The US Catholic Bishops have issued a new doctrinal note that bans gender surgeries and medical interventions such as puberty blockers.
The doctrinal note is called “DOCTRINAL NOTE ON THE MORAL LIMITS TO TECHNOLOGICAL MANIPULATION OF THE HUMAN BODY” and forbids any such medical intervention that doesn’t respect the natural order of the human person.
Here’s more from Breitbart:
The United States Catholic Bishops have issued guidelines banning surgical and chemical intervention aimed at exchanging “the sex characteristics of a patient’s body for those of the opposite sex.”
In a March 20 “Doctrinal Note,” the bishops rule out certain forms of medical interventions in Catholic healthcare institutions such as puberty blockers and sex reassignment surgery, insisting that the do not promote the authentic good of the human person but are, in fact, injurious.
“Catholic health care services must not perform interventions, whether surgical or chemical, that aim to transform the sexual characteristics of a human body into those of the opposite sex or take part in the development of such procedures,” they declare.
While modern technology offers important interventions that have led to the cure of many maladies and promises for more, the bishops write, it also “produces interventions that are injurious to the true flourishing of the human person.”
The interventions advocated by many as treatments for “gender dysphoria” or “gender incongruence” do not respect “the fundamental order of the human person as an intrinsic unity of body and soul, with a body that is sexually differentiated,” the doctrinal note states, and thus Catholic healthcare services must not perform them.
It’s sad that we are at a point in society that there would be need for this but I’m very glad the USCCB stepped up and made clear these types of disordered medical interventions are to be banned in Catholic heath care.
I’m sure this will lead to lawsuits eventually, just as the Obama administration sued the Little Sisters of the Poor over their contraception mandate.
You can read the full 14 page doctrinal note here for more info on this.