The number of doctors and medical professionals filing legal action against the Biden administration over its Transgender Mandate continues to grow. The directive would force doctors to perform gender-transitioning procedures on patients even if the procedure violates a doctor’s medical judgment or religious beliefs.
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) attorneys, representing 3,000 doctors and medical professionals from the American College of Pediatricians, Catholic Medical Associates, and an OB-GYN doctor who specializes in caring for adolescents, are challenging the mandate in a lawsuit filed last week with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee at Chattanooga. The suit cites medical professionals objecting to performing such procedures on any patient, especially children.
“The law and the medical profession have long recognized and respected the biological differences between boys and girls and the unique needs they each present in health care,” said ADF Senior Counsel Ryan Bangert. “Forcing doctors to prescribe transition hormones for 13-year-olds or perform life-altering surgeries on adolescents is unlawful, unethical, and dangerous.”
The lawsuit challenges the right of the federal government to force doctors to perform gender transition surgeries, advise patients to take puberty blockers, and document details about patients based on their preferred gender identity.
“President Biden’s Health and Human Services department is grossly overreaching its authority and, in so doing, putting children’s psychological and physical health in danger,” Bangert added. “Our clients are rightfully objecting on medical, ethical, religious, and conscientious grounds to this unlawful government mandate to provide gender-transition procedures.”
ADF Senior Counsel Julie Marie Blake noted the federal government shouldn’t be telling doctors what they should do in regards to a patient’s health.
“Doctors should never be forced to perform a controversial and often medically dangerous procedure that goes against their best judgment, their conscience, or their religion, especially when it involves vulnerable children experiencing mental and emotional confusion,” Blake said.
“To force doctors to engage in experimental medicine that poses a risk to patients—or face huge financial penalties, withdrawal of federal funding, or removal of their ability to practice medicine—is an extreme violation of doctors’ constitutional rights and certainly not in the best interest of the patients they serve,” she added.
CBN News previously reported that a federal court in North Dakota struck down the “Transgender Mandate” earlier this year.
According to Becket Law, the mandate was issued in 2016 under the Obama administration, forcing members of the healthcare community to violate their medical judgment and religious beliefs.
In Nov. of 2016, Becket had filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Sisters of Mercy and several religious organizations against the provision of the Affordable Care Act.
The ruling was put on hold and in 2019 another federal court in Texas struck it down. In June of 2020, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued another directive but as CBN News reported last month, a federal court in Texas blocked the administration from enforcing the policy.
HD Editor’s Note: Why Is This News Biblically Relevant?
Franklin Graham in response to the legal action, urged people to pray for the outcome of the case, that both religious freedom and “common sense will prevail”:
I hope they win—for all of us! 3,000 physicians and healthcare professionals filed a lawsuit against President Joe Biden’s Transgender Mandate that forces them to participate in gender-transition procedures even if it is against their best judgment, their conscience, or their religious beliefs. The Alliance Defending Freedom attorney for the group said that the Department of Health and Human Services was “grossly overreaching its authority” by issuing this mandate. He also said, “Forcing doctors to prescribe transition hormones for 13-year-olds or perform life-altering surgeries on adolescents is unlawful, unethical, and dangerous.” I totally agree. Pray for the outcome of this important case, that our religious freedoms—and common sense—will prevail.
