By Deacon Mike Manno, JD
The Wanderer
Of all the outrages being
committed by the progressive left these days, few would compare with the
attempts by a coalition of Democratic state attorneys general and the American
Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to force Catholic hospitals and health-care
workers to perform elective hysterectomies for women seeking to “transition” to
men, to perform “trans” surgeries, and to require all to perform abortions.
The party of death and its secular arm, the ACLU, have filed two federal
lawsuits to strip away from Catholic hospitals and medical personnel their
right to decline to perform certain medical procedures as a matter of faith or
conscience.
“The last thing anyone should want right now is fewer hospitals. And yet, that
may very well be the outcome of lawsuits like this one. If people are worried
about the health-care system being overwhelmed today — just wait until liberals
force the religiously affiliated groups entirely out of business. Because
that’s what’ll happen if the left insists on forcing religious facilities to
embrace their radical views,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family
Research Council.
“Catholic nonprofits have told the country before — in adoption and abortion
debates — that choosing between their faith and ministry is no choice at all.
They’d rather shut their doors than bend an inch on biblical teachings,” he
said, suggesting that liberal radicals are willing to “blow a gaping hole in
America’s medical care just to advance their political goals.”
Both of the suits take aim at Catholic teaching that Catholic health-care
organizations are not permitted to engage in “immediate material cooperation in
actions that are intrinsically immoral, such as abortion, euthanasia, assisted
suicide, and direct sterilization.”
The first one was filed by 24 state attorneys general, led by New York Attorney
General Letitia James, aiming at nullifying recent Trump administration rules
protecting the conscience and religious rights of medical personnel. That rule
replaced a 2016 anti-discrimination rule by the Obama administration which
would have forced those workers to commit abortions and perform gender
reassignment procedures.
Obama’s anti-discrimination rule was blocked by a federal court in late 2016 to
protect religious freedom of the health-care workers. That ruling was
subsequently upheld on appeal last year.
The new Trump rules were promulgated just days before the Supreme Court issued
its ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County,
which expanded the definition of “sex” to include “sexual orientation” and
“gender identity” under Title VII’s employment discrimination protections.
In the New York suit, the AGs claim that
Bostock should apply to health issues, including the rules that provide the
operational platform for interpreting the provisions of the Patient Protection
and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). The result being that the original rules
blocked by the courts in 2016 should be in effect.
Thus, under the left’s interpretation, the act “prohibits all health programs
and activities receiving federal financial assistance . . . from discriminating
against individuals on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, age, or
disability.”
Of course, the majority opinion in Bostock,
written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, went to pains to point out that it only
applied to employment cases. “But how these doctrines protecting religious
liberty interact with Title VII are questions for future cases,” Gorsuch wrote.
At the time, I wrote in this column (July 2 issue), “How about Catholic
hospitals who refuse to perform sexual reassignment surgery? There are already
a spate of lawsuits claiming that the refusal is discrimination on the basis of
sex.” Well, I guess we’re finding out how the Dems and the left want to expand Bostock — as most of us feared.
The second suit was filed in Maryland and involves a woman transitioning to
male who is suing a hospital over its refusal to perform the “medically
necessary” hysterectomy for her/him to medically make the crossover from woman
to man.
Oddly, the plaintiff, a Jesse Hammons, did ultimately receive the surgery from
another hospital. But like some of the other LGBTQ bullies who received their
requested services from other businesses and still went back and sued, Ms./Mr.
Hammons and the ACLU decided to go back and sue the hospital that had
originally refused to perform the hysterectomy, which by now she/he had
received from another hospital.
The purpose of that, of course, is to bully people of faith into compliance
with their sinful demands.
There is a bit of a twist in this case that will make legal scholars study this
case in the future. The hospital is not technically a Catholic hospital. St.
Joseph Hospital belongs to the University of Maryland Medical System
Corporation. That corporation was established by statute and the members of its
board of directors are appointed by the Maryland governor. In short, it is a
state-owned entity. So how does it come off following Catholic medical
protocols?
Well, this might be the tricky part. It seems that a few years ago, St. Joseph
Hospital was sold to the Maryland Medical System. Since it was a Catholic
hospital and adhered to Catholic hospital directives, part of the terms and
conditions of the sale was that it would always adhere to those directives,
which it does to this day.
Of course, that gives leave to our ACLU friends to claim that the state is
impermissibly governing the hospital by Catholic rules to the disadvantage of
the general population, which should be protected by the nondiscrimination
clause in the statute that created the Maryland Medical System. And to further
complicate the hospital’s legal status, in 2011 the State Supreme Court
declared that the University of Maryland Medical System was an “instrumentality
of the state.”
Both suits were filed in July, so we have a long way to go before anything
definitive is produced. We’ll follow closely.
++ + Speaking of the LGBTQ
lobby, Facebook, not surprisingly, has given in to it. It now bars any posts
that discuss or promote what is known as “conversion therapy,” the process by
which people who are suffering from unwanted same-sex attraction seek
therapeutic help. LGBTQ activists have successfully lobbied many state
legislatures to ban the procedure in their states.
Apparently you can announce your “coming out” on Facebook, but it is forbidden
to question if you might want to go back. What a queer state of affairs.
++ + While we’re on the
subject of social media, this tidbit: Mike Gundy, football coach with Oklahoma
State University, was photographed wearing a T-shirt with a logo of One America
News Network, a conservative cable television outfit. Apparently someone posted
the photo online, which triggered some of his less manly players. ESPN reported
that within days of the uproar, Coach Gundy fell on the sword of the cancel
culture, apologized for wearing the shirt, surrendered a million dollars and
lost a year on his contract.
My first thought was: Where can I get one of those? But I decided to buy an
Archbishop Viganò coffee cup instead. Wonder if Bishop Strickland might have
key rings for sale. Hmmmm.
(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com. His Faith On Trial program is on
IowaCatholicRadio.com at 10 a.m. (CDT) every Thursday.)
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