There could be an ulterior motive in play for the clinic.
Bailey, however, is beaming over what he sees as Missouri’s leadership in protecting children from the effects of these procedures, which are often irreversible.
The state passed a law 11 months ago that prohibits physicians from providing gender-manipulation procedures on minors. However, minors who were already receiving such treatments were allowed to continue.
Three months prior, Missouri passed a law banning biological males from participating on female sports teams.
The Washington University Transgender Center, at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, closed its doors last week after claims that doctors there pushed puberty blockers and other procedures on minors, The Daily Mail reported.
Bailey called the closure a “huge win” but said his office’s investigation continues.
“We’ve been fighting to protect children from this gender mutilation and woke left-wing experimentation since I took office in January of 2023, and as you know this investigation is the first of its kind in the nation. It’s multi-agency. We’ve demanded a moratorium on these procedures,” Bailey said on Washington Watch Wednesday.
Impacts of the investigation
Bailey said the investigation’s impact on such clinics is noticeable.
“What we’re seeing time and time again is that the pressure we’ve kept on these issues has caused these clinics to shut down permanently,” he told show host Tony Perkins.
In this particular case, St. Louis Children’s Hospital has not complied with certain documents Bailey’s office has sought relative to its investigation.
It’s possible the clinic has closed hoping to keep certain information from coming to light. Bailey said his office faced a “pressure campaign” to call off the dogs.
Bailey says his office will continue to seek relative documents from St. Louis Children’s.
There’s been “industry-wide change, and that’s what we’re seeing in this investigation in pursuit of these documents. We’re not going to be stone-walled,” he said. “Just because we’re preventing wrongdoing going forward doesn’t mean we’re not going to fight for justice for the victims of this mutilation industry that have suffered in the past.”
A Texas judge blocked a similar ban in his state in 2023 but Missouri’s ban was allowed to take effect.
“We’ve won at the trial court level against many of these other clinics and will continue fighting any clinic that continues to try to thwart the state’s effort to look back in time to determine what type of abuses occurred,” the attorney general said.
Missouri, UK similarities?
Bailey believes the investigation will eventually turn up problems with gender treatment similar to what was learned in The Cass Review in the United Kingdom.
Dr. Hilary Cass, a former president of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, led an independent review of gender identity services for minors in the UK.
The review concluded, among other things, that clinic staff were overwhelmed, and raised concerns about the long-term effects of puberty blockers on bone health and fertility. The review has questions about “reversibility” of the drug effects.
“The report showed referrals to their clinic for this mutilation increased exponentially to the point they were creating victims on an enormous scale, and it became unmanageable and even traumatized some of the staff. I think some of the evidence here in Missouri is going to largely comport with that experience in England,” Bailey said.
