Texas Children's Hospital Opens a Detransition Clinic Under Its Settlement With the State. Here Is What It Offers
The Houston hospital's clinic, required by a May settlement with Attorney General Ken Paxton, offers free care for five years to patients who received gender-transition interventions and want to reverse course.
Texas Children's Hospital in Houston has opened a clinic for patients who received gender-transition interventions and now want medical help to reverse course, Attorney General Ken Paxton's office announced Tuesday.
The attorney general's office calls it the nation's first detransition clinic. The hospital was required to create it under a settlement with the state announced in May.
What the clinic offers
According to the attorney general's office, the clinic provides detransition-related medical care to patients through age 21, and detransition-related obstetric and gynecologic care to patients older than 21. Because the care involves several specialties, patients may be seen at different Texas Children's locations depending on their needs and what their care team recommends.
The settlement terms, released in June and first reported by The Texas Tribune, require the clinic to provide endocrinology, surgery, primary care, fertility counseling, psychiatry and psychotherapy, along with obstetric and gynecological services for adults.
Texas Children's must fully fund the clinic's services for its first five years, so patients pay nothing, and must promote the clinic on its website, KPRC 2 reported. The settlement also calls for a donation page for people who want to support the clinic.
How it came about
The settlement grew out of a 2023 investigation by the attorney general's office into Texas Children's, the Tribune reported. That same year, Gov. Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 14, which bars puberty blockers and hormone therapies for minors seeking gender transition.
The state's claims were brought under the Texas Health Care Program Fraud Prevention Act. The attorney general's office alleged the hospital billed Texas Medicaid for gender-transition interventions that were not allowed. To resolve those claims, the hospital agreed to pay $10 million.
The settlement also permanently ended the medical privileges of several physicians. The Tribune reported that it covered three current doctors and two former ones. The hospital must also amend its bylaws so that any doctor who performs gender-transition interventions automatically gives up staff privileges.
"In accordance with my settlement with Texas Children's Hospital, the nation's first-ever Detransition Clinic is now open," Paxton said in the announcement. "I will continue to ensure that this clinic provides the care and support that victims of the radical left's gender ideology deserve."
Paxton is also the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in the Nov. 3 election.
The hospital's side
Texas Children's has said it complied with all laws and settled to close a legal chapter it described as "wrought with falsehoods and distractions," according to the Tribune. When the terms were released in June, the hospital said it already offered the services the settlement demanded.
"The detransition clinic will formalize the supportive, multidisciplinary services we already deliver to all patients who need our care," the hospital said then. "This simply provides structure and a name for the services we currently provide."
The hospital also said it would not share a list of potential patients that the settlement requires it to keep, citing federal patient privacy law. "We abide by HIPAA and protecting patient privacy is one of our top priorities," it said.
The Tribune reported that regret after hormone therapy and surgery is rare.
Why it matters
Whatever one thinks of the lawsuit that produced it, a clinic that exists to help young people who want to stop or reverse medical transition, at no cost to them for five years, answers a real need.
Christians believe every person is made in the image of God, male and female, and is "fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalm 139:14). That truth calls for honesty about the body and compassion for anyone who has been hurt. Young people who are seeking healing deserve both.
Families who want information can find it on the Texas Children's Hospital website, which the settlement requires to describe the clinic's services.
