Conscience, Obamacare Mandates, and Sex-Reassignment Therapies
by Roger Severino and Ryan T. Anderson, Public Discourse:
Proposed new healthcare regulations threaten the religious liberty, freedom of conscience, and independent medical judgment of healthcare professionals. On September 8, 2015, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published a notice of proposed rulemaking that would implement certain nondiscrimination provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA, or Obamacare) in ways that Congress never intended—and never could have imagined.
As we explain in a new Heritage Foundation report, the proposed regulations would create serious conflicts of conscience for many organizations, hospitals, physicians, and other individuals involved in healthcare. By prohibiting differential treatment on the basis of “gender identity” in health services, these regulations propose to penalize medical professionals and healthcare organizations that, as a matter of faith, moral conviction, or professional medical judgment, believe that maleness and femaleness are biological realities to be respected and affirmed, not altered or treated as diseases.
The proposed regulations create special privileges based on gender identity that will lead to unreasonable and costly litigation for physicians, hospitals, insurers, and others involved in healthcare. They would effectively require controversial procedures, such as “sex-reassignment” surgery, that respected medical professionals argue have not been proven to be effective in treating serious mental health conditions. Rather than respect the diversity of opinions on sensitive and controversial healthcare issues, the proposed regulations endorse and enforce one view.
Redefining “Sex” to Include Gender Identity and Possibly Sexual Orientation
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