Planned Parenthood is tapping into a new market, reaching out to young people who identify as transgender and offering them hormone therapy.
Attorney Mary Hasson, a fellow in the Catholic Studies program at the Washington, D.C.-based Ethics & Public Policy Center, has followed the trend for several years and says it makes financial sense, given the growing number of adolescents and young adults who consider themselves to be transgender or simply gender non-conforming.
Those who are gender non-conforming may want to use hormones to achieve a certain look.
“They seek hormones to modify their bodies, not to the extent that someone who identifies as transgender might but just for example, for a girl to have less fat and more musculature to look a little bit more masculine,” Hasson explained.
Planned Parenthood’s 2019-2020 annual report shows the extent of the new venture. Two hundred centers in 31 states now welcome patients who desire hormone therapy.
It’s labeled gender-affirming hormone therapy which typically means few if any questions are asked that would challenge a young person’s thinking. It also typically means no mental health support is needed to obtain the hormones.
Hasson says she’s concerned about the mental health issues that can go untreated in these patients.
“Instead of their underlying wounds being addressed and someone sorting out why it is,” she explained, “they’re simply medicating that and creating new customers for life in a way that’s deeply damaging to these women’s bodies.”
CBN News reached out to Planned Parenthood for information on its services. A spokeswoman emphasized that they vary by location.
Some centers offer hormone therapy to those 16 and under, which critics like Hasson fear will set up a lifelong relationship and permanently alter adolescent bodies.