Court Strikes Down Transgender Mandate, Protecting Freedom of Conscience

Amanda Casanova | ChristianHeadlines.com Contributor | Updated: Jan 04, 2017

Court Strikes Down Transgender Mandate, Protecting Freedom of Conscience

Less than nine hours before the New Year, a Texas court decided to strike down a mandatethat would have forced doctors and health care providers to provide gender transition services and abortions.

Lori Windham, senior counsel at Becket Law, a non-profit firm that defends freedom of religion, says in a column for The Daily Signal that the law firm had asked the Texas court for an order to protect health care providers.

The mandate was part of a regulation that claims to interpret the Affordable Care Act. It was issued in May 2017 and scheduled to go into effect on Jan. 1.

“This ruling is an across-the-board victory that will ensure that the deeply personal medical decision of a gender transition procedure remains between families and their doctors,” Windham said.

The late ruling came after eight states and a Catholic hospital system challenged a new federal regulation that requires doctors to perform gender transition procedures on children even if the doctor believes the procedures could harm the child.

“This is a commonsense ruling,” Windham writes. “The government has no business forcing private doctors to perform procedures on children that the government itself recognizes can be harmful and exempts its own doctors from performing.”

 

Publication date: January 4, 2017



Court Strikes Down Transgender Mandate, Protecting Freedom of Conscience