Vanderbilt University Medical Center, which has been performing gender-affirming surgeries on minors, has announced that it will suspend transgender surgeries after a video was released of a doctor talking about how they are “huge money makers.”

Last month, conservative activist Matt Walsh released a video from 2018 in which the hospital’s LGBTQ specialist, Dr. Shayne Taylor, spoke about how transgender surgeries are “huge money makers” for the hospital.

Dr. Shayne Taylor

Walsh also posted another video of Vanderbilt’s Dr. Ellen Clayton warning that anyone on the hospital’s staff who voices “conscientious objections” due to “religious beliefs” will face “consequences.” Clayton makes it very clear that if someone doesn’t want to perform transgender surgeries on minors, they shouldn’t work at Vanderbilt.

To bring more information about VUMC’s practices to public attention, Walsh released content from VUMC’s YouTube channel which reveals that the hospital “drugs, chemically castrates, and performs double mastectomies on minors.”

Republican lawmakers in Tennessee have been trying to end transgender surgery at VUMC, especially after viewing the videos released by Walsh went viral. Republican Tennessee Governor Bill Lee spoke out against the hospital’s financially-motivated decisions and procedures, saying “The ‘pediatric transgender clinic’ at Vanderbilt University Medical Center raises serious moral, ethical and legal concerns.”

“We should not allow permanent, life-altering decisions that hurt children or policies that suppress religious liberties, all for the purpose of financial gain. We have to protect Tennessee children, and this warrants a thorough investigation,” added Lee.

Gov. Bill Lee

On Friday, Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) announced that it will be pausing all “gender affirmation surgery” on minors while they evaluate its current processes and review new recommendations from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH).

In a letter to state lawmakers, VUMC’s CEO and Chief Health System Officer C. Wright Pinson wrote,

“On September 2, 2022, WPATH published a new version of its recommendations to health care professionals for treatment of transgender persons, known as SOC-8. In light of these new recommendations, and as part of completing our internal clinical review of the SOC-8 guidance in patients under 18, we will be seeking advice from local and national clinical experts. We are pausing gender affirmation surgeries on patients under age 18 while we complete this review, which may take several months.”

Read the full letter below:

 

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