U.S. Catholic Bishops Vote to Ban Sex Changes at Catholic Hospitals

U.S. Catholic bishops voted on Wednesday to officially prohibit Catholic hospitals from offering sex change drugs and surgeries to transgender-identifying patients.

The bishops gathered in Baltimore, Maryland, and “overwhelmingly approved revisions to their directives for the thousands of Catholic healthcare institutions and providers in the country, formalizing a yearslong process for the U.S. church to address” sex changes for transgender-identifying individuals, Fox News reported.

“Bishops will have autonomy in putting the new directives into law for their dioceses,” according to the report.

Most Catholic hospitals already declined to offer sex change drugs and surgeries. More than one in seven patients in the United States receive care each day at Catholic Hospitals, according to the Catholic Health Association.

Bishop Robert Barron of Minnesota’s Winona-Rochester diocese said during the public discussion of the directives that, “with regard to the gender ideology, I think it’s very important the church makes a strong statement here.”

The Catholic Health Association thanked the bishops for including a lot of its feedback and said Catholic hospitals “will continue to welcome those who seek medical care from us and identify as transgender.”

“We will continue to treat these individuals with dignity and respect, which is consistent with Catholic social teaching and our moral obligation to serve everyone, particularly those who are marginalized,” the association said in a statement.

The new directives include earlier instructions on gender identity from the Vatican in 2024 and U.S. bishops in 2023, according to the report.

Bishops stated in their 2023 doctrinal note called “Moral Limits to the Technological Manipulation of the Human Body” that “Catholic health care services must not perform interventions, whether surgical or chemical, that aim to transform the sexual characteristics of a human body into those of the opposite sex, or take part in the development of such procedures.”

Some progressive Catholics and other left-leaning religious denominations were less than pleased with Wednesday’s vote.

“Catholic teaching upholds the invaluable dignity of every human life, and for many trans people, gender-affirming care is what makes life livable,” claimed Michael Sennett, a woman who identifies as a man who is active in his Massachusetts parish and serves on the board of New Ways Ministry, an organization that promotes LGBTQ+ inclusion in the Catholic Church.