Critics say US bishops' new statement on transgender health care lacks science

[NullTuples]

The U.S. Catholic bishops are one of the powerhouses behind the Republican drive to block transgender healthcare across the nation. Yesterday they issued a document yesterday rejecting all gender-affirming medical treatments for transgender individuals and reasserting that such procedures must not be performed by Catholic providers.

"Any technological intervention that does not accord with the fundamental order of the human person as a unity of body and soul, including the sexual difference inscribed in the body, ultimately does not help but, rather, harms the human person," wrote members of the bishops' Committee on Doctrine in a March 20 doctrinal note titled "On the Moral Limits to Technological Manipulation of the Human Body."

Since 2019, when the Vatican Congregation for Catholic Education published "Male and Female He Created Them," which addresses "gender theory" and Catholic education, many anticipated an authoritative text from the U.S. bishops on gender identity. Yet the new doctrinal note is circumscribed; it principally covers medical interventions for people with "gender dysphoria" and emphasizes "particular care should be taken to protect children and adolescents."

Blocking LGBTQ healthcare and abortions are the primary reasons the Catholic church now controls doctors' decisions in 1 out of 6 hospitals in the USA.

This goes way beyond the "religous liberty" of a business or nonprofit. Even here in California, all major hospitals in the top third of the state are Catholic owned or affiliated, and prohibit such care. Across the nation for the last 20 years, they focused on buying or buying into isolated hospitals and regional trauma centers for the stated purpose of being able to control the healthcare provided based on the Church's religious dogma. They have monopolies in many regions around the country.

https://www.ncronline.org/news/critics-say-us-bishops-new-statement-transgender-health-care-lacks-sound-science-and-trans

[elleng]

1. ;-(

[Oneironaut]

2. "We protect kids by molesting them and then hiding the evidence!" - The Catholic Church

As usual, one of the biggest threats towards kids as an organization is projecting onto people who are one of the lowest threats. If I had a child, I would trust 100 drag queens over some crusty, sexually-frustrated old man in a funny cult hat.

[Ruby Zee]

3. Stay away from Catholic hospitals and healthcare...

If you have options. Providence is a big presence where I live, but I have other options not affiliated with a religion. We also have Lutheran hospitals and healthcare (Legacy), but I don't know much about them. Why are religions even involved in health care?

[Mad_Machine76]

4. Good question.

I suppose it could have something to do with tending to the sick and helping heal them but their bigotry shouldn’t be part of it.

[Biophilic]

5. Money, lots of money.

At least where I used to live it did start with an order of caring nuns, but gradually got bigger and bigger and more and more profitable. Now the profit runs the show. Once again the bean counters took over and won.

[Hekate]

10. Theologically, it's because healing the sick was part of Jesus' ministry. There's always been...

…that side. Always.

Churches change over centuries, just as medicine and society do. They’ve all changed, especially in the 20th century.

In America, you run into trouble if you break secular law — other than that, be whatever you want. Unfortunately, protections for women’s reproductive health care as a whole fall in to a very wobbly area, even before Roe was overturned.

As secular hospitals have folded in rural areas, many have been bought up by the Church. This has been going on for over 20 years. They did not create the economics of running hospitals, but the have the means, motive, and opportunity to move in to unserved areas. It’s a ministry for them, and a blessing — to 1/2 the people in the region.

[NullTuples]

16. They control every major hospital in the northern third of California.

But many of those acquisitions & partnerships weren't to save hospitals that otherwise would've failed. For decades they specifically targeted hospitals across the country that were either regional trauma centers or simply the only major hospital in a large geographic area. Not to stop trans health care, but to control what was called, "women's reproductive care". In other words, to remove women's choices when it came to what to do with their own bodies when it came to anything having to do with reproduction.

They now control 1 in 6 hospitals in America, and that was before Dobbs took down Roe. One has to wonder if things would've been different if politicians could have been convinced to more tightly regulate the care that hospital businesses - even church owned ones - have to provide to their patients who often have no other choices.

[Hekate]

19. As everyone here knows by now, I am beyond outraged by what is going on. MY religious freedom...

… is being severely infringed upon, up to and including being outlawed in red states.

[Hekate]

11. Look at places like Idaho and Texas. What are people supposed to do?

[icymist]

17. There is no longer a choice out on Kitsap peninsula in Western Washington State

There's hardly any choice at in in Seattle since the Franciscans and Provenance have been buying up or into all the hospitals here. I objected to what the Catholic Church was doing to our healthcare and was simply told to STFU and go somewhere else.

Religious dogma does not belong in healthcare. Boards that set hospital policy should be made up of doctors, not bishops.

[icymist]

23. Some information for you:

Catholic hospitals and health systems receive nearly $48 billion of taxpayer dollars each year, in the form of Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements, while seeking expansion of government permission to use religious doctrine to restrict care.

https://communitycatalyst.org/resource/bigger-and-bigger-the-growth-of-catholic-health-systems/

[Sky Jewels]

6. I can't say what I want to say about the Catholic Church/Vatican because I'm on thin ice already.

(I'll never understand why criticisms of oppressive right wing women-hating institutions like the RCC provoke warnings from the PTB on this liberal website and also Daily Kos, but there you have it.)

Let me just say that I would not offer a positive assessment.

[keep_left]

9. A really good author (Betty Clermont) got banned from Kos for her outspokenness about the...

"leadership" of the Church. It was their loss, as not long afterward, Clermont published an exposé of sorts, The Neo-Catholics: Implementing Christian Nationalism In America. Along with Damon Linker's The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege, it is an important look at the path on which the country has been for at least two decades.

https://www.amazon.com/Neo-Catholics-Implementing-Christian-Nationalism-America/dp/0932863639/
https://www.amazon.com/Theocons-Secular-America-Under-Siege/dp/1400096855

[Sky Jewels]

13. Thank you.

I'll look into that. The Opus Dei extremists on SCOTUS are the reason U.S. women are now third-class citizens, after men and fetuses.

People who criticize religions often get called "bigots" and "haters" by people who don't seem to care at all about the bigotry, misogyny, and anti-gay hate promulgated by their "faiths."

[keep_left]

25. You're welcome. And I don't consider anyone a "hater" who honestly criticizes *any* religion...

...for one or another repressive or oppressive inclination. I have noticed the same knee-jerk tendency here that you have described, starting in the middle Obama years and continuing to the present day.

There are other issues as well. I have seen posts that were taken down for good cause ( e.g. anti-union posts promoting "freeloading" ) mysteriously reinstated weeks later with no explanation. Promoting "freeloading" goes directly against the Democratic Party platform. Anti-labor attitudes and the usual American extreme radical individualism have really crept in over the past few years. It's why some of us have gravitated to the "harder" left (e.g. shows like Chapo Trap House, and of course Mike Malloy). Kos just doesn't hold my interest much anymore, especially after what happened to Betty Clermont.

[NullTuples]

15. Excellent books everyone to the left of the Republican Party should read.

[keep_left]

24. Yes, everyone here should read at least one of the two, preferably the Clermont book, ...

...though the one by Linker is really good as well. Linker is a somewhat of a social conservative (he is Catholic and was an editor at First Things, a Catholic radtrad journal). In general, Clermont is better at polemical broadsides, but Linker's story of how he left First Things is worth the price of his book--it's quite dramatic.

[Hekate]

7. I like where the author says the "the document lacks humility." Reminds me of Alito...

The document lacks humility "in the face of the stories that transgender people tell about who they are as well as in the face of the emerging scientific and medical discussions around gender identity," said Ford, adding there "is still learning on both fronts, and learning takes time."

"We should be especially humble in our use of words like 'nature' and 'natural order,' especially since these have been used in the past to justify a number of moral atrocities, such as slavery," he said.

Biological sex "is not as simple as we learn in high school," said Michael Sennett, a transgender Catholic who works for a parish in the Boston Archdiocese. "The bishops who wrote this document may be dismayed to learn that biological sex is not necessarily binary — chromosomes and sex characteristics do not always line up."
https://www.ncronline.org/news/critics-say-us-bishops-new-statement-transgender-health-care-lacks-sound-science-and-trans

[Midnight Writer]

8. Gee, religious leaders reject science in favor of judgmental bigotry?

[blue neen]

12. Of course.

They want all of the power and all of the control including healthcare.

[lame54]

14. Duh. His whole profession lacks science

[NowsTheTime]

18. Boston Legal episode :"Smile" Feb 2006 about Catholic Hospital refuse rape victim morning after pill

I thought this issue was surreal compared to today........but the point is when this was done 2006!

[Hekate]

20. As far as I know, that has always been the case in Catholic hospitals & Dubya enshrined it in law...

Last edited Tue Mar 21, 2023, 11:49 PM - Edit history (1)

A woman or girl who is assaulted and taken to a Catholic hospital can expect considerate and healing care. But but no morning after pill and no Plan B. Just Church doctrine, amen.

George Dubya Bush got something into the secular law called the “conscience clause,” which entitles any pharmacist, pharmacy clerk, doctor, nurse, hospital, etc. to refuse to distribute or sell any contraceptive or abortifacient if it offends their personal morals. That certainly covers the religious institutions, but also anyone who works outside them who finds their morals offended by women’s health care.

By the way, damn Dubya to Hell.

[icymist]

21. Opinion I don't want your god in charge of my health care (WaPo related)

Let’s say a patient is considering a tubal ligation after a planned Caesarean section because she doesn’t want to get pregnant again. Here are some factors that pertain to that decision: her vision of her reproductive future, her doctor’s advice, state regulations, the recommendations of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the latest scientific research.

Here are some factors that, for most patients, do not pertain: “God’s purposes,” “God’s will,” “the truth that life is a precious gift from God.”
But if our hypothetical patient happens to be in a Catholic hospital, those factors — precisely those words — will be controlling the decision, whether or not she or her doctor believes in God’s plan. It’s plainly spelled out in the ethical directives of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops: “Direct sterilization of either men or women, whether permanent or temporary, is not permitted in a Catholic health care institution.” She won’t get the operation no matter how medically safe and legal it is, no matter what she wants.

Clearly, she should have picked a different hospital. But with the expansion of Catholic health systems all over the country, that might not be an option. A 2020 report by Community Catalyst, a nonprofit health advocacy group, found that four of the 10 largest health systems in the country were Catholic. The Catholic Health Association says that Catholic facilities now account for more than 1 in 7 U.S. hospital patients.

[...]That would mean no tubal ligations for contraceptive purposes. It would also mean no abortions, vasectomies, IUDs or in vitro fertilization. It would most likely constrain choices in end-of-life care and end gender-affirming care.

No Paywall
https://archive.ph/QBWvP

[icymist]

22. More reasons why merging religions with healthcare is a bad idea:

Let’s be clear why this creates an irreconcilable conflict of interest. A medical system with religious authorities and corporations at the top means the following:

-Patients may be kept in ignorance about the full range of medically appropriate treatments if some of these are judged to violate the theology of the provider or institution.
-Providers don’t get continuing education about medical advances that a religious hierarchy disapproves.
-Pharmacies don’t stock drugs and devices that religious owners disapprove.
-Public dollars are used to promote specific religious beliefs and the notion that “faith” is a reasonable way of determining what medical care should be provided.
-A religious medical culture denies the very methods of science: evidence, hypothesis testing, and accountability.
-Religious institutions or individual believers get a religious veto over the deeply personal medical decisions of individual patients.
-Couples are denied the means to time their childbearing, which leaves more families mired in poverty.
-Women are denied miscarriage management or termination of pregnancy gone wrong.
-Less prenatal diagnosis means a greater percent of children born with birth defects.
-Families are stripped of decision making power after tragic accidents because “every life is sacred.”
-Dead women can be kept on life support as human incubators.
-Families absorb the cost of health treatments that are excluded from insurance by religiously motivated employers.
-Religious health professionals demand to keep their jobs without fully doing their jobs.
-Religious allied health professionals second guess doctors’ orders and patient requests.
-A powerful “religious freedom” lobby undermines anti-discrimination laws that protect queers and females employed in healthcare (and elsewhere).
-A powerful “religious freedom” lobby advocates exemptions to living wage laws and worker rights.
-Public health costs soar as a consequence of religious meddling in end of life and beginning of life decisions.
-Suffering unto death aka “redemptive suffering” becomes the only available option for people who would prefer to manage their own process and die with dignity.

https://valerietarico.com/2014/02/20/its-time-for-religion-to-get-out-of-the-healthcare-business/