(The Center Square) – California leads the nation in the number of sex reassignment procedures and surgeries performed on children, with over 2,000 California minors having submitted insurance claims for one or both types of medical interventions.
The new data comes from Do No Harm, which describes itself as a “a national association of medical professionals combating the attack on our healthcare system from woke activists.”
DNH analyzed procedure and drug codes used by most insurance companies and hospitals for “gender-affirming care” on those 17 and younger, and cross-referenced the data with patient diagnoses. The data was vetted by multiple medical professionals to weed out possible false positives.
Given that approximately 2,024 children were billed for $29 million of submitted charges in California, that’s approximately $14,300 in average medical intervention costs per child. With 8.6 million minors in California, that’s 0.024% of children making medical-level gender transitions — or 23.6 out of 100,000 California children. That’s 31% higher than the national average of 18.1 per 100,000 children.
California’s higher rate may in part be explained by California’s requirement that insurance coverage include “gender affirming care,” a requirement that extends even to taxpayer-funded MediCal, recently expanded to cover the state’s undocumented immigrants.
“These procedures can lead to impairment in bone strength and brain maturation, and loss of fertility and the ability to engage in sexual relations,” wrote DNH. “It is dangerous and destructive to let children, whose minds are still developing, make such life-altering decisions at such young ages – especially since 90% of children who believe they are a different sex no longer hold that view as adults if left to develop on their own without medical interventions.”
DNH’s data says three of the top 12 hospitals in the nation for providing gender medical interventions for children are in California. The Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles has the second-most patients in the nation, and, according to PBS, has provided gender treatment to patients as young as three years old.
CHLA has entered a partnership with Los Angeles Unified School District, the second-largest school district in the nation, to direct students to CTHD. At another California public school, 5th grade students were read a book on gender theory by their teacher, shown a video on the book with their year-long, one-on-one kindergarten mentees, and instructed to teach them gender theory.
According to a new Oct. 9 CDC survey, 5% of U.S. high school students either identify as transgender (3%) or are questioning their gender identities (2%). Because this is the first time the CDC Youth Risk Behavior Survey has asked teens if they identify as transgender or are gender-questioning, comparative data is limited.
A 2022 UCLA study using CDC data found youth identification as transgender had doubled in the previous five years to 1.4%, suggesting the trend has continued, with 43% growth from 2022 to 2024.
This article was originally published at www.thecentersquare.com
