(Daily Caller News Foundation) — Medical professionals are suing President Joe Biden’s administration over a mandate requiring doctors to perform transgender surgeries in violation of their religious beliefs or medical judgment.
Represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, the American College of Pediatricians, the Catholic Medical Association, and an OB-GYN doctor specializing in adolescent care filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee at Chattanooga Thursday against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
“The law and the medical profession have long recognized and respected the biological differences between boys and girls and the unique needs they each present in health care. Forcing doctors to prescribe transition hormones for 13-year-olds or perform life-altering surgeries on adolescents is unlawful, unethical, and dangerous,” ADF Senior Counsel Ryan Bangert said in a statement.
“President Biden’s Health and Human Services department is grossly overreaching its authority and, in so doing, putting children’s psychological and physical health in danger,” Bangert said. “Our clients are rightfully objecting on medical, ethical, religious, and conscientious grounds to this unlawful government mandate to provide gender-transition procedures.”
The two medical associations represent 3,000 doctors and health care professionals, ADF said in a press release.
“Doctors should never be forced to perform a controversial and often medically dangerous procedure that goes against their best judgment, their conscience, or their religion, especially when it involves vulnerable children experiencing mental and emotional confusion,” ADF Senior Counsel Julie Marie Blake said in a statement.
“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,” Blake continued.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Mary Margaret Olohan
Mary Margaret Olohan is a reporter for The Daily Signal.
