Seton Medical Center in Daly City, California has been sued by a person claiming discrimination for being denied breast enlargement surgery following a transgender operation. The hospital, run by the Daughters of Charity, says the requested surgery violates Catholic teaching.
Catholic League president Bill Donohue commented as follows:
“Catholic hospitals are not required to perform abortions, and neither should they be forced to perform transgender operations. There are some medical procedures that run counter to Catholic moral teaching, and they include direct euthanasia, embryonic stem cell experimentation and cloning. If Catholic hospitals are denied the right to proscribe such operations, it effectively nullifies their right to remain Catholic.
“Significantly, the IRS ruled in 2005 that a woman’s transsexual sex reassignment surgery is not allowed as a deductible medical expense. Moreover, consider what Johns Hopkins professor of psychiatry Paul McHugh has concluded: ‘I have witnessed a great deal of damage from sex-reassignment.’ In other words, the government sees the requested surgery as elective in nature and experts like McHugh see it as destructive. Why, then, should Catholic hospitals be forced to cooperate with this objectionable venture?
“There are other hospitals that would gladly perform breast augmentation on a transgender person—especially in the San Francisco area—and the plaintiff knows it. What this case represents is nothing short of vengeance against a Catholic hospital simply because it practices Catholicism. Such intolerance, and such complete disdain for the diversity that Catholic institutions offer, has no legitimate place in our society.”
