The Obama-era “transgender mandate,” which obligated doctors to perform gender transition surgeries, was stricken down in federal court on Oct. 15.
Becket Fund headed the lawsuit and called the Texas judge’s ruling a victory for the conscience rights of doctors. Under the transgender mandate, doctors—regardless of their religious beliefs and medical judgment—would be forced to provide potentially dangerous gender-transition surgeries to their patients.
If they didn’t, they risked losing their jobs.
“Today’s ruling is huge because the regulation at issue applies to virtually every doctor and hospital in the country,” said the Vice President and Senior Counsel Luke Goodrich of Becket Fund. “And today’s court ruling says that violation violated the law and doctors and hospitals need to be free to practice medicine in accordance to their best medical judgment.”
#BREAKING: Huge victory for #ReligiousFreedom:
A federal court just struck down the controversial #TransgenderMandate, which tried to force doctors to perform potentially harmful gender-transition procedures against their conscience and medical judgment:https://t.co/lHPcTxdgJI— Luke Goodrich (@LukeWGoodrich) October 15, 2019
Under the transgender mandate, doctors could also be made to operate on children. Still, according to data collected by Becket, 94 percent of children grow out of gender dysphoria.
“And there are multiple studies showing that some of these transgender medical procedures can actually cause harm. So some of these doctors are saying, ‘don’t force us to violate the Hippocratic Oath: we want to serve patients, and do no harm,'” he added.
People seeking gender transition services will still be able to receive them from willing doctors.
