“U.S. Catholic bishops voted Wednesday to make official a ban on gender-affirming care for transgender patients at Catholic hospitals,” reports Yahoo News:
The step formalizes a years-long process for the U.S. church to address transgender health care.
From a Baltimore hotel ballroom, the bishops overwhelmingly approved revisions to their ethical and religious directives that guide the nation’s thousands of Catholic health care institutions and providers.
More than one in seven patients in the U.S. are treated each day at Catholic hospitals, according to the Catholic Health Association. Catholic hospitals are the only medical center in some communities.
“Gender-affirming care” routinely results in permanent and disfiguring changes. The University of Michigan recently halted transgender treatments for minors.
“Gender-affirming care” includes things like puberty blockers and top surgery. The number of “top surgeries” conducted on minors rose by 389% from 2016 to 2019. Between 2018 and 2023, states spent tens of million of dollars on “gender transition services” for kids — including puberty blockers, hormones, and sex-change surgeries.
As health and science reporter Benjamin Ryan noted, medical authorities in “UK, Sweden, Finland, and now Norway as well,” have recommended against “prescribing puberty blockers and hormones to trans-identifying minors.” Yet, in America, gender clinics have given teenagers double mastectomies and other sex-change operations in many states. The Biden administration promoted puberty blockers, even though the FDA said puberty blockers can cause brain swelling and permanent vision loss.
A gender transition can result in a lifetime of pain, discomfort, and medications, such as hormone therapy. As Britain’s National Health Service explains, hormones “need to be taken for the rest of your life, even if you have gender surgery.” An FDA official who supported giving minors puberty blockers conceded that they actually increase suicidality. Indeed, the “FDA knew ‘gender affirming’ puberty blockers increase ‘suicidality’ in 2017,” says Just the News.
95% of young transgender people on testosterone develop pelvic floor dysfunction; most have bowel issues and sexual dysfunction. As the Telegraph reported, “Around 87 per cent…had urinary symptoms such as incontinence, frequent toilet visits and bed-wetting, while 74 per cent had bowel issues including constipation or being unable to hold stools or wind in. Some 53 per cent suffered from sexual dysfunction…Almost half had an ‘orgasm disorder’, while a quarter suffered from pain during sexual intercourse.”
To overcome parents’ natural reluctance to subject their kids to this suffering, doctors who do sex changes often tell parents that they need to gender transition their kid to keep them from committing suicide, even though this isn’t true. One of America’s most prominent gender doctors, “Dr. Olson-Kennedy disclosed to how she speaks with parents of gender dysphoric patients: ‘We often ask parents, “Would you rather have a dead son than a live daughter?”'”
But such suicide claims are false and misleading. The transgender lawyer challenging Tennessee’s ban on certain transgender treatments for minors, Chase Strangio, admitted to the Supreme Court that “completed suicide is thankfully and admittedly rare” among transgender youth, even those not given gender-affirming treatment, and that “there is no evidence…that this treatment reduces completed suicide.”
One study found that sex changes massively increase suicide risks, rather than reducing them. “Gender-affirming surgery is significantly associated with elevated suicide attempt “risks,” according to that study.
