Boston Children’s Hospital Receives Threats, Harassment From Far-Right Over Disproven Trans-Related Misinformation

The Boston Children’s Hospital has released a statement on Tuesday denouncing the intimidation and threats that their staff have received due to a far-right harassment campaign centered around inaccurate misinformation regarding the kinds of services they offer to transgender individuals.

The hospital has been awashed with threats to its staff due to a far-right campaign started by right-wing social media influencers like LibsofTikTok and the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh, based on misinformation about the hospital providing hysterectomies and genital surgeries to transgender youth under 18 years of age, according to NBC News.

“We are deeply concerned by these attacks on our clinicians and staff fueled by misinformation and a lack of understanding and respect for our transgender community,” the statement read. “We are working with law enforcement to protect our clinicians, staff, patients, families, and the broader Boston Children’s community and hold the offenders accountable.”

Boston Children’s, which has been providing services to transgender youth since 1998, also opened the first trans health program in the United States aimed for adolescents in 2007. The harassment campaign began after conservative influencers claimed that a video about hysterectomies pointed to it being done on children, Boston.com reported.

“Age 18 is used to reflect the standard age of majority for medical decision-making,” the hospital said in a statement. “Boston Children’s does not — and will not — perform a hysterectomy as part of gender-affirming care on a patient under the age of 18.”

Boston Police is investigating the harassment, while many of the hospital’s staff has made their profiles private to prevent further harassment, WBUR reported.

“People are permitted to agree or disagree,” U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins said. “But when it crosses into the level of threats, that is when we are potentially going to have a law enforcement response to this incident.”

The campaign appears to be part of a broader effort from conservatives and anti-trans activists to reduce or close down transgender services in states that would typically protect those facilities through harassment and threats to the staff and facilities, LGBT advocate Alejandra Caraballo said.

“We’ve already had months and months of this reinforcing propaganda, that LGBTQ people are groomers, that they’re pedophiles, that they are threats to children,” she said. “It’s very disturbing to see people justify attacking a children’s hospital because of their transphobia and their hatred of trans people.”

“These people know they can’t ban gender affirming care in states like Massachusetts so they are resorting to digital vigilantism and mob violence to try and intimidate providers and shut down these clinics,” she continued. “The children having their care disrupted are just collateral to them.”