As they gathered for their annual fall meeting in Baltimore, the nation’s bishops considered possible revisions to their guiding document on Catholic health care — with protocols on the issue of gender dysphoria being “especially relevant in our day,” said the bishops’ doctrinal committee chair.
The U.S. Supreme Court on June 18 upheld a Tennessee state law banning certain types of medical or surgical gender reassignment procedures for minors who identify as transgender.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Feb. 5 barring biological males from competing in women’s sports.
The U.S. Supreme Court declined, without comment, March 18 to take up an appeal by an Indiana Catholic couple whose child was removed from their home when they did not accept the teen’s transgender identity.
The Texas Supreme Court on Aug. 31 moved to allow a state law banning certain types of medical or surgical gender reassignment procedures for minors who identify as transgender to go into effect.
Missouri lawmakers passed a bill May 10 banning certain types of medical or surgical gender reassignment procedures for minors who identify as transgender, as well as a measure blocking transgender student athletes from competing on sports teams opposite their biological sex.
A former U.S. Navy surgeon with experience in reconstructive surgeries for combat-wounded troops, Deacon Patrick Lappert of the Diocese of Birmingham, Alabama, recently shared with OSV News his insights on transgender interventions for children. Deacon Lappert, who speaks nationally on this topic, warns that gender reassignment poses grave risks to both body and soul.
Surgical, chemical or other interventions that aim “to exchange” a person’s “sex characteristics” for those of the opposite sex “are not morally justified,” said the U.S. bishops’ doctrine committee in a statement released March 20.
The chairmen of two U.S. bishops’ committees praised President Donald Trump’s repeal of the Obama administration’s directive on transgender access to bathrooms.
A federal judge in Texas Dec. 31 blocked a regulation by the Department of Health and Human Services requiring Catholic hospitals and health care providers to perform or provide gender transition services.
