American College of Pediatricians This article
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This article is about the socially conservative advocacy group. For the major professional association, see American Academy of Pediatrics
Members 500 (estimated)
The American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) is a socially conservative advocacy group of pediatricians and other healthcare professionals in the United States.[1] The group was founded in 2002 by a group of pediatricians, including Joseph Zanga, a past president of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), as a protest against the AAP's support for adoption by gay couples.[2][3] The group's membership as of 2016 is estimated at 500 members.[4][5]
ACPeds describes itself as "a national organization of pediatricians and other healthcare professionals dedicated to the health and well-being of children... committed to fulfilling its mission by producing sound policy, based upon the best available research, to assist parents and to influence society in the endeavor of childrearing."[6]
Founder Joseph Zanga has described it as a group "with Judeo-Christian, traditional values that is open to pediatric medical professionals of all religions" provided that they "hold true to the group's core beliefs: that life begins at conception; and that the traditional family unit, headed by an opposite-sex couple, poses far fewer risk factors in the adoption and raising of children."[7]
The organization's view on parenting is at odds with the position of the American Academy of Pediatrics, which holds that sexual orientation has no correlation with the ability to be a good parent and to raise healthy and well-adjusted children.[5][8][9]
ACPeds has been listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, for "propagating damaging falsehoods about LGBT people".[10][11] A number of mainstream researchers, including the director of the US National Institutes of Health, have accused the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) of misusing or mischaracterizing their work to advance ACPeds' political agenda.[2][12]
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