Culture and Social Issues

Scandal-Ridden Hospital To Open First US ‘Detransition’ Clinic In Historic Legal Settlement

(Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons)

America’s largest children’s hospital agreed to open the nation’s first “Detransition Clinic” after years of scandals involving child sex-change procedures, Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Friday.

Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston will provide free sex-change detransition services through the clinic for its first five years as part of a legal settlement with Texas, Paxton’s office said in a statement. The hospital drew national outrage starting in 2023 for misleading the public about giving so-called gender-affirming care to minors and secretly making taxpayers fund it through Texas Medicaid.

The settlement also requires Texas Children’s Hospital to pay $10 million over the alleged Medicaid fraud and “compels the termination and revocation of privileges of multiple physicians” at the facility, Paxton’s office said.

“Today, we made the difficult decision to settle with the Texas Attorney General and the Department of Justice, closing a chapter that has been wrought with falsehoods and distractions,” the hospital said in a statement. “To be clear — we are settling to protect our resources from endless and costly litigation. This settlement will allow us to redirect those precious resources to focus on the life-saving care and groundbreaking discoveries of our exceptional clinicians and scientists.”

Paxton first started investigating Texas Children’s Hospital in 2023 after surgeon Eithan Haim leaked documents to journalist Chris Rufo showing the facility was giving children sex-change surgeries and hormones — despite telling the public it had stopped and despite Republican Gov. Greg Abbott legally declaring such procedures as child abuse. The Biden administration tried prosecuting Haim on charges of violating medical privacy law, but President Donald Trump’s officials dropped the case in his first week in office.

Vanessa Sivadge, a nurse at the hospital, blew the whistle months after Haim on what she called falsification of medical records meant to get Medicaid funding for the sex changes, Rufo reported in 2024. The Biden administration investigated her as well, though this did not result in charges.

“The impossible was done by [Paxton] and his team at the [attorney general’s] office,” Haim said in a Friday X post responding to the settlement.

“I cannot believe this happened,” Haim added.

“This settlement will ensure that the deranged child mutilators who hurt our kids are fired and held accountable,” said Paxton, who is running for a U.S. Senate seat in a GOP primary runoff election on May 26.

Texas Children’s Hospital, however, maintains it did nothing wrong.

“Over the last three years, we have cooperated fully with the Texas Attorney General and Department of Justice, navigating an unconscionable campaign of mistruths and mischaracterizations related to gender affirming care,” the hospital said. “We produced over 5 million documents and conducted multiple internal and external investigations.”

“All reviews and investigations continue to support the facts — we have been compliant with all laws,” the hospital claimed.