Christians Force Biden Admin to Back Down, Gain Huge Victory to Protect Kids
The Biden administration has backed off from trying to force Catholic hospitals to perform gender transition surgeries.
Tuesday was the deadline for the Justice Department to file a notice of appeal in the case of Sisters of Mercy v. Becerra, but the deadline passed with no action taken, according to The Washington Times.
The court case grew out of a 2016 interpretation by the federal government that Obamacare required gender transition surgeries to be performed — including on children — regardless of anyone’s religious objections.
Becket Law, representing the Sisters of Mercy, the University of Mary, and SMP Health System, filed a lawsuit that year to stop the rule from taking effect, the group said on its website.
In the lawsuit, Catholic hospitals also sought to avoid having to pay insurance coverage for employees who undergo gender transition surgery.
Both parts of the rule were subsequently thrown out by multiple courts, leaving an appeal to the Supreme Court as the last possible chance to restore it.
“After multiple defeats in court, the federal government has thrown in the towel on its controversial, medically unsupported transgender mandate,” Luke Goodrich, vice president and senior counsel at Becket, said, according to a statement on Becket Law’s website.
“Doctors take a solemn oath to ‘do no harm,’ and they can’t keep that oath if the federal government is forcing them to perform harmful, irreversible procedures against their conscience and medical expertise.”
The law firm noted that it had won a similar case that challenges the “transgender mandate.”
Goodrich said “religious doctors and hospitals provide vital care to patients in need, including millions of dollars in free and low-cost care to the elderly, poor, and underserved.”
“This is a win for patients, conscience, and common sense,” he said.
Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission President Brent Leatherwood told The Washington Times that the decision not to wage a Supreme Court fight is a “significant victory in safeguarding the rights of medical professionals to operate in a manner consistent with their deepest held beliefs.”
“This is an important development we should take note of because it not only represents a win for conscience rights but also furthers efforts to shield vulnerable individuals who should never become pawns in the sexual revolution,” he said.
The decision came days after a June 16 vote by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to develop new rules for the treatment of transgender individuals in Catholic hospitals, according to The Washington Post.
The doctrine committee issued a position paper on the subject in March that said “sexually differentiated” male and female bodies are part of the world’s God-given order.
The paper said alterations to the human body “for what is termed ‘gender dysphoria’ or ‘gender incongruence’” are “not morally justified … they do not repair a defect in the body; there is no disorder in the body that needs to be addressed.”
“Such interventions, thus, do not respect the fundamental order of the human person as an intrinsic unity of body and soul, with a body that is sexually differentiated. … Catholic heath care services must not perform interventions, whether surgical or chemical, that aim to transform the sexual characteristics of a human body into those of the opposite sex,” the position paper said.
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