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CV NEWS FEED // A shocking report released today revealed that the nation’s fourth-largest Catholic health system is performing “transgender” surgeries on children, in direct violation of Catholic teaching.
Providence Health and Services, which owns 51 hospitals across seven western states, was found to have performed such surgeries on 81 children and prescribed cross-sex hormones or puberty blockers to 113 children over the last five years, according to a newly published database.
Do No Harm, a secular organization of medical professionals and public policy experts, published the database showing which hospitals subject children to “transgender” surgeries. The data come from medical billing codes, which medical practices submit to insurance companies to claim payment. Every procedure performed in the United States is documented with a procedure code and corresponding diagnosis code.
“We’ve actually been hot on Providence’s trail for a while, and now we have hard evidence to show they are violating Catholic teaching and harming children,” said Tommy Valentine, director of CatholicVote’s Catholic Accountability Project.
In a little-known article published at the Seattle Times last year, Providence confirmed the system would begin performing “some gender affirming surgeries, but not on ‘primary’ sex organs such as the uterus, according to spokesperson Melissa Tizon.”
“Under their twisted logic,” Valentine explained, “a trans mutilation surgery like a mastectomy on a teenage girl is permissible because it doesn’t directly affect reproductive organs. No serious Catholic ethicist would agree with that absurd proposition.”
1/ With our first-of-its kind analysis, the Stop the Harm database, we set out to expose the child trans industry in America.
— Do No Harm (@donoharm) October 8, 2024
The database analyzed claims data from hospitals across the country performing sex change interventions on minors. Here is what we found (🧵🧵):…
After finding the Seattle Times article, which went unreported in Catholic media, Valentine says he began digging deeper into Providence and roots of the subversive policy.
His investigation led him to a 2019 academic paper published in the journal of the Catholic Health Association by Dr. Peter J. Cataldo, who at the time was the Group Vice President for Theology and Ethics at Providence. In the paper, Cataldo claimed, “It is not contradictory to claim that a person’s sense of gender can be contrary to the ontological dimension of the creation of that person as male or female.”
The paper argued that the removal or modification of secondary sex characteristics – such as mastectomies of healthy breasts, cross-sex hormones, vocal cord surgeries, and other “transgender” procedures – are acceptable under Catholic moral principles. Cataldo cited Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI in making his case.
“Everyone knows that JPII and Pope Benedict would be horrified to hear someone cite them to justify irreversible mutilations of troubled children,” Valentine lamented.
In 2020, Providence started an initiative called the LGBTQIA+ Program. According to their website, “Thanks to new services and education of Providence staff, patients are connected to gender-affirming primary and specialty care clinicians, surgeons and mental health professionals.”
Gender-affirming care is a euphemism for mutilation surgeries, cross-sex hormones, and puberty blockers.
High-ranking Providence employees have publicly expressed support for transgender ideology. Jamez Terry, an unordained man who serves as Lead Chaplain at Providence Alaska Children’s Hospital in Anchorage, co-authored an article in the Catholic Health Association’s journal last year which said the steps of a transgender transition “are very much the process of conversion as we see more clearly, abandon inauthenticity and embrace God’s plan.” Andi Chatburn, Senior Director for Ethics in Washington and Montana for Providence, who lists her pronouns as “she/they” and has a rainbow LGBTQ+ pride flag in her LinkedIn profile.
“We’re just scratching the surface at Providence,” Valentine said. “We are going to work hard to stop the injustice occurring under their roof.”
Providence’s roots trace back to the 19th century when the Sisters of Providence of Montreal moved over the border to start hospitals and schools in the Pacific Northwest, then a rugged wilderness.
Through a series of mergers and acquisitions, Providence has grown into a $29 billion company that owns and operates hospitals in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, Montana, New Mexico, and Texas.
As happened with most Catholic health systems over the last few decades, leadership and governance of Providence was turned over to a secular corporate board. Providence is sponsored under canon law by the Mother Joseph Province of the Sisters of Providence, based in Renton, Washington.
A survey of Mother Joseph Province’s social media profiles turned up an image posted in 2020 of a quotation attributed to St. Catherine of Siena: “What is it you want to change? Your hair, your face, your body? Why? For God is in love with all those things and he might weep when they are gone.”
