The Pennsylvania House Freedom Caucus (PAFC) this week issued an ultimatum to the Pennsylvania State University: Either your hospitals will stop providing puberty blockers to children or funding won’t be forthcoming.
Penn State Health operates six hospitals in central Pennsylvania. The PAFC is castigating the university-run system for “prescribing experimental puberty blockers and providing “‘gender-affirming care’ to children as young as FIVE YEARS OLD.” [Caps in original tweet.]
PAFC leaders referenced Penn State’s “Gender Health Program,” whose webpage describes it as offering “comprehensive, gender-affirming care for children, adolescents and young adults up to age 25 in a supportive and safe environment.” The clinic also said its “pediatric endocrinologist provides puberty-blocking medications, cares for people with differences of sexual development and cares for patients who are younger than 10 years old. The system adds it “does not provide gender-affirming surgery, but may make referrals.”
While the PAFC took particular issue with Penn State, the organization of at least 20 conservative state representatives said they also want to prohibit such policy at healthcare institutions run by Temple University and the University of Pittsburgh. All of these schools are partly private but rely heavily on state-taxpayer funding. PAFC member State Representative Aaron Bernstine (R-Ellwood City) wrote to all three schools last month requesting information as to what pharmacological interventions the institutions may perform in cases of gender dysphoria.
When the Pennslyvania General Assembly approves the budgets for these universities this summer, the schools will receive $882,491,000 for Fiscal Year 2023-24. And while conservatives aren’t now ascendant in Harrisburg with a Democrat-controlled House of Representatives and a Democratic governor, the PAFC may have the ability to block the universities’ financial allotments; those items require two-thirds approval by both legislative chambers.
“The Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus will not even consider a yes vote if policies that endanger the health and welfare of children remain unchanged,” PAFC Chair State Representative Dawn Keefer (R-Dillsburg) said. “To sit by and allow public funds to be used in experimental activities causing irreversible harm to children, some under the age of 10, makes lawmakers complicit in this abuse couched as health care.”
Penn State’s press office stated that the caucus failed to consider the full breadth of the hospitals’ use of puberty blockers, suggesting that they are sometimes used for purely physical conditions unrelated to gender dysphoria.
“Penn State Health’s treatments have been misrepresented by the Pennsylvania House Freedom Caucus,” Penn State Health corporate relations and communications vice president Jeff Beckman told The Pennsylvania Daily Star via email. “There are certain medical conditions, such as early onset of puberty, where the prescription of reversible puberty blockers are appropriate.”
PAFC’s leadership seems optimistic at the moment about the group’s ability to hinder budgeting for the universities if the puberty-blocker policy remains unaddressed.
“The two-thirds threshold for approval means that House Democrats will be unable to push through continued funding for ‘non-preferred’ institutions without Republican support,” State Representative David Rowe (R-McAlisterville) said. “Our constituents can rest assured that the PA Freedom Caucus will lead the effort to unite Republicans in opposition to such funding as long as any policy remains in place that endangers the health and welfare of our most vulnerable and valuable demographic, our children.”
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Bradley Vasoli is managing editor of The Pennsylvania Daily Star. Follow Brad on Twitter at @BVasoli. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “St. Joseph Regional Health Network” by Penn State Health.
