Catholic Hospitals May Forcibly Detransition Patients

No trans person should seek treatment for any condition at a Catholic hospital.

by Evan Urquhart

A process expected to force medical detransition on stroke, heart-attack, car accident, and other trans people in need of emergency care is quietly making its way through the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, a body with the power to place the best interests of patients secondary to religious doctrine.
A March doctrinal note stated “Catholic health 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 or take part in the development of such procedures.” This was the first step towards a new set of rules to ensure Catholic hospitals put doctrine first, and patient wellbeing second. The bishops are now beginning the process of formalizing rules based on the March note. While the content of the rules are not yet known, Catholic healthcare workers who support an evidence-based approach to treating gender dysphoria are raising the alarm that they expect an outright ban on any support for trans patients, including renewing or continuing prescriptions for those recieving emergency treatment.

According the the Washington Post, Catholicism controls 1 out of every 7 hospital beds in the U. S. Ambulance services typically choose the closest facility when transporting desperately ill people in an emergency. This means that, if the bishop’s rules are as harsh as expected, a trans person who is brought to a Catholic emergency room would be stuck with no way of obtaining access to their regular medication. Instead, the hospital would impose an uncompromising, militantly anti-trans ideology even on patients in life-theatening emergencies.

screenshot from the Washington Post

In addition to limiting care within Catholic hospitals, Catholic zealots have been instrumental in pushing bans on medical treatment. A fringe right wing medical advocacy group, the American College of Pediatrics, has many Catholic doctors among its 700 members, some of whom have even served as expert witnesses promoting pseudoscience. The goal is to creating doubt about the mainstream consensus around gender affirming treatments so that Catholic religious teachings can influence state and national policy.

While the Washington Post and others have carried the story of the Bishop’s process, no one outside the LGBTQ+ community has recognized the full import of plans to ban any refills or continuation of hormone therapy on patients who arrive unconscious at emergency rooms, or patients who are unaware of the risks of seeking treatment at a Catholic emergency room. The unyieldingness of Catholic ideology in a medical context is, however, well understood in another context. Catholic hospitals have been linked to deaths, near deaths, and serious injuries when miscarrying women were denied lifesaving abortions of their doomed pregnancies at Catholic hospitals. This callous disregard for patient safety is coming next to the transgender community.