Republicans demand answers from Planned Parenthood on abortions, ‘gender transitions’ for minors

By: Calvin Freiburger, originally published May 21, 2026, LifeSiteNews

WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — Top Republicans on the U.S. House Oversight Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency are seeking information from Planned Parenthood affiliates around the country on the abortion giant’s abortion practices and work “transitioning” gender-confused children.

The Daily Signal reported that the committee chairman, Republican Reps. Tim Burchett of Tennessee and Andy Biggs of Arizona, wrote to 11 Planned Parenthood affiliates on May 15 to follow up on failure to produce “documents and communications” pertaining to “the increased provision of abortion services and the provision of gender-affirming care services to minors without parental consent” that the committee first requested on June 13, 2025, almost a year ago.

“Planned Parenthood received nearly $800 million in federal funds in fiscal year (FY) 20232 and is the second largest provider of gender hormone therapies in the United States,” it says. “Subcommittee is concerned that Planned Parenthood and its affiliates (…) may be commingling federal funds and using them for unpermitted purposes. It is imperative that federal funds provided to Planned Parenthood via Title X of the Public Health Service Act (Title X), Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) are administered in compliance with applicable laws and regulations.”

The lawmakers demand the affiliates produce all “non-public financial statements and annual reports;” “documents and communications related to … formation and structure;” a “list of all independent ancillary or other related organizations supported by or under (their) control;” “policies and procedures for complying with state and federal laws and regulations regarding gender affirming care and parental consent;” “informed consent documentation provided to patients, parents, or guardians related to abortion or gender affirming care services;” “policies, procedures, or guidelines for compliance with the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act and compliance with the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act;” “policies, procedures, or guidelines for abortions performed on viable or periviable fetuses;” “documents and communications related to … initial and continuing accreditation status;” itemized totals of money received from “federal government programs, grants, or other sources of federal funds, including but not limited to Title X healthcare services;” and a “list of every healthcare service provided to patients … and the frequency with which those services are provided.”

The material must cover January 1, 2020, to the present day, with a deadline for producing it by June 1.

While Planned Parenthood is best known as the nation’s largest abortion chain, it is also deeply involved in the LGBT movement. It advertises itself as a “safe and welcoming place to get transgender/nonbinary hormone therapy (sic),” including estrogen, anti-androgen, testosterone, and puberty blockers.

As of the abortion giant’s 2022-2023 annual report, 45 of its affiliates offered so-called “gender-affirming hormone therapy” in 2022. Its previous report said 30 affiliates participated in 69 medical studies, an unspecified number of which involved so-called “care” to reinforce gender dysphoria.

Notably, the latest on that aspect of the business was obscured in Planned Parenthood’s 2024-2025 annual report, which highlighted work on a study it says will detail the “harm” of “state-based restrictions on gender-affirming care” but downplayed its own involvement in that “care,” listing only a small footnote that “transgender services” were among the various items included in its 50,411 “Other Procedures.” 

A large body of evidence shows that “affirming” gender confusion carries serious harms, especially when done with impressionable children who lack the mental development, emotional maturity, and life experience to consider the long-term ramifications of the decisions being pushed on them, or full knowledge about the long-term effects of life-altering, physically-transformative, and often-irreversible surgical and chemical procedures.

In 2024, National Health Service (NHS) England’s landmark Cass Review found that “gender medicine” is “built on shaky foundations” and that while such interventions require a great deal of caution, “quite the reverse happened in the field of (so-called) gender care for children,” and that “(w)hile a considerable amount of research has been published in this field, systematic evidence reviews demonstrated the poor quality of the published studies, meaning there is not a reliable evidence base upon which to make clinical decisions, or for children and their families to make informed choices.”

In April, a study of “all under-23-year-old gender-referred individuals between 1996 and 2019” in Finland (2,083 people) found that those who had gone through gender transitions had “markedly higher psychiatric morbidity (other mental health issues) than controls before and after referral, with treatment needs often persisting and even intensifying after medical interventions.”

Many oft-ignored detransitioners, individuals who attempted transitioning before regretting it and returning to life as their true sex, attest to the physical and mental harm of reinforcing gender confusion, as well as to the bias and negligence of the medical establishment on the subject, many of whom take an activist approach to their profession and begin cases with a predetermined conclusion that “transitioning” is the best solution.

“Gender-affirming” physicians have also been caught on video admitting to more old-fashioned motives for such procedures, as with an 2022 exposé about Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Clinic for Transgender Health, where Dr. Shayne Sebold Taylor said outright that “these surgeries make a lot of money.”

Calvin Freiburger is a conservative writer at LifeSiteNews.