Planned Parenthood of Arizona (PPAZ) offers doulas to those who obtain abortions or undergo gender transition procedures.
PPAZ offers doula services for free and trains doulas for free. Other trainings can cost well over $1,000. However, doulas must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, as well as traditional vaccines including measles, mumps, and rubella; Hepatitis B; and the two-step tuberculosis skin test.
On its application page, PPAZ noted that barriers such as criminal history “more often negatively impact BIPOC” (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) in the application process, and that they were “working to eliminate those barriers.”
PPAZ offers its doula services in Tucson and Phoenix.
Arizona state law defines doulas as nonmedical professionals providing continuous physical, emotional, and informational support to families before, during, and after childbirth or in the case of loss. Licensing for doulas is voluntary in the state.
The abortion giant appropriated the traditional notion of a doula, someone who provides guidance and support to a mother during and sometimes in the months immediately following childbirth, to include its other services like abortions and gender transitions.
The first abortion doula program, the Doula Project, launched in 2007 in New York City. The activists dubbed their reinvention of the doula concept, the “full-spectrum doula.”
In Arizona, abortions are legal up to 15-weeks gestation, except for minors and in cases where the woman is seeking an abortion due to her unborn child’s race, sex, or genetic abnormality. After 15 weeks, women must travel out of state to obtain an abortion. PPAZ offers a network of Planned Parenthood abortionists through Planned Parenthood Pacific Southwest in California for those women seeking an abortion after 15 weeks.
PPAZ offers abortions on a sliding scale of fees based on a patient’s monthly income and number of dependents. They also offer transportation, lodging, gas, and child care services for those obtaining abortions. PPAZ has two centers that provide abortions, in Glendale and Tucson, with the other five offering abortion referrals.
There are five other abortion clinics in the state. In Phoenix there’s Acacia Women’s Center, Camelback Family Planning, Desert Star Family Planning, and Family Planning Associates Medical Group; and in Tucson there’s Choices Women’s Center.
The Arizona Department of Health (AZDHS) has yet to publish its 2022 abortion report. Per the last AZDHS report, there were nearly 14,000 abortions performed in 2021, hundreds more than the 13,300 performed in 2020.
PPAZ’s gender transition services include hormone replacement therapy for patients over the age of 18, both in-person and virtually. The Arizona Community Foundation Kellenberger + Tollefson Center for LGBTQ Philanthropy provides financial assistance to PPAZ patients needing financial assistance. PPAZ’s gender transition services are also sponsored by Phoenix Pride, which also funds the Arizona Community Foundation.
Last September, Phoenix Pride gave PPAZ $10,000 for those services through their Community Foundation.
PPAZ’s recently-departed CEO and President, Brittany Fonteno, became the CEO of the National Abortion Federation last month. The abortion provider is set to announce an interim president and CEO soon.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
From the South Lawn of the White House to the pulsing heartbeats of North America’s bustling metropolises, Democrats are stepping into the 2024 electoral fray armed with a transgender-dominated platform that makes the riots of 2020 look like a block party.
This time, the spotlight is focused on the very future of the country: our children.
In a repudiation of the family as the foundation of society, the Democrat platform contends, “Your children are not your children.” And it doesn’t stop there. The Democrats are loud and proud that they’re “coming for your children.”
This was echoed by President Biden himself in April when he proclaimed at a White House event, “There’s no such thing as someone else’s child. Our nation’s children are all our children.”
His sentiment was further reinforced by the LGBTQ activists during their Pride Month celebrations. The rallying cry of “We’re here. We’re queer. We’re coming for your children!” may have escaped the notice of those consuming mainstream media, but as Tucker Carlson has demonstrated, the traditional news platforms no longer control the narrative.
America is turning to Twitter for an unfiltered snapshot of reality, and reality is not pretty. The videos of the LGBTQ agenda are being shared, as citizen journalists take over telling a truth that legacy media won’t touch.
One could write off a single declaration of seizing the children as a mere slip of the tongue, but the unwavering commitment of the progressives suggests deliberate intent to make it a bedrock principle woven into the very fabric of the Democratic Party.
The party finds itself flanked by a president whose mental acuity is questionable at best and demonstrators whose behaviors set a new standard for raunch. By raunch, I refer to the naked men dangling their parts at children along the Pride parade route, and naked women in heavy makeout sessions in a public fountain, while children played nearby.
These individuals are the ones taking over our schools, libraries, parks, and city councils.
Even a top cabinet official – Rachel Levine, the Secretary of Health and Human Services – has officially declared that it’s not just Pride Month but Pride Summer.
Levine, a transgender individual, is determined to see the Democratic Party transgender platform permeate the cultural fabric of America. Levine’s aim is to dismantle the traditional family unit and supplant it with the state, utilizing the powers of the DHHS to cement this agenda ahead of the 2024 elections.
Democrats like Levine appear to be drawing from the Marxist ideology of Frederick Engels and Karl Marx, who famously critiqued the family and foresaw its inevitable demise.
Engels said “On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.”
Thus, he predicted, the family “will vanish as a matter of course.”
His colleague Marx explained how that would be achieved: “The education of all children, from the moment that they can get along without a mother’s care, shall be in state institutions at state expense.”
The American middle class, with its inherent kindness and compassion, has proven to be fertile ground for this Democrat redefinition of “love,” which amounts to actual hatred of the nuclear family.
Leveraging the tolerance of centrists, the Left has weaponized the Christian principle of “What Would Jesus Do” to quell debate and sway major Christian denominations to their cause. It has worked with many mainstream Christians, who haven’t found a good response to that rhetorical question.
The platform for 2024 looks set to feature a triumvirate of transgender dominance, the sexualization of children, and a critique of the traditional family. Why this direction? Because the Democratic Party, now under the influence of its most radical elements, finds itself incapable of reining in its fringe. The genie cannot be returned to the bottle.
Parents, brace yourselves: They are coming for your children. Alphabet agencies and unions like the National Education Association, and even the State of California, have made it clear and are leading the charge.
California Republican State Sen. Scott Wilk issued a warning: A new bill that would criminalize parents who don’t affirm their child’s “gender transition” is a bridge too far. It’s time for parents to run for the border.
“If you love your children, you need to flee California,” he said.
Democrats, seemingly emboldened by favorable polling in the 18- to 34-year-old demographic, are confident they have the winning issues for 2024.
For much of America, however, Democrats have simply packed the powder keg, stretched out the fuse, and are holding a match aloft.
We now live in an era in which mutilating surgeries are done routinely as part of the preferred treatment for gender dysphoria, the belief that the gender “assigned” to you at birth does not reflect your true self.
Modern science has developed solid evidence that gender is determined at conception, not birth, and is not assigned by anybody but is fixed for life. So, until recently, sufferers from gender dysphoria were thought to be confused and maybe need educational counseling while simply waiting for adulthood, when over 80% seamlessly settled into their “birth gender.”
But earlier in this century, a new “best available science” stealthily but comprehensively came to dominate the world of transsexual medicine. Suddenly, gender-confused patients, even adolescents and children, were deemed to be unerringly insightful regarding their true gender identity. They needed not mental health treatment but physical alteration. And they needed it now.
Few seemed to note that gender dysphoria, unlike most other conditions, had no specific manifestations, no test or objective evidence that could confirm or deny its existence. Thus, based simply on the “feeling” of a minor unable to drive, vote, or get a tattoo because of their manifest immaturity, irreversible therapies were initiated.
These included puberty blockers, followed by sex hormones of the desired sex and then both “top” and “bottom” surgeries. Planned Parenthood advertised puberty blockers (obviously to pre-pubescent patients) “as early as your first visit.” Parents who proved balky were excluded from decision-making about transition procedures and sometimes even lost custody of their children.
Another suspicious aspect of adolescent transgenderism is that it behaves very differently from other hardwired inborn conditions. Until recently, transgenderism had been confined mostly to young boys. Now, girls outnumber boys three to one. Researchers additionally note that girls especially often seemed vulnerable to “social contagion,” contracting this affliction in groups where gender switching is seen as the path to social approval. It’s what the cool kids do.
There are also regional variations which don’t fit a biological model. California has a rate of transgender identification well above the national average. For example, six percent of the students in Davis, California identify as transgender, compared with 1.7% nationally.
Yet the tsunami of children transitioning continues to sweep over the western world. In America, it is endorsed by mainstream professional societies of physicians, pediatricians, psychiatrists, and transgender health professionals. None of these organizations are inclined to counter the concerns of their critics, just to silence and shame them.
Because the U.S. doesn’t have a centralized database, accurate numbers of participation are hard to come by. We do know that, in a decade, we have gone from one to 60 “comprehensive gender clinics.”
In the UK, with an experience similar to ours, there were 72 referrals in 2010 to the NHS gender clinic. Ten years later there were 2,729.
But as we accumulate more experience, the tide may be turning. A growing wave of former patients who received the gender affirmation protocol now bitterly regret their experience. They typically recount being unhappy teenagers who believed from social media sources that transitioning could bring the social approval that they craved.
After a cursory evaluation, they were begun on hormones that permanently changed their body form and functions and finally surgery removing their now unwanted body parts. Eventually, they realized that by listening to trusted authorities, they had made an awful mistake.
As one lamented, “I am angry. I’m sad. I can’t have kids…I’ll never lose my virginity. I’m left with the scraps of the life I could’ve had.”
Because of cases like these and research questioning the basic premises of transition therapy, Britain recently closed down the famous Tavistock gender clinic. Sweden and Finland have switched to an approach that emphasizes counseling, with drugs rarely if ever used. New Zealand and others are also reconsidering the affirmation model.
But American medical authorities are soldiering on, oblivious to the yellow lights flashing furiously. When will they admit that their recommendations violate the principles of medicine (first do no harm) and common sense (don’t cause injury treating a condition that is likely to resolve spontaneously)? Misleading impressionnable adolescents into unnecessary, permanent life altering decisions to serve an ideology is despicable.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
Many are surprised to learn that Mesa Public Schools (Unified District #4) has had a co-ed option for restrooms, locker rooms, and overnight facilities since 2015. The district leadership at the time quietly developed a Transgender Support Plan for children. This includes choosing which facilities the child wants to use along with a new name and new pronouns. This plan involves no parental consent or parental notification.
Due to public comment and internal questions, Board President Hutchinson, under the guidance of Superintendent Fourlis, asked for a legal opinion from the Board’s counsel, Udall Shumway. A brief memo was placed on the agenda for the meeting May 9, 2023, and Udall Shumway determined that the Transgender Guidelines stand.
In the meeting I asked about the criteria for a child to be placed on this plan. Kacey King, the district’s counsel said, “for younger children a teacher or counselor might suggest that they put it into writing.” I was shocked at this statement. This is absolutely not the role of teachers or counselors. I have been told that school counselors are simply there to determine what barriers exist that may prohibit classroom learning.
To have a counselor or teacher help put a child on a Transgender Support Plan is simply wrong, particularly without any communication with the parents. The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized that parents possess the fundamental right to direct the upbringing, education, and health care of their children. This right does not belong to any school or staff. Public school offers a service to the community—a service to teach children the academic standards to prepare them for a future to be able to be confident and self-reliant adults. Schools need to stay in their lane if they are going to retain public trust.
Opportunities exist for children to develop personal relationships with counselors and without parental consent. In one such example, the district had an elementary school student who was struggling in math. She would ask to see the counselor during the math lesson. Her mother was never notified because they weren’t official counseling sessions. The mother eventually found out when she confronted the school about her daughter’s below average math performance. No one previously told her that her daughter was behind in math or that she was visiting with a counselor.
Counselors may also have informal visits with children who don’t want to go to lunch or recess with their classmates and decide to visit with a counselor instead. Perhaps a child opens up about personal struggles, then the option exists for that trusted authority figure to guide the child to complete a private Transgender Support Plan. How would the parents know?
There is no other program or plan in the district that is comparable in secrecy or purpose to the Transgender Support Plan. Specialized learning plans, after school clubs, field trips, photographs, all require parental consent. Yet, a student can be given a new identity, and no one will notify the parents?
The main legal justification for these guidelines right now stems from the 9th Circuit case Parents for Privacy v Barr. The court ruled against parental rights, ruled against freedom of religion, and ruled against privacy. I have spoken to attorneys who believe this ruling will be overturned. In the meantime, one of the best courses of action is to make sure our parents are informed. There is no legal argument against notifying parents about a child discussing “gender identity” or any other such topics at school. In fact, the law is on the side of the parents. I will continue this fight for parental rights and transparency.
Rachel Walden is a member of the Mesa Public Schools Governing Board. You can follow her on Twitter here.
Mesa Public Schools (MPS) appeared hesitant in a recent governing board meeting to discuss the secretive gender transition plan, which had been in place for years. Most parents were unaware of the plan until recently, which included an opt-out provision allowing the school to keep the plan secret from parents.
Governing board member Rachel Walden attempted to discuss this gender transition plan during Tuesday’s meeting. However, the district lawyer said that discussion of the plan constituted legal advice and would require the board to go into an executive session, out of the public’s view. The form’s promise of secrecy conflicted with Arizona’s parental rights laws.
“There is no other process that involves plans, paperwork for children without parental consent. But this issue can’t even provide parental notification?” asked Walden.
Teachers and Counselors should NOT suggest putting children on a transgender support plan but that is happening. Parents will not be notified. This is the meeting last night. I was prohibited from talking to the district lawyer under "legal advice." pic.twitter.com/qUPWZyCgAa
Walden clarified that, following discovery of the parental notification opt-out provision of the gender transition plan, MPS modified the form to strike the provision.
☝️That form was updated after it was discovered but it's clear there is no process on which the parents are involved
MPS has reportedly had the controversial gender transition plan since 2015. The original form asked students if their parents were aware and/or supportive of their gender transition. If either are answered in the negative, the form asks the student whether they give consent for the school to disclose their “transgender or gender nonconforming status” to their parents.
Arizona law states that parents have “a right to access and review all records relating to the minor child.”
The current version of the MPS gender transition plan looks virtually the same as the prior version, with the exception that parents or guardians will be notified of the plan if the student requests changes to Synergy, the online student information portal.
The MPS plan appears to be based on model documents. Chicago Public Schools issued a gender transition plan document with similar formatting and the same title.
Controversy over the gender transition plan surged last summer, after the district implemented new guidelines for handling transgender students. MPS defended its actions, arguing that their guidelines aligned with federal guidelines.
The guidelines included an assertion that students had the right to be addressed by their preferred names and pronouns, regardless of whether they had their name legally changed. MPS further declared that students should be allowed to use facilities intended for the opposite sex, such as restrooms, locker rooms, shower facilities, and single-sex classes.
Students also aren’t required to provide proof that they underwent any kind of medical treatment for gender transition as a condition of this special treatment.
“A transgender student is not required to provide verification that the student is undergoing or has undergone medical treatment for the purpose of gender transition as a condition for changing a student’s name and/or gender markers in the District’s records,” read the guidelines.
MPS also asserted that students must be allowed to participate in physical education activities and sports in accordance with their gender identity, though they could not compete in teams designated for the opposite sex in accordance with Arizona law.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
