“Healthcare, Not Hate” – Protestors Ask Seattle Children’s Hospital for Support
SEATTLE, WA – Over 900 people assembled outside of Seattle Children’s Hospital today, in protest of the organization’s decision to unilaterally discontinue healthcare for its transgender youth. This was the third in a series of grassroots demonstrations; attendance has grown exponentially since they began Thursday morning.
Today’s action is especially noteworthy, as this time, it was organized by the hospital’s own staff. At least a dozen healthcare providers risked professional retaliation in order to demand justice for their wards— and to publicly condemn the cowardice of their employers.
And that’s punk as hell.
Violation of Oath, or Law? Perhaps Even Both.
As originally reported by The Stranger’s Vivian McCall, Seattle Children’s Hospital abruptly canceled its gender-affirming procedures on Monday, offering impacted families little in the way of explanation or compassion. One patient— identified in the article only as Ethan, age 18, in the interests of privacy— was informed just hours before his scheduled top surgery that he would not be receiving care, after all.
Allegedly, hospital leadership abandoned both their professional responsibilities and common courtesy; failing to communicate the changes to the family and providing inadequate aftercare for what was almost certainly a world-shattering disruption to Ethan’s physical and mental health.
When pressed by the family for an explanation, representatives from Seattle Children’s Hospital vaguely gestured toward Executive Orders 14168 and 14187— the latter is deceptively titled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation”. These orders instruct government agencies to interfere with healthcare intended for trans youth, and to financially punish those organizations which continue to provide it.
Privately, Seattle Children’s Hospital1 expressed concerns that failing to comply with this order would risk the loss of federal funding. Canceling gender affirming care was presented as a defensive maneuver, outside of their control.
In other words, that the sacrifice and collective punishment of trans youth was necessary to ensure the continued care of other patients.
This argument is unsatisfying for multiple reasons. To get the most obvious one out of the way, the orders in question are blatantly unconstitutional to begin with. They’re comprised mostly of hate speech; they repeat widely debunked myths and contradict international consensus on medical standards of care; and they were authored by a bunch of Neo-Nazis. They never should have been written, and no self-respecting healthcare provider would ever willingly obey them.2
Perhaps the more surprising reason, then, is that somehow SCH managed to begin complying with them before they were written. According to The Stranger, Seattle Children’s was already scrubbing mentions of gender-affirming care from its website as early as January 16th. Trump had not even been inaugurated by that point; there were no orders with which to comply.
Setting aside the inherent immorality in withholding life-saving healthcare from human beings that need it, Seattle Children’s Hospital has apparently volunteered to do so— in advance of any valid legal requirement or credible threat.
And so today, their own employees called bullshit.
Walk With Me
Shame you missed it, but that’s okay. I’ll paint you a word picture.
(Actually, these photos are from Friday, but it’ll make sense why I didn’t take new ones in a second.)
Folks begin assembling along Sand Point Way just before noon.
Within an hour, the sidewalk outside of the Forest building is completely packed. An 860-foot wall of human signage spontaneously forms along the side of the road; it reaches all the way from 40th Ave, to the corner of NE 50th St.
A sheet of poster-board reads: TRUST TRANS KIDS. Another: DO NOT OBEY IN ADVANCE.
People begin crossing the street to make room for more.
At quarter after one, organizers test the day’s chants with the crowd. Call, then response. When trans rights are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back.
A live band plays behind me. The tuba player has, by some feat of witchcraft, suspended the word “PRIDE” across the open bell of their instrument.3 Meanwhile, commuters contribute an unceasing, manic stream of car horns from the intersection. The crowd seems re-energized by each cycle of the traffic light.
As the main event begins, eight speakers assemble beside the nearby bus stop. Fliers are distributed to the crowd, requesting that attendees refrain from photographing, filming, or tagging the speakers on social media, in the interests of their continued employment. A few of them have the luxury— and the security— to speak plainly on the record, but not all of them will. I re-attach the lens cap to my camera.
The first speaker is a psychology fellow, who invokes Bell Hooks. They patiently explain what we all already ought to know; that trans healthcare is life-saving and necessary. They draw from their professional experience to name something which will eventually become the day’s theme; deserving. Children deserve this standard of care which is being denied them.
Speaker number two is the parent of a transmasc child, whose life was immeasurably improved by access to transition care. They describe their son’s struggle with self-harm, but only in service of highlighting his subsequent love of life.
“I will never forget the look on his face when he woke up from that surgery,” they say, “[It was] unadulterated joy.”
A sticker on the side of the organizer’s megaphone says “PROUD AS FUCK”. They hold it up for a young speaker named Fern— she can’t have been older than 10. I’m grateful that kids are being given space to speak for themselves, rather than merely spoken about.
Fern delivers her speech from a stepladder. She says she has already experienced discrimination. Fern recalls being forced to change pre-schools; apparently her teacher was unwilling or unable to work with a trans child. Fortunately, Fern seems to have processed that this problem was never hers to own. I’m grateful for that, too.
She encourages the audience to live authentically— to celebrate what makes them different. In this moment, the absurdity of the situation is inescapable. We’re all here today because there are grown-ass adults in the world that still need to learn this lesson, which even a child can grasp. Remember that whenever these adults express disgust at transgender people, they are not talking about an abstract concept, but a child like this.
Fern’s address is brief. She closes with this simple wisdom:
The only way to make peace is to be weird.
And I’m like, amen kiddo.
Next, a healthcare representative who wishes to remain anonymous. They confront the stakes head-on, and with precision:
This is a fight that is bigger than us. It is bigger than Seattle Children’s Hospital. (…)This is a fight against fascism, and a fight for humanity.
This speaker challenges the reasoning of Seattle Children’s Hospital— the decision to trade the well-being of trans children for that of cisgender ones. They assure the audience that they understand the risks of defying a trans healthcare ban. Personally so. They tell us about their sibling, who is a patient at this hospital. His life depends on the continued availability of Medicaid.
You would think that such a family would have an interest in maintaining that coverage at any cost. You might expect such a family to be risk-averse. You would be wrong.
This is the line we draw in the sand. We are being bullied by the federal government to bow down or else. But if we bow down now, who will they come for next? Will they hold federal funding over our heads, to stop providing care to your children next?
(…)This moment is where we take a stand. This is the moment we refuse to let an executive order determine who is worth treating, and who isn’t. Healthcare should be determined by evidence-based practice, not the words of a politician. We stand up against discrimination today, so that you don’t have to tomorrow.
And then they read that poem about who the fascists came for and in what order. You know the one. Yeah, that one.
The fifth speaker is not only a healthcare worker, but a union member representing United Food & Commercial Workers Local 3,000. They read a petition, which you can find here, calling upon Seattle Children’s Hospital to reverse their policy.
Here’s the most compelling bit:
In its public appeals to patients, Seattle Children’s vows “to help every child live the healthiest and most fulfilling life possible.” That statement does not say every child except trans children. That statement says “every child.” By denying them necessary medical care, the hospital is failing its own commitments to the patients, families, and community we serve.
In lieu of a retraction from SCH, UFCW30004 hopes to attract the attention of Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown. Incidentally, Washington filed a lawsuit just yesterday which seeks to enjoin Trump’s gender-affirming care bans. The court documents offer Seattle Children’s Hospital as an example of parties harmed by the order.5
Speaking of Nick Brown, the next presenter also claims to be working with the Attorney General. Sarah Moran is the board chair for the Gender Justice League; in her address, she scolds SCH, referencing the opening chapters of Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny:
Seattle Children’s has broken the number one rule of dealing with authoritarians, which is: you never obey in advance.
(…)And in capitulating so quickly, Seattle Children’s is doing Donald Trump’s work for him. That is not acceptable. And not only is it cowardly, but it is an abdication of their duty to provide the health care that their patients need.
According to Moran, the Gender Justice League compiled the stories of transgender people throughout Washington, and sent them to the AG to support the state’s lawsuit. They urge the audience to continue applying pressure to their elected officials, and to steel themselves against the deluge of legislative nonsense aimed at at their noggins.
The work will be difficult, says Moran, but she is confident that we will win in the end. The crowd repeats it back to her; we will win. This might be the first time it’s been said out loud, but the sentiment was already in the air.
It has been for the last hour.
The penultimate speaker introduces themselves as a psychologist, a parent, and a trans man. And for a moment, the audience evaporates.
Know that you are not alone.
He speaks directly to the grieving trans children whose care has been suspended, and whose humanity has been rescinded. And I’m about to quote him extensively, because in my opinion this is the most important and most heartfelt message of the entire enterprise.
I want to address you as a trans elder. (…)Consider that there was a time— not long ago— that we didn’t even have the imagination to consider the context that you’re currently in… Consider that my survival as your elder is fueled by your survival.
My promise to you is that everything changes. And sometimes a good night’s sleep and a warm meal can give us the care we need to begin to just see things a bit differently.
Let’s be clear; he is not speaking to most of us. I’m transgender, and he’s not even speaking to me. This is the language of a mental health professional who has seen some shit, who understands the trauma these kids are going through, and who knows what that kind of trauma can do to a person.
He is begging these kids to survive, because he is quite reasonably concerned that they might die deaths of despair as a result of this ban.
“It’s not acceptable to me that so many of you think you’re not gonna live past 35,” he says. “So I hope that both young folks and your family hear me when I say that you are not to allow your standards of living, either in how others treat you, or how you think of yourself, to be degraded because you’re queer or trans.”
It might seem odd for a stranger to forbid you from doing something, but I do not doubt for a moment that someone needed to hear it— maybe multiple someones— and that is just emotionally devastating.
Finally, the megaphone is passed to Meesh Vecchio, president of the Seattle Education Association. If these domains seem unrelated to you, I would ask you to look again, and to look more closely.
On January 29th, Donald Trump signed executive order 14190— “ENDING RADICAL INDOCTRINATION IN K-12 SCHOOLING”. It seeks to rescind federal funding from any school which acknowledges the gender identity of its students, under the guise of “parents rights”. Framed a bit more honestly, the rights of parents who reject their children’s identity, and not the ones who accept it.
Federal funding is being wielded as a hostage in education, in precisely the same way as it is in healthcare. The target is the same, and so is the harm.
“We will not let hate erase the facts”, says Vecchio. It’s as true when applied to education, as when applied to WPATH standards of care. Vecchio’s address highlights that these fights are not separate; that erosion here foreshadows erosion there.
Then they call for something crucial; reparations. Forgive me for having such a pesky thing as a point of view, but they’re right. It is not enough to restore these rights that kids always ought to have had. At this point, they are owed more. We’re back to that theme of deserving.
Ethan, for example, deserves to have his top surgery, but that’s table stakes. He deserves more than that, for the anguish he has been caused. At this point, organizers are no longer asking for violence to stop; they’re demanding justice.
“Complicity has a price tag,” says Vecchio.
And I get that I have a vested interest in the outcome, but I’ll be damned if I don’t agree.
Focus On [Cisgender] Kids
Seattle Children’s Hospital has yet to publicly acknowledge any of this, or issue an official statement of any kind as of writing. Their last press release was in December of last year, and their social media presence has been dormant for over a week.
You should know that I have contacted SCH representatives twice now— first in person, and again via email— and received no response. If you feel that their viewpoint has gone unrepresented in this piece, I promise you it’s not for lack of trying.
According to SCH staff— who for obvious reasons wish to remain anonymous— the internal response has been equally inadequate. An email I’ve reviewed from the 7th confirms for staff that yes, they have been in contact with the AG’s office:
Seattle Children’s has been collaborating with the Washington State Attorney General’s office for the past week on a lawsuit in response to President Trump’s January 28th executive order directing federal agencies to revoke funding for institutions providing gender-affirming care to minors…
That part is useful and good to know. Cool.
Unfortunately, they follow that up by suggesting that their current policies are in full compliance with the law, and for everyone’s own good, actually.
…Given the uncertainty surrounding the executive order and its harmful effects we’re seeking clarity on the best interests of Seattle Children’s patients and families, and our workforce, so we can continue to deliver on our mission. We remain committed to caring for our patients and families who need us and engaging in life changing research, while ensuring we operate within all applicable laws.
Our hearts go out to our patients, families, workforce, and the communities we serve who have been impacted by the uncertainty of our current landscape.
Your hearts go out them, huh? From one chronic abuser of the passive voice to another, let me ask; impacted by whom? It’s true that SCH didn’t write the executive orders, and obviously it’s more productive to direct the bulk of your anger at the fascists that started all this. But it wasn’t necessary to eject one of your most vulnerable communities into traffic to save your own skin, either. At the very least, not yet.
There’s a distinct lack of ownership and professionalism here, given that they failed to inform at least one patient that their surgery would be canceled. SCH definitely had that time to prepare; we know this because they started sanitizing their website a month in advance. Surely, they had some inkling; certainly, they had some choice.
Instead of acknowledging this, they cite their policies and their mission statement, not because they have adhered to them faithfully, but as a means to deflect responsibility. It is a surrogate, a straw man, a punching bag. SCH couldn’t have hurt these people; see, it says right here they’re committed to not doing that!
As an aside, Seattle Children’s Department of Laboratories hosted their annual benefit “Beakers and Bubbly” at the Inglewood Golf Club this evening. The mission statement on that program’s website currently reads: every patient is our patient. I feel like that bit might need amending.
Anyway, hopefully the auction is lucrative enough to offset any loss in federal funding.6
Here Yesterday, Still Here Tomorrow
It’s two in the afternoon. Parents and allies wear capes crafted from trans flags. Every car horn elicits a fresh whoop from a hundred humans delighted to be alive, and in the company of someone who cares— no matter how briefly.
In a way, walking through this crowd feels a lot like attending Pride. But instead of corporate sponsorships and cheap tat, there’s a table of homemade zines. I stick around to read a few. This one— titled “Transmutation – An Early memoir”— is my favorite. The author signs, “a vegan tranarchist”.
As the demonstration winds down, the organizers say they want to try one last thing. They warn that it’s weird. They’re not sure it will work out, but what the hell, why not?
That thing turns out to be queer karaoke. They hold their cellphone up to the megaphone, and 900 people sing Pink Pony Club on the spot.
It is beautiful in its imperfection.
Eventually the protestors go their separate ways, but many of them were here yesterday, and they’ll be back tomorrow.
A child waves from the back seat of a vehicle as she leaves; it might be Fern, but I can’t tell from this distance. Whoever she is, she’s holding pink and blue balloons.
- Hereafter “SCH”, because I am lazy and do not care about their branding guidelines. ↩︎
- I actually don’t intend to waste any more words refuting their contents. Statistically, you either arrived at this article capable of recognizing the humanity of transgender people, or you have decided in advance not to do so under any circumstances.
That said, if you’d like to read a proper refutation of these unconstitutional, pseudo-scientific pieces of hate speech, such breakdowns are readily available elsewhere. Here’s a short piece by Natasha Lennard at the Intercept to get you started. ↩︎ - I am embarrassed to admit how long I stood fascinated by this. ↩︎
- …which when abbreviated sounds like the model number of an as-seen-on-TV vacuum cleaner… ↩︎
- It’s unclear whether the AG’s office will separately prosecute the hospital’s conduct between now and the complaint’s resolution. Depending on how how quickly it progresses, and on the result, it may not even be necessary. I’ve reached out to both Brown, and to the AG’s Deputy Communications Director Mike Faulk, and will follow up if I learn anything useful. ↩︎
- Jokes aside, it looks like these folks are volunteers for a separate department, so please don’t bother them. It’s fun to tease the business side of the house for the optics, but healthcare isn’t zero-sum, and events like this probably help a lot of people. 🙂 ↩︎
[CORRECTION: 2/9/25, 6:36pm – Meesh Vecchio uses they/them pronouns. Additionally, I fixed the link for EO 14168. Both are rookie mistakes to have made, how embarrassing! Thank you for the feedback.]
Citations
Lennard, Natasha. “Trump’s Anti-Trans Executive Order is Unscientific Nonsense”. The Intercept, 22 January 2025. https://archive.ph/cQCYj
McCall, Vivian. “Seattle Children’s Postpones Trans Teen’s Surgery Indefinitely”. The Stranger, 4 February 2025. https://www.thestranger.com/queer/2025/02/04/79906101/seattle-childrens-postpones-trans-teens-surgery-indefinitely
Niemöller, Martin. “First They Came”. 1946. Republished by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. https://hmd.org.uk/resource/first-they-came-by-pastor-martin-niemoller/
Trump, Donald. “PROTECTING CHILDREN FROM CHEMICAL AND SURGICAL MUTILATION”. White House EO 14187, 28 January 2025. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/protecting-children-from-chemical-and-surgical-mutilation/
Trump, Donald. “DEFENDING WOMEN FROM GENDER IDOLOGY EXTREMISM AND RESTORING BIOLOGICAL TRUTH TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT”. White House EO 14168, 20 January 2025. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/defending-women-from-gender-ideology-extremism-and-restoring-biological-truth-to-the-federal-government/
Trump, Donald. “ENDING RADICAL INDOCTRINATION IN K-12 SCHOOLING”. White House EO 14190, 29 January 2025. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-radical-indoctrination-in-k-12-schooling/
United Food & Commercial Workers Local 3,000. “Petition: Restore Gender-Affirming Care at Seattle Children’s Hospital!”. 7 February 2025. https://ufcw3000.org/news/2025/2/7/petition-restore-gender-affirming-care-at-seattle-childrens-hospital
Washington State Office of the Attorney General. “State of Washington challenges unconstitutional presidential order criminalizing, and ending funding for gender-affirming care”. 7 February 2025. https://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/state-washington-challenges-unconstitutional-presidential-order-criminalizing
#Activism #Antifascism #HumanRights #LGBTQ_ #Politics
