Dr. Jonathan Keith was the first surgeon to offer genital reassignment surgery in New Jersey in 2018. He has performed over 130 genital surgeries since then and is the first surgeon in New Jersey to offer the full range of “gender-affirming” procedures. He is described as having "expertise" in all aspects of gender-affirming mastectomies, even for patients who are under the age of 18. According to NJ Monthly, Dr. Keith says that neither top nor bottom surgery for minors is outlawed in New Jersey and are up to the discretion of surgeons. He is a member of the Rutgers Center for Transgender Health and WPATH, the global authority for gender medicine. They set the standards for "gender-affirming care.” In 2001, The Guardian published an article about the work of William Futrell, who was Dr. Keith's mentor, and compared him to a “modern-day Frankenstein.”
A recently published study analyzed data from surgeries conducted by Dr. Keith between 2015 and 2020. The demographic data confirmed that these surgeries were performed on minors, some of which were less than a year into their medical transition at the time of surgery. One-third of the surgeries during this five-year period resulted in complications.
East Coast Advanced Plastic Surgery, whose services have been branded as “progressive plastic surgery,” celebrates Dr. Keith as a world-renowned expert in transmasculine procedures. Through them, Dr. Keith unashamedly gives double mastectomies to teenage girls. According to TopSurgery.net, Dr. Keith performs all types of top surgery, and he operates on minors. Another summary of Dr. Jonathan Keith’s medical background and the procedures he offers asserts that Dr. Keith will operate on minors. In 2023, widespread awareness of the child abuse taking place in the operating room prompted legislation banning this heinous act state-by-state. Regarding this matter, Dr. Keith remarked, “It’s so hard for me to fathom what it is like for a patient right now in some of these other states — how they are feeling, what it would be like to even try and come out of the darkness and find adequate health care. This is one of the problems we are facing right now in America.”
Since when is taking emotionally vulnerable children and chopping off parts of their body considered “adequate health care?” The real issue is that these inhumane procedures are somehow still legal in many states. They should have never been allowed to occur in the first place. Dr. Keith worries what would happen if the services he provides were outlawed. Must we remind him that the only prohibited services are those carried out on minors? If these "services" were outlawed in Dr. Keith's state, the only change would be disallowing him from mutilating people's children. And we think that sounds great. Ban it. Nobody has the right to butcher children.
“And in Texas right now, doctors like me would go to jail,” Dr. Keith said in another interview. By “doctors like me,” what he really means is “doctors who butcher children for money” – all of whom should be put behind bars. Executive Order No. 326 established New Jersey as a “safe haven” for gender-affirming health care. It aims to ensure that all members of the LGBTQIA+ community, including “transgender and non-binary” kids, enjoy equal access to quality health care services in New Jersey, whether or not they are New Jersey residents. Once this went into effect, Keith noted that his clinic saw “an influx of patients not just from New York and New Jersey, but from all over the country.”
Instead of confronting the fact that these interventions are too dangerous for a child's body to be put through, parents from states with “gender-affirming care” restrictions are just bringing their kid to New Jersey to get castrated. Have these parents considered that these surgeries are getting outlawed for good reasons? Dr. Keith talks about these laws as if they're a form of bigotry and hate. Meanwhile, they are being implemented in order to prevent malpractice and keep people safe. “It’s absolutely obscene that we’re letting kids agree to mutilating surgeries that can never be undone. No adult should ever look back wondering how they were allowed to make such monumental decisions as a child that they now regret,” Sen. Durr said in a press release after a ban was first proposed. Shortly after, the corporate leaders at RWJBarnabas Health, the hospital system that Dr. Keith is affiliated with, reiterated their commitment to serving LGBTQ+ and nonbinary patients: “We fully support transgender youth and their families in accessing comprehensive, gender-affirming and developmentally appropriate health care. We are proud to work with our patients, families’ and caregivers in making informed medical decisions and stand in solidarity with the transgender community.”
Dr. Keith praised the message of support because he believes that it is important to gender-affirming care providers and their patients. According to New Jersey Monthly, “Keith has started to encounter what he calls ‘roadblocks, barriers, and hoops to jump through’ from some insurers, who, he says, have become increasingly adversarial about compensating patients for gender-affirming surgery.”
Has Dr. Keith ever entertained the thought that perhaps insurance companies are tightening their regulations because these procedures are inherently hazardous, full of malpractice, and fail to improve the mental well-being of kids in distress? The "gender-affirming care" he is defending means permanently altering children. There should be more safeguards preventing surgeons from butchering children at will. In fact, safeguards are being put in place. These are not “roadblocks.” This is just proper safeguarding. If your doctor sees medical safeguarding as a barrier or inconvenience, then your alarm bells should start going off. If they view simple safeguarding as creating unnecessary barriers, then what kind of gatekeeping do they actually approve of? Do they even believe in any form of gatekeeping at all?
Avery Heimann, a social worker, used to work with patients seeking gender-affirming care through this LGBTQ+ clinic at RWJBarnabas Hospital Somerset, as well. Heimann’s work in this field was mostly “writing letters of support to insurance companies to explain how the treatment is indeed a medical necessity and critical to the patient’s mental health.” Heimann does this by “taking a holistic lens to not gate-keep or verify whether the patient is ready — we know the patient is ready" So, if an underage kid believes that surgery is the best option for them, Heimann will gladly write a letter of support based on self-declaration without verifying any of their claims first? The purpose of the letter is to provide a statement that the patient is able to give informed consent. The process of obtaining informed consent is essential to ensure that all parties involved have a clear understanding of the medical procedures and their implications.
When gatekeeping and safety are dismissed or not taken seriously, the boundaries protecting one's body begin to erode and consent becomes meaningless. When children are force-fed constant propaganda and pushed into a radical agenda not just by their parents but also by the media and medical professionals, it's a blatant failure in safeguarding. Protection should prevail over abuse. Not only is that irresponsible, but it speaks volumes about how little these clinics actually care about these kids. To nobody's surprise, Dr. Frankenstein has an active Instagram page where he shares interview clips about “pride” and tiktok music videos showing off his customers:
Dr. Johnathan Keith finds himself on the Watchlist not only for the agenda he so diligently strives to uphold but also for the physical and mental damage inflicted upon these kids as a result. These butchers aren't immune to criticism. And we refuse to let absolute charlatans like him go unchecked.
REFERENCES
Dr. Jonathan Keith [@drjonathankeith]. (2024). Jonathan Keith, MD FACS (he/him) [Instagram profile].
ECA Plastic Surgery. (2024). FTM Transmasculine Procedures New Jersey | FTM Hoboken. https://www.ecaplasticsurgery.com/procedures/gender-affirmation/ftm-transmasculine-procedures/
ECA Plastic Surgery [@ECAPlastics]. (2024). Posts [X profile]. X. Retrieved January 7, 2023, from https://x.com/ECAPlastics?t=Jlcl4NgeNKlGPih_xgGTTQ&s=09
NJ Spotlight News. (2023, September 26). Surgeons in the vanguard of gender-affirming procedures in NJ.
NJ Spotlight News. (2023). Transgender care grows in New Jersey. https://www.njspotlightnews.org/special-report/how-gender-affirming-care-is-delivered-in-nj-as-demand-grows/
New Jersey Monthly. (2023, October 30). What Gender-Affirming Care Looks Like in New Jersey. https://njmonthly.com/articles/news/gender-affirming-care-nj/
The Guardian. (2001, November 10). The flying doctor. https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2001/nov/11/life1.lifemagazine5