| American College of Pediatricians | |
| Founders: | Gerry Boccarossa and Joseph Zanga |
| Members: | slightly more than 700 |
| Revenue: | $178,000 |
| Revenue Year: | 2022 |
| Expenses: | $143,000 |
| Expenses Year: | 2022 |
| Tax Id: | 47-0886878 |
The American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) is a socially conservative advocacy group of pediatricians and other healthcare professionals in the United States, founded in 2002.[1] The group advocates against abortion rights and rights for LGBT people, and promotes conversion therapy. As of 2022, its membership has been reported at about 700 physicians.[2]
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.[3] [4] [5] ACPeds has been listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for pushing "anti-LGBTQ junk science".[6] 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 ACPeds' political agenda.
The group was founded in 2002 by a group of pediatricians, including Joseph Zanga, a past president of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), as a protest against the AAP's support for adoption by gay couples.[7] [8] In 2005, The Boston Globe noted that ACPeds was being used as a counterpoint to anything the AAP said despite it being run by one employee at the time.[8] Between 2013 and 2017, ACPeds distributed over 10,000 mailers to doctors as a recruitment strategy.
In 2012, the SPLC estimated the ACPeds membership at "no more than 200". In 2016 ACPeds reported its membership at "over 500 physicians and other healthcare professionals",[9] 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.[10]
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 has also strongly opposed gender-affirming medical care for transgender children.[11]
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.[12]
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 (over 85 percent) with same-sex attractions will ultimately adopt a heterosexual orientation if not otherwise encouraged."[13]
American College of Pediatricians is a plaintiff in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA, which sought to overturn the FDA's approval of mifepristone as an abortion drug.[14] 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 successful campaign that succeeded in passing such laws in several states.
Some scientists have voiced concerns that ACPeds mischaracterized or misused their work to advance its political agenda.[15] Gary Remafedi, a pediatrician at the University of Minnesota, wrote ACPeds a public letter accusing them of fundamentally mischaracterizing his research in their publications to argue that schools should deny support to gay teenagers. Francis Collins, a geneticist and director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), issued a statement through the NIH accusing the ACPeds of misleading children and parents on its Facts About Youth website. Warren Throckmorton, a therapist who specializes in sexual orientation issues, similarly stated that his research had been misused, saying of ACPeds: "They say they're impartial and not motivated by political or religious concerns, but if you look at who they're affiliated with and how they're using the research, that's just obviously not true."
In an amicus brief regarding the removal of a child from the foster home of a same-sex couple (Kutil and Hess v. West Virginia) the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) described ACPeds as a "small and marginal group" which was "out of step with the research-based position of the AAP and other medical and child welfare authorities". The LGBT advocacy organization PFLAG categorizes the ACPeds as an anti-equality organization, describing the group as a "small splinter group of medical professionals who do not support the mainstream view of the American Academy of Pediatricians (AAP) that homosexuality is a normal aspect of human diversity".[16]
The American College of Pediatricians has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as a "hate group", and a "fringe group" which closely collaborates with the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) with "a history of propagating damaging falsehoods about LGBT people, including linking homosexuality to pedophilia".[17] [18] [19] In response to being labeled a hate group by the SPLC, the ACPeds undertook a private campaign with its allies to attempt to discredit the SPLC and to lower its standing on Charity Navigator.
In response to an ACPeds brief, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) wrote that ACPeds is a fringe group that has acted to promote "unscientific and harmful 'reparative therapies' for LGBTQ students".[20] [21] [22]
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.[23]