It would reverse Trump-era conscience protections that sought to allow medical professionals to opt out of performing procedures contrary to their beliefs.
Cupich and Dolan said that Section 1557 “rightly prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in health care. We wholeheartedly support all efforts to ensure that everyone, without exception, receives the best health care that is their due.”
They emphasized that at Catholic hospitals, “all people who come to us, no matter their age, sex, racial or ethnic background, or religion,” as well as “people who identify as transgender,” “will receive the same treatment as any other patient.”
“Catholic hospitals do not discriminate against anyone and to do so would be offensive to the embracing and expansive healing ministry of Jesus Christ,” the cardinals wrote. “However, if health care facilities are to be places where the twin pillars of faith and science stand together, then these facilities and their workers must not be coerced by the government to violate their consciences.”
“Does objecting to performing gender transition procedures — but welcoming patients who identify as transgender — constitute discrimination? Of course not. The focus of such an objection is completely on the procedure, not the patient,” they wrote. “Prohibiting the removal of a healthy, functioning organ is not discrimination, provided that the same determination would be made for anyone of any sex or gender, which is true at Catholic hospitals.”
The cardinals said that “People of many faiths, or of no faith yet with deep personal convictions, may find these procedures profoundly troubling, and their constitutional rights deserve to be respected. In a society that protects the free exercise of religion, religious health care providers cannot be expected to violate the teachings of their religion as a condition of continuing their care, and religious health care workers cannot be expected to violate their consciences as a condition of employment.”
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