Cleveland Reporter

GOP U.S. Senate candidate Bernie Moreno oversaw millions in non-profit grants to a leading provider of child genital mutilation surgeries, now illegal in the State of Ohio.

While Moreno sat on the board of the Cleveland Foundation, it made $17,076,048 in grants to University Hospitals' Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital in Cleveland, a review of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) filings by the Cleveland Reporter showed.

Rainbow Babies markets itself as a leader in "gender affirming surgery" and "gender affirming care," which are euphemisms for the practices now barred by state law.

They included prescribing so-called "puberty blockers" and "cross sex hormones" to children with gender dysphoria, a mental illness that leads or boys to believe they are girls, and vice-versa. 

They also included "surgeries" to remove the boys' penises and girls' breasts, and to "construct" new male or female genitalia, like a vagina.

The Cleveland Foundation made grants to Rainbow Babies of $737,578 in 2015, $794,399 and $4,192,191 in 2016, $799,448 and $4,337,043 in 2017, $803,003 and $4,558,618 in 2018 and $854,168 in 2019, IRS records show.

The grants were specifically for funding "mental health services for youth" at Rainbow Babies.

Critics of these procedures say 80 to 95 percent of children “naturally grow out of any gender-identity conflicted stage.”

The American Psychiatric Association's "Diagnosfic and Stafisfical Manual of Mental Disorders" holds that children are not fully capable of understanding what it means to be a man or a woman, adding that most questioning their biological sex eventually come to accept it and stop "identifying" as the opposite one.

3,300 Ohio children seeking sex changes

According to Nick Lashutka, President and CEO of Ohio Children’s Hospital Association, approximately 3,300 Ohio children were subjected to these practices between 2013 and 2023. 

In testimony before the Ohio General Assembly, he said the average age of a patient seeking "gender affirming" procedures was 16.

House Bill 68, introduced in 2023, gives parents the power to decline to consent to allowing their children to undergo these procedures.

It also prevents doctors from performing sex change surgery on a minor, or prescribing cross-sex hormones or puberty-blocking drugs to them.

The bill was originally vetoed by Ohio Gov. Mike Dewine (R), but his veto was overridden by the Ohio State Senate.

According to a 2022 SurveyUSA poll, 66 percent of Ohioans oppose child sex change surgeries, while 25 percent support keeping them legal.

The predecessors of Rainbow Babies-- a combination of the once-independent Rainbow Hospital, which merged 50 years ago with Babies and Children’s Hospital of University Hospital of Cleveland-- were founded in 1896 by wealthy and prominent Cleveland women to help "crippled and convalescent children."

The Republican Ohio U.S. Senate Primary, which pits Moreno against Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R-Akron) and State Senator Matt Dolan (R-Chagrin Falls), is March 19.