Shelley Carthen Watson, CEO of the Minneapolis YMCA | LinkedIn
Shelley Carthen Watson, CEO of the Minneapolis YMCA | LinkedIn
Shelley Carthen Watson served as Minneapolis YMCA CEO and is also member of the board of trustees of the Children's Minnesota hospital, named among the “12 worst offending children’s hospitals promoting sex change treatments for minors" for performing such experimentation on 54 patients between 2019 and 2023.
That’s according to a national database released today of hospitals and medical facilities “administering irreversible sex change interventions on children in the United States” by the organization Do No Harm.
The data represents sources including “claims clearinghouses, data aggregators, payors, health systems, CMS, and multiple open data sources,” according to Do No Harm, and "includes data from commercial insurance, Medicaid, Medicare, and VA claims.”
Children's Minnesota saw 54 “sex change" patients, who were children, from 2019 to 2023, according to the database, which included administering “hormone and puberty blockers” to 54 patients. There were 235 total prescriptions written. In all, it amounted to $2,863 in total submitted charges.
A pediatric health care system with locations throughout the Twin Cities area, Children's Minnesota operates a range of services including neonatal, pediatric, and cardiovascular care, along with a Level I trauma center. The hospital is one of the largest freestanding pediatric health systems in the United States.
Watson has served as the president and CEO of YWCA Minneapolis since August 2021. Before she became president and CEO of YWCA, Watson was previously employed at University of Minnesota, where she served as senior associate general counsel in the Office of the General Counsel.
Watson earned her bachelors from Macalester College, and her juris doctorate from the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law.
Watson previously served two terms on the Minneapolis YWCA board and also served on the board of the St. Paul YWCA. Watson previously served on the Planned Parenthood of Minnesota Board of Directors.
Shelley Carthen Watson was an intern at the Minnesota State Capitol and had become involved with Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party at age nineteen.
Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.), Harris' running mate, visited Children's Minnesota hospital in June 2022 to sign a bill that included funding for the facility's first inpatient mental health unit. The hospital's mental health program provides "an alternative to inpatient hospitalization for teens struggling with emotional and behavioral problems that interfere with their ability to function at home, school and in the community," according to a press release.
Walz's visit and bill signing comes almost three years after the hospital's "creation of a pediatric gender health program to provide comprehensive care to kids who identify as transgender or gender-diverse," reported TwinCities.com.
That "gender health program" is "an exclusively pediatric, multidisciplinary gender health program, and includes pediatric gender health, endocrinology and gynecology physicians," according to the hospital's website.
Marc Gorelick, MD, has been Children's Minnesota's CEO since December 2017. He previously was the executive vice president and COO of Children's Hospital of Wisconsin in Milwaukee and previously worked in various roles at the Medical College of Wisconsin, University of Pennsylvania, Al DuPont Hospital for Children, and Children's Hospital of Wisconsin. Gorelick also worked at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), also listed by Do No Harm as a "Dirty Dozen" hospital.
In all, hospitals in Minnesota saw 382 minors who were “sex change patients,” including 174 total surgery patients. These hospitals administered “hormone and puberty blockers” to 219 total children, and wrote 1,038 prescriptions. In all, it totaled $2,298,056 in total submitted charges.
Chloe Cole, a senior fellow at Do No Harm, said the database “proves the lies from the medical establishment and radical politicians who argue that cases like mine are rare.”
A 20-year-old woman who said that she had “gender dysphoria” was given “puberty blockers,” testosterone and had a double mastectomy at age 12, Cole has since “de-transitioned” and supports bans on the chemical castration of minors.
“The stats in this database represent thousands of kids who are being treated like Guinea pigs for unproven, and sometimes dangerous, medical experiments,” said Cole. “I hope politicians and parents alike use this database to see where these treatments are happening and protect their children from being rushed into irreversible, life-altering treatments.”
Nationally, 13,994 children received sex change related treatments between 2019 and 2023, according to Do No Harm’s database. This includes 5,747 sex change surgeries performed on children, and 62,682 hormone and puberty blockers prescriptions written for 8,579 pediatric patients.
“At least $119,791,202 made from sex change treatments performed on minors,” reported the organization.
The "Dirty Dozen" Hospitals
The “12 worst offending children’s hospitals promoting sex change treatments for minors" according to Do No Harm.
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