The American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds), the Catholic Medical Association (CMA), and an OB-GYN doctor who specializes in the care of adolescents are represented by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) attorneys in a lawsuit challenging a Biden administration mandate that requires doctors to perform gender transition procedures on any patient, including a child, even if the procedure violates a doctor’s medical judgment or religious beliefs.
ADF attorneys filed suit in federal court Thursday against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for its reinterpretation of the Affordable Care Act, which prohibits sex discrimination, to include gender identity and thus require gender transition interventions, services, surgeries, and drugs on demand, even for children, no matter a doctor’s medical judgment, religious beliefs, or conscientious objection.
Dr. Michelle Cretella, Executive Director of ACPeds stated, “To equate sex with gender identity as if children may be born in the wrong body sacrifices science and our children on the altar of political correctness. Sex is a medically significant innate and immutable binary trait that is determined by genes at fertilization. No drugs or surgeries can change a person’s sex, but so-called gender transition interventions do cause irreversible damage, especially to youth.”
Dr. Quentin L. Van Meter, President of ACPeds and a pediatric endocrinologist added, “Puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones combined will sterilize many youth and cause them to develop serious chronic illnesses such as diabetes, heart disease, stroke and cancers that they otherwise would have never experienced.” He also emphasized that the international standard of care for youth is psychotherapeutic exploration with treatment aimed at underlying causative factors.
“Biden’s Health and Human Services department is grossly overreaching its authority and, in so doing, putting children’s psychological and physical health in great peril. Our clients are rightfully objecting on medical, ethical, religious, and conscientious grounds to a one-size-fits-all government mandate to provide gender-transition procedures,” said ADF Senior Counsel Ryan Bangert.
“To force doctors to engage in experimental medicine that poses a risk to patients—or face huge financial penalties, withdrawal of federal funding, or removal of their ability to practice medicine—is an extreme violation of doctors’ constitutional rights and certainly not in the best interest of the patients they serve,” said ADF Senior Counsel Julie Marie Blake.
The two medical associations filing suit in American College of Pediatricians v. Becerra represent 3,000 physicians and health professionals, including in Tennessee. The case is filed with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
