A Walgreens in Dallas is quietly housing a transgender clinic where patients can go get referrals for transgender transition hormones like testosterone. Then they can stroll out of the clinic into the pharmacy and get their prescriptions filled.
Walgreens has sparked backlash from its customers for offering to dispense abortion drugs “in any jurisdiction where it is legally permissible to do so” and for offering to pay for employee abortion travel. The corporation has a 100% score from the Human Rights Campaign, which means its internal policies are pretty much as far left as modern-day corporations can be.
Even so, the revelation that Walgreens has housed Kind Clinic inside its Oak Lawn, Texas, location is surprising. One local outlet described the partnership as “significant.”
And it raises questions about how Walgreens is profiting from the close proximity of such a clinic.
Neither Walgreens nor Kind Clinic would respond to requests for comment from The Daily Signal for this story. Walgreens similarly would not address how often it fills prescription hormone medicine for “gender-affirming care.”
A note on Walgreens’ Oak Lawn website notes, however: “Kind Clinic at Walgreens is operated by Texas Health Action, Inc. or one of its affiliates. The health care practitioners and staff providing professional services at Kind Clinic at Walgreens are employed by, professional retained by, or affiliated with Texas Health Action, Inc. The health care providers are not employees, associates and/or agents of Walgreen Co. or any Walgreens subsidiary or affiliated company.”
Taking Attention Off ‘the Type of Clinic’
Kind Clinic Dallas – Oaklawn, a program of the LGBTQ+ nonprofit Texas Health Action, launched inside the Oak Lawn Walgreens in early 2022. The clinic is one of several Kind clinics in Texas, and the news garnered relatively little media attention other than local Dallas outlets.
Mary Elizabeth Castle, director of government relations at Texas Values, described Kind clinics as the “Planned Parenthoods of the gender transition business” in a Tuesday phone interview with The Daily Signal.
“If you are putting a Kind Clinic in a Walgreens, you are making this practice of gender transitioning more mainstream,” Castle said. “Which means that it’s more available to younger kids and it’s a lot easier for people to get access to these very harmful puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.”
Clinic Administrator Michael Carrillo told Fox 4 News in July 2022 that he hoped to take some of the attention “off of the type of clinic that it is” by putting it in a Walgreens—likely because state lawmakers in Texas have been aggressive about pushing measures to protect children from early and irreversible transgender interventions.
The clinic offers “gender-affirming care” to individuals as young as 16 years of age, according to The Dallas Express.
For those unfamiliar with the phrase, “gender-affirming care” is an activist umbrella term used to encapsulate uncomfortable and often grisly transition procedures like surgeries, hormones, and puberty blockers.
The use of the phrase has become so extreme that in most coverage of legislation banning irreversible sex-change surgeries and hormones for minors, it is almost impossible for the average reader to know what is actually being banned, particularly if they are not already familiar with “gender-affirming care.” Most outlets and many activists and lawmakers will use the phrase “anti-transgender bills” or “anti-transgender laws” to describe such legislation.
Kind Clinic uses an informed consent model, according to its website, so no mental health letter is required for someone who wants prescriptions for testosterone or estrogen “at little or no cost to you.”
“We give you the most current information we have about hormone replacement therapy, so you can make an informed choice about what to do with your own body,” the website says. “After prescribing hormones we will assist with access if needed, as well as referrals for other services or qualified physicians.”
If a biological man who identifies as a transgender woman walked into Kind Clinic for an appointment, he would spend the first part of his visit with a “patient advocate,” then see a clinician and complete “required lab work,” according to Kind Clinic’s website.
That same day, he’ll likely receive a prescription for estrogen. And since the clinic is located in a Walgreens, he can get that prescription filled mere steps away.
LGBTQ+ Services for 9-12-Year-Olds?
Kind Clinic also advertises that it partners with “Out Youth” to offer “Transgender Wellness as an optional mental health service.” Out Youth is a nonprofit organization that allegedly seeks to promote “the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and social well-being of sexual and gender minority youth so that they can openly and safely explore and affirm their identities.”
“They’re a pretty heavy lobby group for introducing this ideology to young kids and to influencing them into this gender transitioning business,” Castle said of Out Youth.
She emphasized the dangers that early transgender hormones, puberty blockers, and surgeries present to children and youth, warning, “The fact that the Kind Clinic and Out Youth are partnering with Walgreens is very disheartening and alarming, because of their true intent of wanting to, in the end, harm children.”
Children who “drop in” to Out Youth between the ages of 9 and 12 are asked to fill out an intake form that states their “preferred” first and last name, their pronouns, their home address, their phone number, their email address, their gender identity, their “sexual and/or romantic orientation,” known medical conditions, and the name and contact information of a “trusted adult.”
These 9-, 10-, 11-, and 12-year-olds are also asked if they identify as transgender or nonbinary.
The form specifically asks the children if it is OK to text, call, or leave a voicemail on their phone—presumably to navigate family members who might not know that the child is contacting an LGBTQ+ group.
Out Youth also has a similar intake form for teenagers. This form goes a little further, offering the teens counseling and asking whether they are homeless, couch surfing, or unsure of where they are living.
The teen forms question whether the teenager’s school is pushing or open to pushing LGBTQ+ issues, such as whether the school has gender-neutral bathrooms and uses preferred pronouns.
“Do you feel that your school has unjustly disciplined someone you know because of sexual orientation, gender identity and/or gender expression?” the form asks.
A review of Out Youth’s social media shows that it partners with affiliates of the abortion giant Planned Parenthood and the far-left American Civil Liberties Union.
Out Youth did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Pharmacists in the Middle
Meanwhile, Walgreens’ and CVS’ policy of filling prescriptions for “gender affirming” hormones has immersed its employees in the culture wars. These employees increasingly face scrutiny if they push back against filling prescriptions that they object to for religious reasons.
A 30-year-old biological woman who identifies as a man and goes by the name Roscoe Rike is promising to work with the Transgender Law Center to file a formal complaint with Walgreens after a pharmacist allegedly objected to giving Rike testosterone hormones.
Rike has been taking testosterone as part of an attempt to become a man. Testosterone typically changes a woman’s voice, making it deeper; causes her to grow more body hair; redistributes her body fat; and more. Some of the drug’s irreversible effects include “clitoral growth, facial hair growth, voice changes and male-pattern baldness.”
Other irreversible effects are not fully known—detransitioners like Chloe Cole are alleging in new lawsuits that doctors recklessly endangered patient fertility and health through hormone prescriptions.
The male pharmacist that Rike spoke with allegedly asked why Rike needed the medication.
“I told him I was pretty sure that it wasn’t any of his business,” Rike told the local station KRON4.
When the pharmacist allegedly told Rike that he could not fill the prescription due to his religious beliefs, Rike started filming, even when the pharmacist suggests that Rike can come back when another member of the pharmacy team could assist Rike.
“So right now you’re telling me that you’re going to deny me my medication because of your personal religion. You’re not my f—— doctor,” Rike can be heard saying in the video.
Walgreens is reportedly reviewing the matter.
“Our policies are designed to ensure we meet the needs of our patients and customers, while respecting the religious and moral beliefs of our team members,” Walgreens told KRON4 in a statement. “In an instance where a team member has a religious or moral conviction that prevents them from meeting a customer’s need, we require the team member to refer the customer to another employee or manager on duty who can complete the transaction. These instances, however, are very rare.”
In 2018, when a CVS employee at an Arizona pharmacy refused to fill a hormone prescription for a biological male who identified as a transgender woman, CVS condemned the pharmacist’s actions, saying the incident “does not reflect our values or our commitment to inclusion, nondiscrimination and the delivery of outstanding patient care”—despite the fact that CVS allows pharmacists to refuse to fill specific medications if it violates their religious beliefs.
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