The United States bishops have issued new guidance that Catholic health care institutions must not perform gender transition interventions, whether surgical or chemical, on a person regardless of their age. Source: Crux.
“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,” the March 20 statement reads.
The 14-page statement, signed by the eight members of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Doctrinal Committee, which is led by Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, states such interventions “do not respect the fundamental order of the human person as an intrinsic unity of body and soul, with a body that is sexually differentiated”.
The bishops note that bodiliness and the sexual difference of the body is a fundamental aspect of human existence. They go on to say a gender transition intervention “harms the human person.”
“The Hippocratic tradition in medicine calls upon all healthcare providers first and foremost to ‘do no harm,’ the statement explains. “Any technological intervention that does not accord with the fundamental order of the human person as a unity of body and soul, including the sexual difference inscribed in the body, ultimately does not help but, rather, harm the human person.”
The “Doctrinal Note on the Moral Limits to Technological Manipulation of the Human Body” statement was issued to provide a moral criteria to Catholic health care institutions for discerning which medical interventions “promote authentic good of the human person and which are in fact injurious,” according to the USCCB. The bishops noted that the document was developed in consultation with medical ethicists, physicians, psychologists, and moral theologians.
FULL STORY
U.S. bishops say Catholic healthcare intuitions should not perform gender transitions (By John Lavenburg, Crux)
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