Five states and two organizations comprising of health care providers have sued Health and Human Services over Obamacare regulations which mandate doctors to perform sex reassignment surgeries and procedures, even against their medical judgment and deeply-held religious beliefs.
Under the HHS regulations, physicians will be compelled to provide hormone therapy or sex change surgery despite their moral and conscientious obligations.
The HHS rules apply to health care providers who accept federal dollars from Medicaid and Medicare, and the providers can be taken to court for referring the sex change patients to other doctors.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the plaintiffs, said that the law is in violation of "medical judgment and conscience rights of doctors and health care professionals across the country".
"Under the new rule, a physician that believes that certain treatments are not in a patient's best medical interests may be in violation of federal law. And a physician that, for religious or conscientious reasons cannot perform a particular procedure, chooses to instead refer a patient to another health care provider may also be determined to be in violation of this new rule," he said.
The lawsuit represents over 17,000 physicians affiliated with the Franciscan Alliance Inc., Specialty Physicians of Illinois LLC, and Christian Medical & Dental Associations, and from five states including Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, Texas, and Wisconsin.
It states: "On pain of significant financial liability, the Regulation forces doctors to perform controversial and sometimes harmful medical procedures ostensibly designed to permanently change an individual's sex -- including the sex of children."
"Under the new regulation, a doctor must perform these procedures even when they are contrary to the doctor's medical judgment and could result in significant, long-term medical harm," it continues. "Thus, the regulation represents a radical invasion of the federal bureaucracy into a doctor's medical judgment."
The lawsuit says that many of the crucial medical decisions such as hysterectomy on transgender patients are called "medical necessity" by the HHS, thus disregarding individualized medical advice.
"HHS explained that a hysterectomy in this medical transition context would be 'medically necessary to treat gender dysphoria,' thereby declaring medical necessity, benefit, and prudence as a matter of federal law, and without regard to the opinions, judgment, and conscientious considerations of the many medical professionals that hold views to the contrary."
