New Detransitioner Lawsuits Expose A Radical Shift at Planned Parenthood

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Cristina Hineman tells The Free Press that the last time she went to Planned Parenthood in March 2023, she held back tears as she told the nurse practitioner she realized that it all had been a mistake. (Cindy Schultz for The Free Press)

For 100 years, Planned Parenthood has provided birth control, along with other women’s health services like abortion and sex education. But, for the past ten years or so, Planned Parenthood has entered a new realm—the realm of “gender affirmation”—and it has “become the country’s leading provider of gender transition hormones for young adults, according to insurance claim data.”

While this might come as a surprise to some, many parents of trans-identified teens have been aware of this fact for years, as they strategize ways to keep their daughters (and sons) away from the 450 locations nationwide that will provide cross-sex hormones to clients at the drop of a hat.

Now, Jennifer Block has written an incredibly shocking and thorough piece for The Free Press about how Planned Parenthood got caught up in the world of “trans healthcare, and the detransitioners who are suing them for medical malpractice.

The piece profiles a young woman named Cristina Hineman, who was prescribed testosterone at Planned Parenthood at the end of a single visit which lasted less than 30 minutes. Her story is summarized like this:

Like many others in the rising wave of female teens seeking to masculinize, she had been battling a cluster of mental health problems: self-harm, depression, and anxiety. Also like many of these teens, Hineman has autism. The Covid lockdown exacerbated her troubles. She told me, “I couldn’t see my friends, I couldn’t see my girlfriend. I was depressed and scared, in my room ruminating all the time.” 

The viral YouTubers she was watching convinced her that gender was the problem. “I was like, oh my god, trans includes all the things I’ve been feeling—my discomfort with my chest, my discomfort with being called ‘young woman,’ not being sure of who I was or what I wanted to be,” she said. 

Just over a year into treatment, Hineman realized she had made a terrible mistake, and that gender was not the source of her problems. “I was brainwashed,” she says now. “A lot of people say that adults should be able to do whatever they want. But if you have mental illness that’s clouding your view, or you’re so misinformed about what gender dysphoria even means, then you cannot consent to such invasive treatments.”

Hineman is suing Planned Parenthood and is being represented by Campbell, Miller, Payne. We had Josh Payne on the podcast last month. You can revisit that episode here.

The story told by another detransitioner who is suing and uses the pseudonuym Anna in the article, echos information we learned in our recent conversation with Elaine Miller:

Anna took testosterone for seven months, which was enough to drop her voice and thicken her body hair. Now, she says she experiences constant vocal pain, joint pain, and frustrating and sometimes painful sexual dysfunction. She says that none of these distressing side effects were discussed at that first Planned Parenthood appointment, one that resulted in a prescription for testosterone. 

And once again we hear about how gender-affirming care is a one way street. Once Cristina Hineman decided to stop treatment, there was no one at the clinic to help her do that safely, or to give her any information about the long term effects on her body.

Hineman discovered there was no protocol for stopping, no handout. Her clinician had no advice except to contact a gender therapist. Hineman left a voicemail but said she never got a return call. 

Read the full article, by Jennifer Block, on The Free Press website here:

How Did Planned Parenthood Become One of the Country’s Largest Suppliers of Testosterone?

In addition to this incredible reporting in the Free Press, the IWF (Independent Women’s Forum) also released a short documentary profiling Cristina Hineman and her story. You can watch that here.

In the video, Cristina says:

I wish that I had gotten more pushback when I started identifying as trans and when I wanted to medicalize, and I wish I had gotten help for my mental health issues before it even got that bad that I was wanting to identify as trans… There’s just so many places [where] I could have been helped, and I want that for other young people in my position.

How do you think this story will impact the future of Planned Parenthood? Share your thoughts in the comments below.