Along with Reed, trans journalist Evan Urquhart, founder of Assigned Media, joined Monday's St. Louis on the Air to talk about Missouri’s national role in anti-trans efforts. A key factor in Missouri’s influence is the case of Jamie Reed, a former caseworker at Washington University’s Transgender Center at St. Louis Children's Hospital.
In February 2023, Reed went public with a whistleblower complaint that the clinic’s doctors were “permanently harming” children by allowing them to medically transition. An internal investigation by the university found her allegations unsubstantiated.
During the recent January 17 hearing, Reed testified in favor of proposed bills restricting gender-affirming care for kids; she insists it is not “compassionate” to transition a child medically.
Urquhart reported on Reed’s claims, and, in multiple interviews with the clinic’s patients and their families, he found the purported accounts of abuse fell apart.
He said that Reed’s status as a whistleblower changed the national conversation — and added fuel to the fire being stoked by those opposed to trans people’s existence.
When he first read Reed’s whistleblower statement, Urquhart said: “On the surface of it, her allegations seemed quite plausible, something to take very seriously… what I found out was that these were families who were devastated at having been included [in Reed’s allegations.] The center that they had really trusted was being misrepresented, was being presented as if it was damaging their children — when they knew their children were thriving, their children were trans, and that they had not in any way felt angry at the Transgender Center or felt like they had been harmed, which was the opposite of what Jamie Reed was saying.”