Partners for Ethical Care
This content was last updated Feb. 22, 2024, 4:43 a.m. UTC
International Partners for Ethical Care (PEC) is a 501(c)(3) charity and anti-trans activism group in Chicago, Illinois. Operating under the umbrella of parental rights, the organization seeks to restrict access to gender-affirming care for transgender minors and campaigns under the assertion that “no child is born in the wrong body.” Several of the group’s members are parents who do not affirm their transgender children.
Listening to emotional testimony spoken by the TX ACLU representative, stating that ‘blood will be on your hands [if you pass this bill].’ Nope. That’s not how suicide works. More importantly, why are you suggesting that children have only two choices? That’s not very liberal.
Founding
PEC was officially incorporated on November 3, 2020 in Chicago, Illinois. Co-founded by a group of six anti-trans activists, the group is primarily helmed by Jeannette Cooper. Their mission statement says, “Our mission is to raise awareness and support efforts to stop the unethical treatment of children by schools, hospitals, and mental and medical healthcare providers under the duplicitous banner of gender identity affirmation. We believe that no child is born in the wrong body.” Officially, the group was founded to collect stories and testimony from those who have struggled with their gender identity in an effort to collate resources that can be used to argue against providing gender-affirming care to minors.
Finances
PEC is officially registered as a 501(c)(3) non-profit charity in Illinois. According to the group’s publicly available tax information for 2021, PEC reported gross revenue of under $50,000, entitling them to file a simplified 990-N form. Gross revenue for the organization totaled $2,191 against operating expenses of $141, ending in an excess balance of $2,049 for 2021. The entirety of their operation balance was attained through private gifts and donations.
The only listed expenses for the group are contributed to a LiveChat subscription for their website, a service that allows for live text-based customer support.
History of Anti-LGBTQ+ Activism
PEC offered its support to a 2021 protest on International Women’s Day, in which radical feminists and alt-right activists picketed together in opposition to President Biden’s executive order preventing discrimination on the basis of gender or sexual orientation. The group’s support followed their opposition to 2021’s Equality Act, also regarding discrimination on the basis of gender or sexual orientation.
Cooper, a mother whose lack of support for her transgender child led to losing custody after her divorce, was a featured speaker for a January 2023 panel titled “Stolen Innocence,” which claimed to speak on the “insidious ideology infecting your children’s education.” Cooper appeared alongside other anti-trans activists, including Chloe Cole and Jaimee Michel.
Cooper, on behalf of PEC, spoke in favor of Kentucky’s House Bill 470, which sought to restrict access to gender-affirming care for trans youth and prevent local schools from affirming a child’s identity, among other measures. During her testimony, Cooper claimed “Gender dysphoria is a psychological problem that deserves ethical psychological care. It is impossible to be born in the wrong body.”
In a similar piece of testimony for Ohio’s House Bill 454, Cooper compared gender-affirming care for minors to walking them to a gas chamber. At a Florida hearing, she compared hormone therapy to “a street drug that needs to be injected every day.”
In June of 2023, Cooper appeared on The Ingraham Angle on behalf of PEC to speak against California’s Assembly Bill 957. The bill centers around the health and welfare of transgender children and would require the state to consider a parent’s acceptance of their child’s identity as part of the child’s overall health and welfare, especially in divorce cases. Cooper, who did not affirm her child’s gender identity exploration and lost custody following her divorce, reaffirmed that she “does not believe in such a thing as gender identity.”
In October of 2023, Cooper spoke in Wisconsin in support of the “Help Not Harm Act”. This act would seek to restrict access to gender affirming care to minors. It was heavily influenced by the legislation of the Family Policy Alliance.
Despite their foundation as a non-partisan organization, the group has operated near-exclusively alongside conservative and alt-right political organizations, including rallies for the Republican Party of Texas.
PEC launched a side project, Transition Justice, to connect those who have struggled with their gender identities with legal counsel for the purpose of pursuing lawsuits.