U.S. Catholic bishops have voted to bar Catholic hospitals from providing transgender patients with gender-affirming care, including hormones and surgical procedures.
The vote, taken last week during the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ plenary assembly in Baltimore, updates the “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services,” the Church’s rulebook governing medical procedures it deems immoral.
The directives spell out how Catholic-affiliated hospitals and staff should respond to medical situations that may clash with personal religious beliefs or Church teaching on issues like end-of-life care, contraception, abortion, or gender identity.
Most Catholic institutions already avoided gender-affirming treatments, but until now there was no formal policy explicitly barring them. The update makes that prohibition official, folding in 2023 guidelines urging Catholic hospitals to avoid gender-affirming care, “whether surgical or chemical,” that supports a gender transition.
More than 1 in 7 U.S. patients receive care at Catholic hospitals, according to the Catholic Health Association. Yet many of these hospitals don’t clearly disclose their religious affiliation. In rural areas where a Catholic facility may be the only option, patients — including non-Catholics — can find their care restricted by Church teaching.
On transgender identity — which the Church views as conflicting with its teachings on binary sex and immutable biological identity — some bishops pushed for an even firmer stance against what they call “gender ideology,” according to The Hill.
Under the updated directives, Catholic hospitals “must not provide or permit medical interventions, whether surgical, hormonal, or genetic, that aim not to restore but rather to alter the fundamental order of the human body in its form or function,” including procedures that “aim to transform sexual characteristics… into those of the opposite sex (or to nullify sexual characteristics).”
But the guidelines also state that Catholic health care services and providers “must employ all appropriate resources to mitigate the suffering of those who experience gender incongruence or gender dysphoria” and to provide any health-related treatments they might need, so long as they “respect the fundamental order of the human body.”
They also outline limited exceptions for situations where a patient’s life or health is at risk. For example, while Catholic hospitals generally avoid performing elective hysterectomies, such as those sought for gender transition, they do permit emergency hysterectomies when necessary to save a patient’s life.
The directives prohibit Catholic hospital staff from proactively referring patients for prohibited procedures to another hospital or medical professional willing to perform such procedures. However, if a patient independently requests a transfer, staff “should facilitate a safe transfer of care in compliance with legal and professional requirements while avoiding immoral cooperation.”
The Catholic Health Association, which represents more than 600 hospitals and other care facilities, thanked the bishops for incorporating its feedback, reports NPR. It also pledged to treat transgender patients for all health needs except those tied to supporting a transition.
As reported by The 19th, the 2023 guidelines discouraged Catholic practitioners from offering many reproductive or gender-affirming treatments, but some doctors previously found workarounds — for example, prescribing birth control to treat conditions like severe acne or painful periods.
With those workarounds now barred, providers at Catholic hospitals may face a choice between violating Church edicts or neglecting their patients’ needs. The impact may be less pronounced in conservative regions — where transgender people already rely on alternative providers — and far greater in liberal-leaning states that have enacted protections for reproductive and gender-affirming care.
“The group that worries me the most are patients getting care from large Catholic systems in which, up until now, their LGBTQ health policy has been more liberal,” Debra Stulberg, chair of family medicine at the University of Chicago, told The 19th. “For those clinicians to now be told you can no longer provide gender-affirming care to trans people is going to affect care for a lot of people.”
In a historic move, Michael J. O'Loughlin, an award-winning journalist and gay man, has been named executive editor of the National Catholic Reporter, the nation's leading independent Catholic news organization.
A New England-based journalist, O'Loughlin has amassed more than 15 years of experience covering religion as a reporter, editor, podcast host, and author. For the past nine years, he has worked at America Media, the Jesuit news and commentary outlet, serving seven years as national correspondent and most recently as founding executive director of Outreach, an LGBTQ Catholic news site.
Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has pledged to make New York City a sanctuary city for transgender people.
In a new campaign ad honoring Latina trans activist Sylvia Rivera -- a pioneering figure in the early LGBTQ rights movement -- Mamdani sits at a desk near the Christopher Street Pier in Greenwich Village, recounting Rivera’s life and the pier’s significance as a haven for LGBTQ people in the city.
As photos and video clips of Rivera and other activists flash across the screen, Mamdani recounts her legacy of activism -- from her role in early gay and trans rights demonstrations to founding Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, which provided food and shelter for homeless trans people, and her push for LGBTQ-inclusive non-discrimination laws.
Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic nominee for Virginia governor, has released a new ad attacking her Republican rival, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, for claiming during a recent debate that firing someone for being gay -- or for opposing same-sex marriage -- does not amount to "discrimination."
Titled "That's Not Discrimination," the ad focuses on Earle-Sears' long record of opposing LGBTQ rights throughout her two-decade political career.
It mixes clips from Earle-Sears' contentious debate with Spanberger at Norfolk State University with a news report about how Earle-Sears penned a handwritten note on a bill she was required to sign -- a procedural duty of her role as Virginia's lieutenant governor and presiding officer of the Senate -- expressing her moral opposition to same-sex marriage.
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