Yvonne van Dongen
Veteran NZ journo incredulous gender ideology escaped the lab. Won’t rest until reality makes a comeback.
American nurse practitioner Michelle Green has been in New Zealand for less than a year but she already uses terms like wahine and whānau when talking about her patients.
She is employed at a women’s health clinic in Tairāwhiti, which only opened in the middle of this year. Te Ara Puāwai free clinic is part of Three Rivers Medical. Apart from catering to women’s usual healthcare needs (such as endometriosis, cervical screening, fertility), the clinic will also provide gender-affirming care for “transgender, non-binary and gender-diverse people”, male and female. We all know gender-affirming means sex-denying and mental illness affirming.
In the United States, Green had been a partner in a health and wellness clinic in Arkansas, where there was a focus on ‘LGBTQIA+ healthcare’.
In a story last week in the Gisborne Herald, Green discussed the subtleties of providing gender-affirming care. Sometimes she talked to gender non-conforming folk who weren’t “even interested in taking medication” but those same people might need to talk about issues “like chest-binding or tucking in a safe way that isn’t going to be harmful”.
She also liked “educating people” and said the clinic had counsellors who supported patients. “[T]alking to patients and whānau about what does gender non-conforming mean; what does it mean to be transgender?”
Green has found the healthcare system here a positive experience and she recommends it to other American colleagues. Indeed she moved here at the recommendation of a nurse practitioner friend who immigrated to New Zealand in 2025.
New Zealand’s rep as a ‘rainbow haven’ is not just a drawcard for trans individuals and families (that is, the mentally unwell) from across the globe, but also medicos specialising in this area (a specialty that may well go the way of lobotomies in due course).
American Dr AJ Eckert arrived in New Zealand not long after Michelle Green, in December 2025. Originally from Los Angeles, his speciality is also the LGBTQIA+ community. Now at The Doctors Silverstream he too offers gender-affirming care.
He joins other overseas-born medical practitioners with this speciality in their resume such as South African Dr Veronique Nicolaou. Dr Nicolaou is an endocrinologist who has been in the country since 2021. She started in Whangārei, but is now based in Auckland. Her expertise in women’s health ranges from thyroid disorders, pituitary disease, osteoporosis, transgender medicine, and other endocrine conditions.
Dr Rachel Johnson arrived here from the United Kingdom in the early 2000s, before the trans trend really took off. But the general paediatrician is now part of a multi-disciplinary team providing gender affirming healthcare to young people and families across the whole of the Auckland region at the Kids First Centre for Youth Health. She’s been doing this for 10 years and has been actively involved in PATHA and WPATH, two highly questionable organisations representing medicos in this field.
She’s also on the Auckland regional clinical trans health peer network, the Northern Region Transgender Clinical and Consumer Advisory Group, and has been involved in the development of New Zealand’s trans health guidelines.
PATHA complained in 2023 that the public health system did not cater sufficiently to the transgender community, hence many people had to fund their own care. Anyone game enough to look up ‘top surgery’ and ‘gender affirming care’ on Givealittle can find links to some of the most messed-up people (mainly young women) on that site.
The Gender Affirming (Genital) Surgery Service (GAGSS) have 383 people on their waitlist as of March 2026, though public funding only exists for up to 14 genital surgeries per year.
This covers procedures such as:
- Full-depth or minimal-depth vaginoplasty – construct a vaginal canal
- Metoidioplasty – constructing a small penis using existing genital tissue (with or without urethral lengthening)
- Phalloplasty – penis construction using donor tissue from a site like the thigh or forearm (with or without urethral lengthening)
The limit has applied since the dedicated service was established (funded from Budget 2019, operational from around 2020). Earlier, under the High Cost Treatment Pool, the numbers were much lower (historically capped at roughly a few surgeries every two years).
Official data on referral numbers (people applying to join the waitlist) shows a sharp rise after extra funding and the dedicated GAGSS were introduced. The number of people referred increased by more than 160 per cent between October 2018 and September 2020.
The official Health New Zealand website publishes a chart of new referrals received each quarter since January 2013. It confirms the marked upward trend in that period, with roughly 78 per cent of referrals for feminising procedures and 22 per cent for masculinising ones in cumulative data.
These figures look alarming but the number of young people seeking puberty blockers has been dropping in recent years. A 2024 RNZ story reported that after a decade of increases the number of children and young teens prescribed puberty blockers has fallen. Indeed, the latest data shows that first-time prescriptions started falling steeply in 2022.
With the pause on puberty blockers and bill to define sex in law currently before parliament, New Zealand’s rainbow reputation may be fading. Heaven knows we don’t need more ‘trans’ folk, abused children or medicos affirming this mass delusion coming to our country.
This article was originally published on the author’s Substack.
