Authored by Paul Terdal via RealClearPolitics,

Here’s a question my home state of Oregon could easily answer: How many kids have received gender transition surgeries in the last 15 years? The state has this data and is required by law to give it to me. Yet instead of doing so, officials are now telling me that they’ve been illegally selling Oregonians’ health information for years. It’s a head-turning argument, but it’s also false. It shows how desperate the state is to avoid answering my question.

I have been a volunteer health consumer advocate for more than 20 years. I have led the development and passage of laws that guarantee insurance coverage of evidence-based autism services, end discrimination against disabled patients seeking organ transplants, and strengthen the insurance commissioner’s enforcement authority. I am also a lifelong Democrat, and as transgender medicine has come into vogue in recent years, I’ve worked to help my state implement evidence-based standards that protect kids.

The key to my work is the Oregon Health Authority’s “All Payer All Claims” database, which has detailed information about health transactions for more than 92% of the state’s population. By law, this data is available to the public, and to protect patients, it’s fully compliant with federal privacy laws and regulations. There is no way to identify any individual patient, full stop.

The Oregon Health Authority makes this data available for purchase, and a few years ago, I purchased access to the 2019 data for a federally funded study. I found that while Oregon had estimated that only about 175 patients would obtain taxpayer-funded gender transition services at a total annual cost of no more than $200,000, more than 7,585 patients had done so at more than 100 times the initial cost estimate. That included 160 children using “puberty blocker” drugs and approximately 370 children taking cross-sex hormones. There were also 33 biological girls who had mastectomies – including some as young as 15 – and two 17-year-old girls who had their uteruses and ovaries removed.

I found this concerning since the Oregon Department of Justice had declared in a February legal filing that “genital surgery is not performed on transgender minors”. Yet the state’s own data confirmed that children really do undergo genital surgery that leaves them permanently sterilized. I publicized my findings late last year.

In February, I contacted the Oregon Health Authority to express interest in a new research project. At first, they offered me 10 years’ worth of data – 2011 through 2020. This would have been invaluable in tracking the recent rise in gender dysphoria diagnoses, the age and other medical conditions of patients who pursue a gender transition, and the types of treatment they received.

Yet when I told officials that I wanted to study “gender-affirming treatment” over that decade, their reaction quickly shifted. From internal emails that I obtained under Oregon’s public records laws, my routine request was immediately flagged for review by senior executives. They were deeply concerned about the political “risks” of providing me with this data.

The first idea they debated was requiring me to sign a new contract that would prohibit me from publishing detailed results of my analysis. Then, they considered just purging all records related to gender dysphoria. They concluded that they didn’t have the legal authority to do that. They ultimately settled on another concerning – and telling – approach. The Oregon Health Authority told me that the state database was out of compliance with federal privacy laws. Therefore, it couldn’t be released to me or anyone else.

This claim falls flat on so many levels. Oregon has been selling this database to dozens of organizations for 15 years. Customers have included academic researchers, journalists, and even computer companies seeking data to train artificial intelligence tools. If this database were illegal, someone would have flagged it by now – not least the state’s lawyers.

More to the point: If Oregon really believed that the database was out of compliance with federal laws, the state would be required to notify the Secretary of Health and Human Services. It would also be required to inform the news media and each and every one of the millions of individuals affected. Yet the state has made no such move. The Oregon Health Authority hasn’t even notified those of us who already possess the data, nor have they tried to recall it. If their lawyers really say they’re not in compliance, those same lawyers would tell them to begin the notifications immediately.

I’m left with one undeniable conclusion: Oregon is withholding the data to prevent me from researching – and telling the public – about the prevalence and practice of gender medicine in my state. That is a severe violation of my constitutional rights under the First Amendment, and in August, I filed a federal lawsuit to vindicate my rights.

I’m appalled to see this kind of authoritarian behavior from my own Democrat-led state government. My fellow liberals wouldn’t tolerate this from a Republican administration, and I refuse to tolerate it from my own.

Paul Terdal is an advocate for health consumer rights and a visiting fellow at Do No Harm.