by Eric Lendrum
Under the Biden Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has eliminated religious conscience exemptions for doctors who are forced to perform gender-alteration surgeries, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
The move represents yet another crucial and widely-popular policy that was first enacted by President Donald Trump, only for Biden to reverse it. HHS announced on Monday that to overturn this policy, it would be expanding its definition of sex discrimination so that sexual preference and “gender orientation” would be included among identities that could be considered discriminated against by such a policy.
HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra released a statement in which he claimed that “people have a right not to be discriminated against on the basis of sex and receive equal treatment under the law, no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation. That’s why today HHS announced it will act on related reports of discrimination.”
“Gender identity” refers to the pseudo-scientific belief, adopted by the Left in recent years, which falsely claims that there are more than two genders, and also incorrectly believes that it is possible for someone to change their gender. Since Biden seized power in January, multiple Republican-led state legislatures have proposed or voted on various bills to crack down on efforts by the federal government to force “transgenderism” on public schools and healthcare systems. Arkansas became the first state to outright ban the practice of gender-altering surgeries for minors, while others have banned so-called “transgender” athletes from competing in sports of the opposite gender.
Far-left groups have claimed that such surgeries are “life-saving,” even though studies have shown that many people who receive such procedures often suffer with regret, and the rates of suicides hardly change between those who alter their bodies and those who don’t. Chase Strangio, a spokesman for the far-left American Civil Liberties Union, falsely claimed that “health care for transgender youth [is] under attack by state legislatures,” and thus praised Biden’s decision to “protect LGBTQ people from discrimination in health care.”
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Eric Lendrum reports for American Greatness.
