Corporate malpractice

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Next up on The WORLD And Everything in it: Corporate benefits and what they’re costing children.

The Human Rights Campaign is the largest LGBTQ advocacy organization in the country. For more than two decades, the HRC bullied companies into adopting practices and policies harmful to families and children.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Now, a record number of corporations once eager to comply with the LGBTQ agenda have started pulling back support and changing some of those policies.

But is it too little, too late? 

I talked to one woman who is telling companies what happened to her…by making videos from her home office.

SOREN ALDACO: I’m a 23-year-old detransition woman and I’m here to talk about what corporate health insurance did to me as a teenager.

When Aldaco was 17 years old she started taking hormones to deepen her voice, increase her facial and body hair, and end her menstrual cycle. By the time she was 19, a surgeon had removed both of her healthy breasts. 

Still focused on the camera, Aldaco explains how a teenager could pay for cross sex hormones and a double mastectomy.

ALDACO: All under the banner of gender affirming care, all covered by my mother’s employer-sponsored health plan.

Dustin DeVito is the Director of Research at 1792 Exchange. It’s a non-profit organization helping companies navigate ideological issues like gender identity.

DUSTIN DEVITO: You go back 15 years or so ago there were zero Fortune 1000 companies offering that type of care. And if you go to last year, that number was closer to 75 percent of companies.

Then, in February of this year, the numbers began shifting again.

DEVITO: So there’s a 65 percent decline in Fortune 500 participation. And if you dig in a bit deeper, you’ll notice that trend is pretty consistent across the Fortune 1000. There was a 61 percent decrease across the whole Fortune 1000.

DeVito attributes the shift to a changing political climate. Many companies dropped the HRC and its CEI, Corporate Equality Index. The CEI scored companies and published the results: High scores earned praise, low scores boycotts. 

But even as companies ditch the CEI, many harmful policies they adopted remain. And in some instances, have been added to. 

Soren Aldaco says that’s why her message is so vital.

ALDACO: I share this experience not for sympathy, but because decisions made in boardrooms have consequences in operating rooms.

She’s hoping her recorded message reaches boardrooms and beyond.

ALDACO: Well, I was envisioning a lot of businessmen primarily, because that’s who I imagine are the ones who make decisions in these sort of stakeholder meetings. I also envision people who are shareholders in other ways, right? Just regular, everyday people who care about this issue.

Aldaco sees fault in company policies that facilitate gender surgeries.

ALDACO: My mom’s benefits package was underwriting my destruction.

And while it caused damage, it also helped prevent even more.

ALDACO: And anyone who’s ever known anything about a double mastectomy, is that there are drains, doctors are heavily involved. Well my doctors sent me to an Airbnb for five days with no drains and I experienced major bruising.

Aldaco says the botched job landed her back in the hospital.

ALDACO: They had to cut my scars back open, sew in new drains, or drains period, because I didn’t have them to begin with. And I had to manually express the blood from my chest for about a week afterwards and tend to the wounds for another couple.

Aldaco’s mother still works for the company that paid for the double mastectomy in the first place.

ALDACO: The thing is, the cognitive dissonance is strong. Cuz this company treats her right in a lot of other ways. So I’m in the camp where it’s like, I don’t think we should burn everything down, but I think I have a pretty reasonable expectation which is that they stop underwriting other young people’s destruction.

Dustin DeVito says it’s possible, but it will take time.

DEVITO: Companies are not going to have total neutrality overnight.

But when the American Family Association put repeated pressure on Apple to add device protections for minors…

DEVITO: …In that second year, Apple came to the table understanding their policy deficiencies a lot more clearly and ready to make changes.

He says someone like Soren has an opportunity to engage companies in the right direction.

ALDACO: I’m asking you to support this proposal…

Aldaco is married now and shares her story with anyone who’ll listen. Always reflecting on the life-changing decisions she made as a confused, emotional pre-teen.

ALDACO: I realized, ok, I can be uncomfortable by the idea of being a woman. I can change my pronoun, I can get a double mastectomy, and it doesn’t change reality. And in fact, if I sit with that discomfort, in time it might even go away. And it did.

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