Report: Nearly 150 Catholic hospitals provided transgender drugs or surgeries to children

Nearly 150 Catholic hospitals across the United States provided children with transgender drugs or performed gender-transition surgeries on them between 2019 and 2023, contradicting Church teaching and the U.S. bishops’ prohibition on Catholic health care providers offering such interventions, according to data published this week by a medical watchdog group.

In all, more than 520 minors received treatments in Catholic hospitals in about 40 states over the five-year period, an analysis of the data by EWTN News shows.

Of those patients, more than 150 had surgeries to alter their appearances to resemble the opposite sex, while more than 380 children were given puberty blockers or hormone therapies.

Puberty blockers stop a child’s natural developments during puberty and hormone therapies provide testosterone to girls who want to resemble boys and estrogen to boys who want to resemble girls. Based on the records in the database, EWTN News found that doctors at Catholic hospitals wrote more than 1,850 prescriptions for minors to facilitate a gender transition.

Catholic health care providers contacted by EWTN News criticized the watchdog group’s methodology and motives without contradicting any of its specific data.

In 2023, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) published guidelines stating that any attempt to alter one’s physical sex characteristics to facilitate a gender transition is “not morally justified” because it does not “respect the fundamental order of the human person as an intrinsic unity of body and soul, with a body that is sexually differentiated.”

“Catholic health care services must not perform interventions, whether surgical or chemical, that aim to transform the sexual characteristics of a human body into those of the opposite sex or take part in the development of such procedures,” adds the document prepared by the USCCB’s Committee on Doctrine, titled “Doctrinal Note on the Moral Limits to Technological Manipulation of the Human Body.”

The document quotes Pope Francis several times, including his 2016 apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia: “Beyond the understandable difficulties which individuals may experience, the young need to be helped to accept their own body as it was created.”

Yet despite the bishops’ directive, the watchdog group Do No Harm found gender transition interventions to be widespread among U.S. hospitals affiliated with the Catholic Church.

The group’s “Stop the Harm Database” is based on publicly available insurance claims generated by U.S. hospitals and health care facilities. These numbers do not include children who were born with intersex disorders.

Based in Glen Allen, Virginia, Do No Harm states on its website that it “seeks to highlight and counteract divisive trends in medicine, such as “‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ and youth-focused gender ideology.”

Most of the more than 149 Catholic hospitals listed in the database — including six children’s hospitals — offered only minimal services, such as filling a single prescription, the records show. But 33 Catholic hospitals performed at least one gender transition surgery on a minor for a total of 152 surgeries.

Half of the children who received such surgeries — 76 in all — were patients at five facilities operated by Providence, a nonprofit Catholic health care system encompassing 51 hospitals in five states: Washington, Montana, Oregon, California, and Alaska. Two of the system’s hospitals provided the lion’s share of these surgeries: Providence Milwaukie Hospital in Oregon operated on 46 children, according to the database, while Providence St. Joseph Hospital-Orange in California provided surgeries to 18 children.

Six other Catholic hospitals performed gender transition surgeries on at least five minors. This includes eight children who received surgery at St. Anne Hospital in Burien, Washington. St. Anne Hospital is operated by Virginia Mason Franciscan Health, which runs 10 hospitals in Washington state.

Other hospitals that performed several gender transition surgeries, according to the database, include Ascension SE Wisconsin Hospital-St. Joseph Campus in Milwaukee and Ascension NE Wisconsin-St. Elizabeth Campus in Appleton, Wisconsin, both of which performed surgeries on six minors.

Across Catholic, secular, and other hospitals, the database found nearly 14,000 minors undergoing gender transitions in the United States across the time span. This includes more than 5,700 surgeries and more than 8,500 minors receiving puberty blockers or hormone therapies. Doctors wrote more than 62,600 gender transition prescriptions.

Catholic Health Association pushes back

When EWTN News reached out to several Catholic health networks and hospitals that are listed in the report, most referred to a statement issued by the Catholic Health Association (CHA), which criticized Do No Harm.

Comprising more than 600 hospitals and 1,600 long-term care and other health facilities in all 50 states, CHA is the largest group of nonprofit health care providers in the United States, according to its website. The organization has clashed with the U.S. bishops in the past on health care issues, such as the Affordable Care Act.

“A preliminary review of the data gathered by Do No Harm indicates they are irresponsibly presenting claims data without necessary clinical context,” CHA said in its statement. “This harmful report makes dangerous assumptions that seek to disparage health care providers and the patients they treat.”

CHA added that Catholic hospitals provide “ethical, evidence-based medical care that recognizes and upholds the human dignity of each person” and accused Do No Harm of stigmatizing “LGBTQ communities.” It also stated “there are certain procedures we do not perform based on our values and faith.”

CHA did not respond to EWTN News’ request for clarification about which procedures are not in line with its values and whether Catholic hospitals provide transgender surgeries or drugs to minors or adults.

Beth Serio, the external relations manager at Do No Harm, told EWTN News the group stands by its findings, adding that the group has published the methodology so that “anyone could look at our paper and exactly replicate our study and get the same results.”

She said the records in the group’s database represent “the minimum [number of gender transitions] we know occurred in these hospitals.” Because the database could not account for cash payments or insurance claims that are not accessible to the public, she said, “we’re quite confident it’s an undercount.”

Serio expressed disappointment in CHA’s response, telling EWTN: “It is very sad that the Catholic Health Association is choosing to attack [Do No Harm’s] character as an organization rather than focusing on the real issue, [which is that] … thousands of children are being harmed across the country.”

She said the report could be an “opportunity [for CHA] to be an advocate for change” and urged the association to “truly read our methodology and study it and point to exactly where [they think] the methodology is flawed.”

Serio told EWTN News that Do No Harm’s “primary motivation and interest in releasing this database is the protection of children.”

A spokesperson for Providence — the network responsible for half of the transgender surgeries by Catholic hospitals listed in the report — said the health network has “concerns about the motivation for this report and the risk it poses to the privacy of a vulnerable patient population” but could not “speak to the validity of its report content, data, or methodology.”

“Transgender patients come to us for many health care needs,” the statement read. “We are committed to providing them with quality, compassionate health care, and helping them to feel welcome, safe, and included. … [We] provide all patients with the full range of care available at our facilities.”

When asked for clarification about its policies regarding transgender surgeries, a spokesperson referred EWTN News back to Providence’s original statement.

What can the bishops do?

It remains to be seen what, if any, action the USCCB or individual U.S. bishops will take in response to Do No Harm’s report.

In a statement to EWTN News, Chieko Noguchi, a spokesperson for the USCCB, said that Church teaching “is clear … about the inherent dignity of each person as created in the image and likeness of God.”

Noguchi added that “we are always called to accompany those who are struggling, and this certainly includes people who struggle with his or her God-given identity as male or female,” but emphasized that both the bishops and the Holy See “have been clear as to what is morally acceptable.”

“Let us pray that we may all find the compassion and wisdom to better help our brothers and sisters accept who God created them to be,” she added.

EWTN News followed up on the statement to ask what action bishops could take if hospitals violate the USCCB guidelines but did not receive a response by the time of publication. EWTN News also asked CHA whether Catholic hospitals listed in the report intend to follow USCCB guidelines but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, a senior ethicist at The National Catholic Bioethics Center, told EWTN News: “Catholic hospitals clearly must hold to a higher standard than that of their secular counterparts” and they “may not condone or participate in these unethical practices.”

“Reports indicating that Catholic hospitals, including some Catholic children’s hospitals, may be involved in sex reassignment procedures remind us of the need for continued vigilance on the part of diocesan bishops and Catholic health care leaders,” Pacholczyk said.

“There may also be a need for more thoroughgoing ethical formation for employees and administrators to help them counter the pro-transgender ideological messaging that has become commonplace in recent years,” he added.

“To treat our human maleness or femaleness as malleable or re-assignable is to invite serious harm into the lives of those who may be facing genuine and deep-seated psychological struggles over their own ‘gender identity,’” Pacholczyk said. “Catholic health care entities best serve their patients by directing them towards supportive psychotherapy that works to address any underlying psychiatric issues that may be prompting the desire to gender transition.”

Transgender drugs and surgeries for minors has become a heated political topic in the United States and worldwide in recent years.

Most Republican-led states have restricted or banned doctors from providing those medical interventions to minors. Many Democrat-led states have done the opposite — changing state law to ensure doctors can continue with those interventions.