The facts
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced that Texas Children's Hospital has opened the nation's first detransition clinic. This development follows a $10 million settlement between the hospital and the state, finalized in August. The settlement requires the hospital to halt gender-transition services and establish the clinic. According to Paxton's office, the clinic will provide detransition-related medical care to patients up to age 21, and obstetric and gynecologic care for patients older than 21. A spokesperson for Texas Children's Hospital stated that the clinic formalizes existing supportive, multidisciplinary services and will include endocrinology, surgery, primary care, fertility counseling, psychiatry, psychology, social work, case management, and speech pathology. The hospital is triaging prospective patients but has not yet had clinical appointments. The settlement also mandates that the hospital fully fund the clinic's services for its first five years and publicize it on its website. The $10 million payment resolves allegations that the hospital improperly billed Texas Medicaid for gender-transition treatments.
Our take
Here’s a masterclass in using a state’s legal artillery to bully a hospital into building a monument to your own political vanity. Ken Paxton, a man whose legal career is a long public record of alleged corruption and incompetence, has finally created something: a clinic with no fucking patients. For the low, low price of $10 million - extorted from the hospital as part of a bullshit settlement over Medicaid billing - he has forced Texas Children’s to open a ‘detransition’ center. Think of it as the world’s most expensive participation trophy for a culture war pawn like Paxton, a shiny new facility whose entire purpose is to be a permanent middle finger to the people he hates. The hospital spokesperson, through gritted teeth, said this ‘formalizes existing services.’ Translation: We already helped all patients, including those with regret, you absolute prick, but now we have to put your name on the door and call it a ‘clinic’ so you can suck up to your base. The clinic offers a whole buffet of care, from endocrinology to speech pathology, which is hilarious because the only sound in there right now is the deafening silence of an empty waiting room. They’re ‘triaging prospective patients,’ which in non-grifter terms means they’re sitting around hoping someone, anyone, will show up so this ten-million-dollar dick-measuring contest doesn’t look completely pathetic. Paxton’s office gets to brag they’re helping people ‘up to age 21,’ and even older folks with gynecological needs, because nothing says ‘protecting children’ like using them as political props and then tossing in some OB-GYN care to make the whole grift sound medically legitimate. The settlement demands the hospital fund this ghost clinic for five years and advertise it on their website, turning their homepage into a permanent monument to state-coerced humiliation. It’s the healthcare equivalent of being forced to wear a sign that says ‘I’m a cunt’ while handing your tormentor a giant check. Paxton didn’t win a legal battle; he spent public resources to build a empty warehouse for his own smugness, and called it a day. What a hero. What a fucking asshole. The only thing getting ‘transitioned’ here is $10 million into a landfill, and the only thing getting ‘reversed’ is any remaining respect for Texas’s shithead Attorney General.
