For 2016, the new shade is on transgender people. With all the right-wing states trying to rush new bathroom rules into effect, with the Congress even inserting the same ALEC language into the Defense Appropriations bill, it's up to Fox News to demonize transgender people as much as possible.
As an extra added bonus, they figured they could use Planned Parenthood as the villain in their scenario, too. Because why not?
Media Matters reports:
Fox News is arguing that Planned Parenthood’s newest venture is helping “transgender patients with sex changes,” which the FoxNews.com article says will help fill budget gaps caused by the health care provider no longer accepting reimbursements for fetal tissue donations. But Planned Parenthood has offered trans-inclusive health care services, according to well-established guidelines, well before the organization discontinued fetal tissue reimbursement.
Planned Parenthood has "found a new niche that could prove nearly as controversial as providing abortions" -- helping transgender people through the "sex-change process," says a May 5 FoxNews.com article. the article also claims that since Planned Parenthood has stopped "selling baby body parts for money," the “gender reassignment process may enable the organization to make up the lost cash." The false allegations of fetal tissue profiteering that Fox News is referring to have been repeatedly debunked.
But Planned Parenthood offering medical care to transgender people is not “new.” Standards of care for providing transition-related services have been on the books for almost 50 years and are supported by major medical associations, such as the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association. Trans people use Planned Parenthood as a means to access a diverse range of culturally competent medical services, such as reproductive health care, STD screenings, pap smears, cancer screenings, and even sometimes hormone treatments. Planned Parenthood provides one aspect of many that go along with transition-related care.
The author is correct about one thing -- both hormone therapy services and facilitation of fetal tissue donation account for a negligible amount of Planned Parenthood’s resources each year. Currently, less than 1 percentof the organization’s health centers even facilitate donations for fetal tissue research. Hormone therapy services also account for less than 1 percent of the 9.5 million services that are performed each year, according to the latest annual report.
The article relies solely on the opinion of hate group spokesperson Peter Sprigg, a senior fellow at the Family Research Council, who is not a medical professional. Sprigg predicts severe backlash from patients experiencing transition regret, which -- much like so-called “post-abortion syndrome” -- is a conservative myth debunked by scientific evidence.
They go on to quote more from the Fox News article, but you get the idea. They dipped in the "baby parts" well and found that it was dry, so why not take aim at transgendered people next?
Fox News. They hate; you decide.
