The Obama administration is being sued by numerous US states and Christian health care providers over a federal law that forces them to perform ‘gender transition’ procedures.
The groups bringing the lawsuit are hoping to block new rules that expanded the interpretation of “sex” under the Affordable Care Act to include “gender identity”.
The Act, also known as Obamacare, states that individuals cannot be denied federal funded health benefits because of their race, colour, national origin, sex, age, or disability.
New rules
In May, the US Government introduced the rules which could leave doctors unable to refuse to perform ‘gender transition’ procedures.
It is expected to cover almost all doctors because they receive federal financial assistance.
The lawyer representing two of the Christian parties involved in the case warned that the new mandate could be harmful to doctors and patients.
Harmful
Luke Goodrich said: “It’s a very rare moment in history when the government would force doctors to go against their conscience and their medical judgment and perform procedures that may be deeply harmful to patients.”
He added: “The new mandate forces doctors to perform gender reassignment procedures on individuals including young children, even when those procedures may be physically and emotionally harmful and may violate the doctors’ faith and medical judgment.
“These organizations care for transgender individuals all the time in lots of different respects”.
Medical judgement
Goodrich went on to further discuss the impact that the new rules may have on doctors.
He said doctors cannot “in good conscience or in their own medical judgement do procedures that would be harmful, so they felt like they had to get relief from the new regulation”.
Texas, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Nebraska and Kansas are all involved in the legal case.