When Confused Kids Become “Cash Cows”

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A new lawsuit shows that Planned Parenthood is now a leading prescriber of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for teenagers and young adults. Not surprisingly, the left’s favorite “healthcare” business shows the same level of concern for the long-term well-being of these patients as it does its abortion clientele.

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Supporters of the destructive practice known by the misnomer of “gender-affirming care” claim they are motivated by compassion for those who want to change their “gender identity.”

But there is a much more selfish motivation at heart for many of transgenderism’s proponents: Greed.

Consider the case of Cristina Hineman, a young woman with mental health issues who was shoved onto the transgender butchery block by Planned Parenthood.

Hineman, as highlighted in an Aug. 7 article in The Free Press, is suing Planned Parenthood in the first lawsuit against the abortion giant regarding “gender transition” malpractice.

As a teenager, Hineman began suffering from “significant mental health issues” such as “anxiety and major depressive disorder, social exclusion disorder, self-harm, and passive suicidal ideation.” The COVID pandemic lockdowns and attendant isolation only made things worse.

In the midst of this darkness, Hineman had an epiphany motivated by social media videos, believing that her troubles plagued her because she was the “wrong gender.” The solution was simple: Get “gender-affirming” treatments from Planned Parenthood.

She apparently had no second thoughts at the time, and neither did the Planned Parenthood nurse who spoke to her at the clinic in Hudson, New York. The nurse thought nothing of the fact that Hineman had previously sought out professional help regarding her struggles with mental health. Within less than a half an hour, the 18-year-old received a prescription for testosterone gel to help her “transition” to being a man.

A little more than a year into her “gender-affirming treatment,” Hineman was overwhelmed by feelings of regret after getting a double mastectomy, realizing that changing her “gender identity” solved nothing. In fact, it made things worse.

But she could find no comfort at Planned Parenthood. She returned to the Hudson clinic that started her on her path to “gender transition,” wanting to know how she could detransition — only to find that “they were utterly unprepared and unequipped to help a patient detransition.”

Hineman is now suffering from pain and discomfort with her new body, irreversibly changed from its original form. “I’m never going to look like a woman again,” she lamented.

Why would Planned Parenthood take care of her so fastidiously, only to seemingly give up any interest in her well-being when she decided to detransition?

One Planned Parenthood employee was once credibly accused of saying that “trans-identifying kids are cash cows, and they are kept on the hook for the foreseeable future in terms of follow-up appointments, bloodwork, meetings, etc., whereas abortions are (hopefully) a one-and-done situation.”

That statement says it all. It also explains how an organization known for being the largest abortion provider has also become “one of the largest providers in the United States of cross-sex hormones like testosterone to females seeking medical gender transition,” as pointed out by journalist and author Abigail Shrier.

If Planned Parenthood and other purveyors of cross-sex hormones really cared about children and teens struggling with gender dysphoria, they would presumably care about them even when they express regret and seek to detransition.

But the moment someone like Hineman looks in the mirror with existential horror and thinks “I don’t want this anymore,” they stop being a “cash cow.”

Tragically, several factors come together to make things harder, if not impossible, for gender dysphoric kids to get off the road to irreversible gender surgery once they are already on it.

First, multiple states, including Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz’s Minnesota, have declared themselves “sanctuary states” for children who want to “transition.” Certain states have gone a drastic step further, declaring illegal any sort of therapy that seeks to help gender-confused kids — therapy that they ironically deem harmful even as they eagerly peddle cross-sex hormones.

Second, activists for transgenderism also repeat the oft-told lie to parents that, if they don’t allow their children to fully pursue their new gender identity, their sons and daughters will inevitably commit suicide.

Third, any parents who reject this false claim (even though the majority of children outgrow feelings of gender dysphoria) run the risk of having their child forcibly taken by the state. That’s what happened to the Kolstads, a Montana family whose daughter’s gender dysphoria was encouraged by the state’s Child and Family Services, despite her parents’ resistance to this insanity. The Kolstads eventually lost custody of their child for being “unable or refusing to provide medical care” — that is, they were unwilling to pump her full of body-destroying hormones and chop off perfectly healthy tissue.

All these factors push children and teens like Hineman unto the destructive path of transgenderism and put guardrails in place to keep them on that path until they hurtle off the cliff.

These children need to be told by their families, and, if need be, by mental health professionals, that there is nothing wrong with their bodies and there is no need for surgery or hormones. Such mental care is essential because so many gender dysphoric kids also suffer from other mental problems, that make them more willing to “change” their “gender identity.”

Imagine if any other mental health condition was treated in this outrageous way. Imagine if suicidal teens, instead of being told that they can find help, were told instead that their only option was to take their own life. And, to enforce that, the government would ban the National Suicide Prevention Hotline, take away suicidal children from parents who try to help them, and ban any therapy for kids who seek aid.

Christians see every person as someone uniquely made in God’s image, someone we are called to love, care for, and evangelize to. And to show that love, we must fight those who see God’s image bearers as “cash cows” to be milked and then tossed aside.

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