American College of Pediatricians
The American College of Pediatricians is a socially conservative religious advocacy group of pediatricians and other healthcare professionals in the United States, founded in 2002 by Dr. Den Trumbull. The group advocates in favor of abstinence-only sex education and conversion therapy, and advocates against vaccine mandates, pornography, abortion rights and LGBT rights. As of 2022, its membership has been reported at about 700 physicians.
ACPeds has been listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for pushing "anti-LGBTQ junk science". A number of mainstream researchers, including the director of the US National Institutes of Health, have accused ACPeds of misusing or mischaracterizing their work to advance their own political agenda. ACPeds has also been criticized for their professional-sounding name which some have said is intended to mislead people into thinking they are a professional medical organization or mistake them for the similar-sounding American Academy of Pediatrics.
Founding and membership
The group was founded in 2002 by a group of pediatricians, including Joseph Zanga, a past president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, as a protest against the AAP's support for adoption by gay couples. In 2005, The Boston Globe noted that ACPeds was being used as a counterpoint to anything the AAP said, despite ACPeds being run by one employee at the time. ACPeds sends out a mailing list to thousands of "conservative physicians" as a recruitment strategy, with doctors and medical students who hold Christian views being their top priority. More than 10,000 recruitment emails were sent out to them between 2013 and 2017 alone.ACPeds has struggled to attract many members in the past, but in recent years has gained outsize political influence by "using conservative media as a megaphone in its quest to position as a reputable source of information." The group gained national attention in 2024 for being one of the plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit, FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, which sought to limit access to the abortion drug, mifepristone.
In 2012, the Southern Poverty Law Center estimated the ACPeds membership at "no more than 200". In 2016 ACPeds reported its membership at "over 500 physicians and other healthcare professionals", while leaked internal documents in 2023 identified approximately 1,200 current and former members with about 700 active. The ACPeds is currently led by its president, Quentin Van Meter.
Positions
Abortion
ACPeds strongly opposes abortion, calling it "a clear violation of the Hippocratic Oath." In 2023, ACPeds was a plaintiff in the federal lawsuit, FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, which sought to limit access to the abortion drug mifepristone.An internal document obtained in a data leak revealed a script that ACPeds provided to its members for appointments with pregnant minors. Wired Magazine, who obtained copies of the leaks, described the script as being "engineered specifically to reduce the odds of minors coming into contact with medical professionals not strictly opposed to abortion". The script also encourages its members to tell pregnant minors that abortion "not only kills the infant you carry, but is also a danger to you."
LGBTQ rights
ACPeds strongly opposes gay marriage, gay adoption and gay parenting and has submitted several Amicus Briefs in court cases opposing them. They also support conversion therapy for gay youth and have linked homosexuality to pedophilia.ACPeds believes homosexuality leads to health risks and shorter lifespans. Additionally, they believe that people are not born lesbian, gay or bisexual and that LGBT identification in adolescences will ultimately be temporary if not encouraged.
In 2015, then-ACPeds president, Michelle Cretella, strongly denounced the Supreme Court decision, Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized gay marriage nationwide, saying it was "a tragic day for America's children".
The organization's view on the relevance of sexual orientation to parenting differs from the position of the American Academy of Pediatrics, which holds that there is no connection between orientation and the ability to be a good parent and to raise healthy and well-adjusted children.
ACPeds has vehemently criticized the American Psychological Association as a "gay-affirming program" that "devalues self-restraint" and supports "a child's autonomy from the authority of both family and religion, and from the limits and norms these institutions place on children".
ACPeds also strongly opposes gender-affirming medical care for transgender people. The group has also referred to transgender people as a "cultish religion".
ACPeds frequently testifies in state legislatures in favor of anti-trans laws.
Pornography
ACPeds opposes online pornography.Vaccines
ACPeds opposes vaccines. Surgical oncologist David Gorski has said that statements from ACPeds have been used by quack sites like Natural News to push an anti-vaccine agenda. Gorski has said that organizations spreading misinformation regarding HPV vaccines have often cited ACPeds.Religion
Joseph Zanga, the group's founder, described ACPeds as having "Judeo-Christian, traditional values". While an anonymous member of the group's board of directors, said that ACPeds is a "conservative and religious" organization, but that the group was "too busy trying to walk the fence" in order to gain clout to acknowledge that. Most of ACPeds' publications are not overtly religious, but they have been noted to contain traditionally religious positions on social issues like same-sex relationships and sexual abstinence.ACPeds instructs its members to encourage their patients to purchase "Christian-based parenting guides" as well as workbooks that teach children about "sexual purity" which includes Bible scriptures and parables.
2023 data leak
In 2023, unsecured Google Drives on ACPeds' website were subject to a data breach, leaking over 10,000 confidential documents, including financial and tax records, membership rosters, social security numbers, usernames and passwords of members, resignation letters, budgetary and fundraising affairs as well as email exchanges between members extending over ten years, among other sensitive and personal information.Leaked communications between members revealed members painting transgender people as carriers of a contagious "pathological disorder" that can be spread between people, claiming that watching anime is "brainwashing boys into behaving like girls" as well as giving physicians instructions on how to discuss a "variety of scenarios about a multitude of topics" regarding sex with their child patients even when the child's parents are not present.
A strategy document also revealed a "unified plan" by ACPeds members that attempts to discredit the SPLC due to the SPLC labeling ACPeds as a "hate group" which ACPeds says has hurt its fundraising efforts. The strategy included an effort aimed at lowering SPLC's rating on Charity Navigator.
Affiliations
The ACPeds has affiliated itself with other conservative medical and religious groups including the Catholic Medical Association, the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, the American Association of Christian Counselors, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Christian Medical and Dental Associations, the National Catholic Bioethics Center, the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, the Lutheran Church and the United Reformed Churches in North America; as well as with anti-LGBT organizations and anti-abortion organizations including Genspect, the Discovery Institute, the Family Research Council, Family Watch International, Focus on the Family, Moms for Liberty, Family Policy Alliance, Ethics and Public Policy Center, the American Family Association, Gays Against Groomers, Protect Our Kids and The National Center for Law & Policy, some of which have been designated as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center.Publications and research
According to leaked internal documents, most of the research done by ACPeds has been written by one person and many of their papers have been rejected by medical journals. Because of this, the group's board of directors unanimously voted to release their rejected papers online, but under the term "not published" because it sounded "nicer than rejected".In response to the publication by the American Academy of Pediatrics of Just the Facts, a handbook on teen sexual orientation aimed at a school audience, ACPeds issued its own publication, Facts About Youth, in March 2010. Facts About Youth, along with a cover letter, was mailed to 14,800 school superintendents. Facts About Youth was challenged as not acknowledging "the scientific and medical evidence regarding sexual orientation, sexual identity, sexual health, or effective health education" by the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The ACPeds letter to the superintendents primarily addressed same-sex attraction, and recommended that "well-intentioned but misinformed school personnel" who encourage students to "come out as gay" and affirm them as such may lead the students into "harmful homosexual behaviors that they otherwise would not pursue". The ACPeds letter to the superintendents also stated that gender dysphoria will typically disappear by puberty "if the behavior is not reinforced" and similarly alleged that "most students with same-sex attractions will ultimately adopt a heterosexual orientation if not otherwise encouraged."
Activities
In 2023, the American College of Pediatricians was a plaintiff in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA, which sought to overturn the FDA's approval of mifepristone as an abortion drug. Leaked minutes from 2021 showed that the group has collaborated with religious groups in order to influence opinion leaders in courts, academic literature, and in state legislatures.Since 2021, representatives of ACPeds have lobbied several state legislatures in support of legislation to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youths, as part of a campaign that succeeded in passing such laws in several states.
In December 2023, ACPeds teamed up with the Catholic Medical Association in the case American College of Pediatricians, et al v. Becerra which challenges president Joe Biden's executive order that sought to reinterpret the word "sex" in federal laws to include sexual orientation and gender identity, particularly in the Affordable Care Act.
Members and presidents of ACPeds have appeared in conservative media including Tucker Carlson Tonight and Fox News and misinformation about LGBT rights by ACPeds has been parroted by conservative and far-right outlets, commentators and organizations including Glenn Beck, the Christian Broadcasting Network, The Daily Caller, Breitbart and the Family Research Council.