Rachael Rollins, a U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts, decried the “disturbing” attacks on Boston Children’s Hospital and its pediatric and adolescent transgender health program.
Since last week, the hospital has been inundated with harassing calls, emails, and death threats after several prominent conservative social media accounts shared videos and screenshots about the gender-affirming care the program provides. Libs of TikTok, for instance, shared a Boston Children’s video about hysterectomies and falsely claimed the trans health program offers such procedures to “young girls,” when patients must be 18 or older.
Rollins called the reports about the harassment campaign “disturbing to say the least,” adding, “Children deserve an opportunity to thrive and grow as their own authentic selves. Parents/guardians and health care providers who support them in that journey should be allowed to do so free of threats and harassment. I want to make it clear that the Department of Justice will ensure equal protection of transgender people under the law.”
Rollins added, “While free speech is indeed the cornerstone of our great nation, fear, intimidation, and threats are not. I will not sit idly by and allow hate-based criminal activity to continue in our District.”
Boston Children’s Hospital previously responded to the harassment campaign and false accusations against them as well, writing in a statement, “We condemn these attacks in the strongest possible terms, and we reject the false narrative upon which they are based. 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. We will continue to take all appropriate measures to protect our people.”
While the harassment campaign targeting Boston Children’s has received the most attention, according to USA Today and the Boston Globe, similar attacks are being leveled at hospitals in Phoenix and Pittsburgh that also offer gender-affirming care. Alejandra Caraballo, an instructor at Harvard Law School who tracks online attacks against hospitals that provide gender-affirming care, said she’d seen an uptick in such campaigns recently. She also noted that the tactics being used — such as doxxing the personal information of healthcare providers — were borrowed straight “from the anti-abortion playbook.”