North Cook News

Lurie Children’s Hospital was paid to give Gender 101 and 102 trainings at Park Ridge-Niles School District 64, according to findings in a FOIA request provided to North Cook News.

“Both Gender 101 and Gender 102 trainings included policies schools should have in place and how to handle students that are having gender identity issues,” parent Daniela Fuksa, who made the requests, said. “The trainings went over how teachers and/or staff are allowed to have 8, 90-minute sessions with students ages 12 and older about their gender identity without notifying the parents. They also state the district must allow students to have access to locker rooms, bathrooms, and team sports which the students identifies with. They also include ways in which the district should implement gender inclusion through books, media, health and history curriculum.”

“As of August 2022, the board has been pushing to create a policy but Superintendent and Vice Superintendent have been putting it off. The 2 trainings with Lurie's took place in March 2022 and Sept 2022.” Fuksa said allowing children to undergo nine sessions of 80 minutes apiece with Lurie’s at the school and without parental oversight is wrong. 

“I think they're invading the privacy of the kids,” Fuksa told North Cook News. “I think that they're just trying to do things that are not legal and I think if parents knew what policies Lurie's is trying to implement or trying to tell the school to implement its anti-parent.” “You need a permission slip as a parent to have the nurse dispense medicine Tylenol or Advil. But Lurie's is telling the school that you can go ahead and have a 90-minute session with the child and talk about their gender identity before you even notify parents. That's not okay. So it is everything in such secrecy and I just don't think parents understand what's going on and they try to hide it well and they do.”

Lurie Children’s Hospital has a “Gender Development Program” in which they provide services as “youth progress through gender identity development.” It offers services for “masculinizing” girls and “feminizing” boys. Clinical services offered include pubertal suppression therapy, menstrual suppression hormone therapy (masculinizing), hormone therapy (feminizing), fertility preservation and gender-affirming surgery referrals. The program caters only to those under 22 years of age. 

“Our patients generally fall within one or more of the following groups: Gender expansive or gender non-conforming children: Children and adolescents who exhibit behavior that is not typical of their assigned birth sex. Gender-questioning youth: Children and adolescents who are questioning their gender identities (e.g., “I was born a girl, but I wonder if I’m really a boy?”). Transgender and gender-fluid youth: Children and adolescents who identify as a gender different from their assigned birth sex (e.g., “I was born a girl, but I am really a boy.”),” the website stated the types of gender identity issues the program treats. 

Gov. J.B. Pritzker is directly involved with funding gender reassignment at Lurie Hospital in Chicago. Lurie's Children's Hospital received $6.45 million from the Pritzker Foundation in January, on top of a previous $15 million.

Chloe Cole, a California teenager who at age 13 began hormone therapy and later had her breasts surgically removed, has said children should not be allowed to make such decisions about their sexual health. Cole, now in her late teens, later de-transitioned and has become one of the most outspoken critics of allowing children to undergo such treatments.

“Personally, I don’t think that children should ever be allowed to transition," Cole said after attending likely presidential candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s State of the State speech Tuesday, March 7, WUSF Public Media reported. “I think it should be an adult decision, and there needs to be a better model of care for [gender] dysphoric patients.”

Critics have deemed the medical community’s involvement in transgender services to children as child abuse. Writing in the Daily Signal, Michelle Cretella, M.D., executive director of the American College of Pediatricians, said her field has become overrun by those engaging in gender treatment. She notes while once treated as a mental illness called “gender dysphoria” an increasing number of doctors have now treated such issues under the gender identity umbrella which includes treatments such as hormone therapy, plastic surgery and gender reassignment. Clinics catering to high-dollar medical procedures servicing children have been popping up as a result. 

Cretella describes a development in the pediatric care community in which the number of gender clinics has increased by 2,000 percent over the past eight years. According to her, “Pediatric 'gender clinics' are considered elite centers for affirming children who are distressed by their biological sex. This distressful condition, once dubbed gender identity disorder, was renamed 'gender dysphoria' in 2013.” Cretella noted that there were 24 of these gender clinics clustered chiefly along the east coast and in California in 2014 which increased to 40 a year later across the nation. 

In 2017, Cretella forecasted that "gender clinics are bound to proliferate further" noting the 215 pediatric residency training future pediatricians in a transition-affirming protocol and treating gender-dysphoric children at the time. She also mentioned, "the federal government stated that it would not require Medicare and Medicaid to cover transition-affirming procedures for children or adults because medical experts at the Department of Health and Human Services found the risks were often too high, and the benefits too unclear.” 

Despite these findings and setbacks, "the World Professional Association for Transgender Health has pressed ahead, claiming—without any evidence—that these procedures are 'safe,'" Cretella said. 

“Two leading pediatric associations—the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Pediatric Endocrine Society—have followed in lockstep, endorsing the transition affirmation approach even as the latter organization concedes within its own guidelines that the transition-affirming protocol is based on low evidence," she added. “They even admit that the only strong evidence regarding this approach is its potential health risks to children.”