WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) – A legal group that assists Catholic employers said it fears President Joe Biden’s administration, through the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), could issue new regulations this month that would require health plans to pay for abortion and procedures for gender-confused individuals.
The Catholic Benefits Association (CBA) said a leftist group called the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights has been working with the administration to craft regulations “to include surgical abortion, cross-sex hormones, gender-transition surgeries, gender-affirming cosmetic surgeries and voice modification — along with a host of expanded services dealing with fertility treatments, contraception, abortifacients and sterilizations,” Crux reported.
“The memo prepared by the Leadership Conference provides the best forecast of what the new regulation will say,” attorney Martin Nussbaum, a legal advisor to CBA, told Crux for an April 5 article. “We don’t know for sure what the regulation will say but there is good reason to believe that it will be quite similar to the memo signed on by 30 sexual rights activist groups including Planned Parenthood.”
CBA first heard of the possibility of new regulations after due to a reference in a court filing last year.
There would be no religious exemptions to the rule. “The forthcoming (HHS) regulation presents an existential threat to Catholic health care because the penalties to noncompliance will likely include private enforcement, class-action lawsuits, ‘qui tam’ actions, which is where an individual can file a lawsuit as if he or she were the United States itself,” Nussbaum said. “The penalties may also include loss of Medicare and Medicaid funding and even imprisonment for noncomplying health care executives.”
This would not be the first time the Biden administration has sought to push so-called “gender-affirming care” as necessary healthcare.
HHS released on March 31 two documents that endorsed the surgical and chemical mutilation of gender-confused children. “Providing gender-affirming care is neither child maltreatment nor malpractice,” one document claims. “There is no scientifically sound research showing negative impacts from providing gender-affirming care,” it continued, contradicting numerous experts.
The administration also tried to require Christian healthcare facilities to perform “sex-change” operations starting in May 2021, but federal courts have blocked the regulation and a similar one issued while President Obama was in office.
The Biden administration also threatened states like Alabama that have passed laws prohibiting medical professionals from mutilating kids and said they have been “put on notice.”
“Alabama’s lawmakers and other legislators who are contemplating these discriminatory bills have been put on notice by the Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services that such legislation could violate the Constitution and federal law,” Press Secretary Jen Psaki said prior to Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signing the legislation.