(LifeSiteNews) — Catholic hospitals are prohibited from assisting in the chemical and surgical mutilation of gender-confused children and adults, according to a recent policy passed by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).
The USCCB passed the resolution on Wednesday during its meeting in Baltimore. However, it is up to each bishop to put the prohibitions in place, according to the Associated Press.
Some nominally Catholic hospitals have been caught assisting in the surgical or chemical mutilation of gender-confused individuals, such as Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage.
The USCCB, though not unanimously, has opposed permanently damaging drugs and surgeries that can render people infertile in the pursuit of looking like the opposite sex.
The bishops’ conference submitted an amicus brief in the recent U.S. v. Skrmetti case that affirmed that states can protect minors from transgender procedures.
The bishops wrote:
[T]ransgender body manipulation is not a moral medical intervention for individuals suffering from gender dysphoria because the aim of this [procedure] is neither to repair a defect in the body nor to sacrifice a part of the body for the welfare of the whole body. These interventions “are intended to transform the body so as to make it take on as much as possible the form of the opposite sex, contrary to the natural form of the body.”
Another problem with a “sex change” operation according to the brief is that it “sacrifices healthy bodily functions and organs for reasons other than to serve the body as a whole,” LifeSiteNews previously reported. But morally justified medical interventions must be undertaken only while respecting the “sexual differentiation” between men and women and not attack it wholesale.
The USCCB also released a note in 2023 about the moral issues surrounding transgender drugs and surgeries.
While major medical organizations have been overtaken by radically pro-transgender doctors, a growing body of evidence, including testimony from formerly gender-confused individuals, demonstrate that the drugs and surgeries are seriously harmful. Biology also shows that it is not possible for someone to change his or her sex.
Dr. Quentin Van Meter, president of the American College of Pediatricians (not to be confused with the American Academy of Pediatricians), previously called puberty blockers “child abuse.”
“If you are interrupting [physical maturation] with clearly the intent of never having it go the direction that nature intended, with biological males ending up as adult males and biological females ending up as adult females, if you interrupt that, you are basically setting up a disease state,” Van Meter told LifeSiteNews in 2021.
“And then on top of that, the purpose is clearly in the vast majority of kids that get on puberty blockers, they will not be allowed to go through their own natural puberty. They will be held back and then given cross-sex hormones,” he said.
There is also recognition among some social scientists that the increase in transgender identification is largely driven by peer pressure, amounting to a “social contagion.”