A hospital system based in Memphis, Tennessee said this week that it has paused, not stopped, its irreversible “gender-affirming” services in response to a possible lawsuit by civil rights organizations.
Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Tennessee accused the hospital, Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare, of discontinuing all of its transgender services due to a new policy. However, the hospital claimed this week that it has not changed its services regarding transgender treatment.
“In recent weeks, some care providers voiced questions about patients receiving gender affirming procedures at a facility affiliated with our health system,” hospital spokesperson Rachel Powers said in a statement. “This resulted in a temporary pause to review current practices.”
Powers added that “the physicians are moving forward with getting the patients rescheduled before the end of the year.”
Last week, the ACLU said that its client, 19-year-old Chris Evans, was scheduled for a surgery in November but was informed less than a week before that it had been canceled. The ACLU demanded the hospital reschedule Evans’ procedure and “rectify its unlawful actions,” as well as threatened to file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights, according to ABC News.
Lucas Cameron-Vaughn, an attorney for the ACLU of Tennessee, said Monday that the hospital’s attorney requested more time to investigate the situation. The ACLU agreed to hold off on filing a legal challenge against the hospital in the meantime.
“Ending medically necessary healthcare for one particular group of people based on sex, whether by formal written policy or simply in practice, is discrimination and violates federal law," Cameron-Vaughn said. “We will evaluate whether we need to file a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights once we have a response from the hospital.”
Earlier this year, Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville suspended its “gender-affirming” surgeries after it was revealed that it was providing these services for children because it’s profitable.
Vanderbilt opened its trans clinic in 2018. During a lecture the same year, Dr. Shayne Taylor explained how she convinced Nashville to get into the gender transition game. She emphasized that it's a "big money maker," especially because the surgeries require a lot of "follow ups" pic.twitter.com/zedM7HBCBe
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) September 20, 2022
After Matt Walsh unveiled these alarming details about the clinic, Vanderbilt deleted the clinic’s entire website and put out a statement claiming that his reporting “misrepresented” facts about the clinic. However, Walsh's Twitter thread pulled straight from the clinic’s webpage and lectures from its physicians that were available on the internet, which Townhall covered.