CLINICS SUE FEDS OVER ORDER TO
PERFORM GENDER TRANSITIONS, 'No doctor should
be forced to perform a procedure that he or she believes will harm a child', by
Bob Unruh, 11/19/16
A number of health clinics,
hospitals and a university have joined the state of North Dakota in a lawsuit
against a new federal regulation that demands that doctors – all of the
estimated 900,000 in America – be ready, willing and able to perform
gender-transition procedures on children. That’s even if the physician believes
such treatment could harm the child.
The federal
regulation, announced earlier this year, is the target of a lawsuit filed by
the clients of the
Becket Fund.
“No doctor should be forced to
perform a procedure that he or she believes will harm a child,” said Lori
Windham, a senior counsel for the group. “Decisions on a child’s medical
treatment should be between families and their doctors, not dictated by
politicians and government bureaucrats.”
The
lawsuit is on behalf of the Religious
Sisters of Mercy, Sacred Heart Mercy Health Care Center in Jackson, Minnesota;
Sacred Heart Mercy Health Care Center in Alma, Mississippi; SMP Health System;
the University of Mary; and North Dakota. Defendants are HHS Secretary Sylvia
Burwell and the federal agency.
The complaint alleges the demand is
invalid under the Administrative Procedures Act, the Religious Freedom
Restoration Act and the U.S. Constitution’s First, Fifth and 14th Amendments.
It seeks a permanent injunction against the regulation as well as damages and
costs.
Becket argues the government ”does
not require Medicare and Medicaid to cover these same procedures, because
Health & Human Services’ (HHS) own medical experts found the risks were
often too high and benefits too unclear.”
“Yet any private doctor who made the
same decision about the risks would be in violation of the new mandate and face
potential lawsuits or job loss.”
The group cites research showing
that up to 94 percent of children with “gender dysphoria” will “grow out of
their dysphoria naturally and will not need surgery or lifelong hormone
regiments.”
There also are risks from heart
disease and diabetes, and from breast, ovarian and prostate cancers.
The lawsuit states: “This regulation
will cost healthcare providers and taxpayers nearly $1 billion and affect up to
900,000 doctors – virtually every doctor in the U.S., many of whom have chosen
the medical profession because they are inspired by their faith to serve those
in need. But this regulation violates doctors’ ability to exercise both their
best medical judgment and their religiously inspired desire to care for
society’s most vulnerable.”
Windham called the HHS regulation
“an unparalleled government overreach.”
“This law not only forces doctors to
violate the Hippocratic oath, but also removes their professional right to be
the final decision-makers on the best medical care for their patients,” she
said.
It’s the second lawsuit filed by the
Becket Fund over the same leftist agenda. Becket previously launched a case on
behalf of Franciscan Alliance and the Christian Medical & Dental
Associations. Becket has a website on the case at transgendermandate.org.
The complaint asserts that “on pain
of significant financial liability, the regulation forces doctors to perform
controversial and sometimes harmful medical procedures ostensibly designed to
permanently change an individual’s sex – including the sex of children.”
“Under the new regulation, a doctor
must perform these procedures even when they are contrary to the doctor’s
medical judgment and could result in significant, long-term medical harm. Thus,
the regulation represents a radical invasion of the federal bureaucracy into a
doctor’s medical judgment.”
It explains the feds made the change
simply by changing the historical meaning of the word “sex.”
“For decades, across multiple
federal statutes, Congress has consistently used the term ‘sex’ to refer to an
individual’s status as male or female, as determined by a person’s biological
sex at birth. But in the regulation, HHS redefines ‘sex’ to include ‘an
individual’s internal sense of gender, which may be male, female, neither, or a
combination of male and female, and which may be different from an individual’s
sex assigned at birth.'”
The Obama administration has done
this, “despite the fact that Congress has repeatedly rejected similar attempts
to redefine ‘sex’ through legislation.”
Federal courts also have rejected
such efforts, the complaint notes.
http://www.wnd.com/2016/11/clinics-sue-feds-over-order-to-perform-gender-transitions/
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