The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has overwhelmingly voted to ban all gender-transition interventions in Catholic health care facilities, explicitly prohibiting puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and genital or cosmetic surgeries intended to affirm a transgender identity.
Meeting in Baltimore this week, the bishops approved revisions to the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services by a vote of 247-3, with three abstentions. The updated directives declare that medical procedures and treatments which “have as their purpose or effect the change of a person’s sex” are morally impermissible and may not be performed in the nation’s more than 600 Catholic hospitals.
The new language states that a person’s sex is an “immutable biological reality” established at conception and that Catholic institutions must not cooperate in efforts to “alter or mutilate” healthy organs to conform to gender identity. It also bars Catholic hospitals from providing referrals for such procedures elsewhere.The directive reinforces longstanding Church teaching on the unity of body and soul while responding to mounting pressure on Catholic medical centers to perform or facilitate chemical and surgical transitions, especially for minors.
The bishops cited the growing body of evidence showing serious health risks and high regret rates associated with these interventions.The vote marks the strongest institutional stand yet by the American hierarchy against the transgender medical complex, ensuring that the country’s largest non-profit health care network—one in six hospital beds nationwide—will remain closed to gender-transition treatments.
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