A congressional hearing was held last week on the matter of federal funds going to children's hospitals, including those that offer the experimental treatments to kids with gender dysphoria.
Dr. Meredithe McNamara of Yale School of Medicine testified to the lack of data on its harm.
"It is very unscientific and flawed to pick a single study or a single statistic and to discuss it in isolation," she stated.
So Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) cited 61 studies that indicate so-called "gender-affirming treatments" present a real and permanent harm to children, and he gave her the chance to argue against them.
"Tell me a journal that has done systematic reviews, that cites different evidence, that cites strong evidence for benefits of these therapies," he demanded of Dr. McNamara.
She referred to doctors' standards of medical care, which did not meet Crenshaw's request.
"You're not telling me any journal. You're not telling me any study. Don't say 'standards of care.' Tell me one [study]," he said.
"The standards of care," was her response.
"That's not a journal. That's not a study. That's not an organization. That's not an institution," Rep. Crenshaw reiterated, asking again for Dr. McNamara to "name one study."
But since no peer-reviewed study with such a conclusion exists, Dr. McNamara could not name one.
Though hormone and other such "affirming" treatments are permanent, they still never change a person's gender or addresses the patient's psychological problem. Even so, a number of American hospitals and healthcare professionals continue to ignore the evidence, harming children in the process.
In fact, the nation's largest Catholic health system is guilty of that. And in the opinion of a research and education organization dedicated to the defense of the Catholic Church against assaults from without as well as from within, it needs to shed its Catholic identity.
The Lepanto Institute has released a 64-page report concerning CommonSpirit Health, a chain of Catholic hospitals that is performing "sex-change operations" and providing hormone therapies and puberty blockers for children.
"It's an abomination," asserts the institute's president, Michael Hichborn. "What makes all of this so much worse is that the Catholic identity of CommonSpirit Health comes directly from the Vatican."
According to the report, CommonSpirit Health derives its Catholic identity through sponsorship from the Catholic Health Care Federation, a "public juridic person" whose authority is granted by the Vatican's Congregation for the Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.
This means that direct oversight and jurisdiction over CommonSpirit Health belongs alone to the Apostolic See in the Vatican.
"So everything that CommonSpirit does is done in the name of the Catholic Church," Hichborn explains. "It's got to be severed; it has to be kicked out of the church."
Meanwhile, he submits that bishops all over the country need to start leading prayers and calls for repentance. He also urges Catholics to contact Rome directly and encourage the Vatican to correct the problem.
"What CommonSpirit has done is satanic at its core, and only reparation to God is going to make up for any of this," Hichborn contends.
The Lepanto Institute is calling upon the bishops of the United States to revoke the Catholic identity of CommonSpirit Health and all of the "Catholic" hospitals identified in its report.
