Do No Harm database: Seattle Children’s Hospital in ‘Dirty Dozen’ for gender-affirming care

Do No Harm database: Seattle Children’s Hospital in ‘Dirty Dozen’ for gender-affirming care

News Story by Mia Gallegos | FāVS News

Do No Harm, a nonprofit organization that discourages gender-affirming care as it pertains to minors, recently released a database disclosing states in the U.S. that have performed the highest number of gender transformative care on children under the age of 17.5 years old. Among these is Washington state, with the total charges billed for gender-affirming surgeries and hormone or puberty blockers totaling just over $7 million.

This “Stop the Harm” database includes a list of hospitals that have performed the highest number of these surgeries, coining them as the “Dirty Dozen.” The data derived from the study has proven the fact that the number of gender-affirming surgeries has increased significantly between the years of 2019 and 2023. 

Among the Dirty Dozen is Seattle Children’s Hospital, which ranks at number four on the list of 12 hospitals. According to the Stop the Harm database, Seattle Children’s describes itself as “a leader in the region for gender-affirming medical care,” and accounted for $1.4 million of the Washington state total submitted charges of sex change interventions.

Spokane and Whitman County hospitals are also included in their database. Multicare Deaconness Hospital in Spokane treated 58 sex change patients, six for surgery and 52 for hormone/puberty blockers for $967,821. Pullman Regional Hospital in Whitman County treated four minor patients, one for surgery and three for for hormones/puberty blockers for $783.

Some states require providers to be gender affirming

Do No Harm is a collection of healthcare providers who are all seeking to maintain the integrity of the care-providing process by reevaluating the way the system has been overtaken by various “radical ideologies,” according to their website.

“We’re trying to depoliticize the medical field,” said Jared Ross, a senior fellow and physician at Do No Harm. 

Ross shared the legal bounds that healthcare providers are strapped to when it comes to affirming the patients they assist.

“There’s many states that require mental health professionals to be ‘affirming.’ So you have someone that goes to see a therapist because of their struggles and if they start mentioning ‘I’m born in the wrong body.’ Even if the therapist wants to do (otherwise), they’re bound by state law to affirm,” Ross said. 

Washington state has required health professionals since Jan. 1, 2022, to treat patients within the gender-affirming model.

Being legally-mandated to affirm minors’ feelings of gender dysphoria has a lot to do with the concept of autonomy, Ross said. 

“We don’t let kids pick their own bedtime or get tattoos. So what we have is not so much rebellious children, but troubled children that are dealing with underlying mental health issues, whether that be anxiety (or) depression,” Ross said. 

A detransitioner’s story of working through self-hate not gender dysphoria

This sentiment expressed by Ross is shared by KathyGrace Duncan, who lived as a man for 11 years. Today she is a detransitioned woman who works the Women and Transgender Ministry at Portland Fellowship. 

“We don’t have a transgender crisis, we have a mental health crisis that is manifesting as a transgender crisis,” Duncan said.

Duncan began feeling discomfort with being born into a female body at the age of 3. A big reason for this was the emotional and verbal abuse that she witnessed her mother undergo at the hands of her father.

Duncan said she didn’t believe it was possible for women to be loved and cared for, so decided that it would be best for her to seek refuge as the other gender.

“I thought women were weak, hated, and vulnerable. I saw my dad and decided I wanted to be the man my dad was not,” Duncan said. 

Transitioning from female to male at the age of 19, Duncan also discovered the church around this same time. Duncan explained how no extreme shame or washing overtook her at the time she accepted Christ as her savior, confirming in her mind the thought that how she was living was permissible to him.

However, as she continued to grow as a man, Duncan realized that what she had been searching for was not being fulfilled through her changed sex. 

“As I worked through the lies and the reasons why the self hate was there, it came to a place where I wanted to transition back. It was (in) working through the underlying issues that I was able to find that peace,” Duncan said.

Pathologizing puberty

Addressing the self-hate that some of these children experience from a young age is what requires some discernment before concluding that these feelings are coming from clinical gender dysphoria, Duncan said. 

Children who are uncomfortable with the sex they were born with may be purely experiencing the discomfort that comes with puberty, Ross said. He detailed how social media standards coupled with general anxiety surrounding the subject have advanced the mentality that transitioning is the solution to this affliction. However, Ross said, the current industry of professionals have medicalized and pathologized a normal process for these children.

“What we’ve done now is said ‘if you’re a girl that likes to play with trucks, you’re not a girl, you’re actually a boy.’ So we’ve really pushed forward on gender stereotypes, really losing this progress that we’ve made” Ross said, referring to the success that the feminist movement has had in promoting its ideals in our country.

Study’s goals and methodology

The methodology for the Stop the Harm study involved the attainment of 50 billion insurance claims from various hospitals around the nation over a five-year period. The doctors and physicians at Do No Harm analyzed the procedure codes listed on these claims in order to decipher which ones contain evidence that a gender-affirming operation or drug was administered. The collection of this data was done within the legality of HIPAA, explained Michelle Havrilla, the director of Programs at Do No Harm.

“One of the main goals we had was (for the database) to be used as a tool by not only legislators and policy makers, but also for the general public so they can parent and see what’s happening in their backyard. The biggest goal is transparency,” Havrilla said, citing how many people will turn a blind eye to this subject, not believing it’s near or applicable to them in any way.

Another goal of the database is to give various clinicians and healthcare providers an arsenal of information that they can bring to their individual practices, Havrilla said.

“If we can give people really grounded evidence of why this is not right, that’s incredibly powerful,” Havrilla said. 

A major tool that Do No Harm has been using to get their database seen is social media. The day they released the study on X, it got much attention, which at the time this article was written stood at at 422,000 views and more than 450 reposts. 

Despite the extensive research undergone by the medical professionals at Do No Harm to pull together this comprehensive database, Ross believes that their research is only scratching the surface of what is likely taking place in the hospitals around the country. 

Non-gender-affirming care harms, critics say

However, not everyone supports Do No Harm’s mission.

Bob Ferguson, the newly elected governor of Washington State, has long been a staunch advocate for transgender rights and has reaffirmed his commitment to these issue since the election.

Concern for protection of transgender rights has also been brought to the forefront of many initiatives like the Trevor Project, The Human Rights Campaign and other gender-affirming care organizations with the election of the 47th President, Donald Trump. This concern stems from several promises made by the president-elect, one of them being to block transition-related care for minors, according to NBC. 

The Trevor Project posted on X a few days after the election offering a hotline for transgender youth who may be feeling hopeless and discouraged by the result of this election. LGBTQ+ young people are four times as likely to commit suicide than their peers, said Steven Romo on NBC’s coverage of transgender rights. 

Less than half an hour after posting these mental health resources for transgender youth, The Trevor Project released a post disclosing that they would be closing their X account.

Fears of the ‘The Family Agenda’ of Project 2025

Another concern that has arisen surrounding transgender rights in light of the reinstatement of the Trump Administration is the implementation of Project 2025. 

One of the sections of the presidential transition project is titled “The Family Agenda,” which suggests that the chief of Health and Human Services “proudly state that men and women are biological realities,” according to CBS News. This clause goes on to say that Health and Human services should be actively working to solidify a biblical- and social-science-based definition of what marriage and the family structure is.

These measures possibly taken by Trump may create an environment in the U.S. where transgender youth are less acceptable and may potentially even prohibit minors from undergoing sex-change treatment.

Discourse surrounding transgender youth seems like it will persist in the nation with its new president and the various organizations that both support and reject what he plans to employ in his second term. 

Do No Harm will continue to share their database to inform parents and healthcare providers of the soaring numbers of treatments being given to minors, while organizations like the Trevor Project will find ways to push back and protect transgender youth coming up in this country’s new administration. 

Many will continue to remain divided on this issue. This raises the question whether or not the country can achieve a united understanding on how to help youth who identify as transgender.

Hospitals from Spokane and Whitman County in Stop the Harm Database