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CNA Staff, Jun 27, 2024 / 17:45 pm (CNA).
A judge in Montana has struck down a state statute that says “there are exactly two sexes, male and female,” setting up a possible appeal. The judge found that the title… […]
Texas Children’s Hospital. / Credit: Zereshk|Wikipedia|CC BY-SA 3.0
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 24, 2024 / 16:00 pm (CNA).
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has launched an investigation into allegations that illegal sex-change procedures are being performed on minors at Texas Children’s Hospital.
The probe follows news reports based on documents a whistleblower shared with City Journal. The outlet reported that Texas Children’s doctor Eithan Haim shared information showing that the hospital system had “secretly continued to perform transgender medical interventions … on minor children” despite it being illegal in Texas.
Haim has since been indicted for allegedly breaking federal law by violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) while obtaining and disclosing the private health information of Texas Children’s pediatric patients. If found guilty, Haim faces up to 10 years in prison and a maximum $250,000 fine.
A representative for Paxton’s office confirmed with CNA on Friday that Texas Children’s is currently being investigated. The hospital system, which is the largest children’s system in the U.S., is being investigated for potential Medicaid fraud in its sex-change program, according to National Review.
In addition to Haim, Texas Children’s nurse Vanessa Sivadge shared with City Journal information indicating that the hospital was “stealing” from the government by billing sex-change procedures on minors to Medicaid, which is illegal in Texas.
Brian Harrison, a Republican in the state Legislature, has also called on the Texas House to hold hearings on the potential Medicaid fraud by Texas Children’s and into the federal government’s actions in attempting to “silence” the whistleblowers.
In a Wednesday statement, Harrison called the administration’s actions “absolutely outrageous” and an attempt to protect “abusive and illegal practices.”
“The Texas House of Representatives must not sit idly by and allow this federal overreach to occur,” he continued.
Headquartered in Houston, Texas Children’s is the largest children’s hospital system in the U.S. The hospital announced in 2022 that it would be ceasing sex-change “therapies” and procedures, citing concerns that these practices were potentially illegal under Texas law.
This followed the publication of a directive by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Paxton that transgender procedures on minors could be considered “child abuse” in Texas. In 2023, Texas passed a law that explicitly bans sex-change procedures on children.
At least three doctors associated with Texas Children’s — Richard Roberts, David Paul, and Kristy Rialon — had continued to perform “gender-affirming” procedures on children throughout 2022 and 2023, according to whistleblower evidence published by Christopher Rufo of the Manhattan Institute. Rufo claimed that Rialon had been performing surgeries on minors ranging in age from 15 to as young as 1.
Sivadge, the nurse at Texas Children’s, further alleged that the hospital was potentially billing transgender procedures on children to Medicaid.
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs sits in the audience prior to President Joe Biden’s remarks at the Tempe Center for the Arts on Sept 28, 2023, in Tempe, Arizona. / Credit: Rebecca Noble/Getty Images
CNA Staff, Jun 19, 2024 / 15:45 pm (CNA).
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs this week vetoed a bill that would have required insurance companies to cover “detransitioning” procedures for transgender-identifying individuals who had undergone sex-change surgeries.
The Democratic governor vetoed state Senate Bill 1511 after it passed both houses of the state Legislature. The measure would have stipulated that health insurance plans that offer “coverage for gender transition procedures” may not “deny coverage for gender detransition procedures.”
It would have also required that physicians who perform gender transition procedures “must agree to provide or pay for the performance of gender detransition procedures.”
“Detransitioners,” or transgender-identified individuals who have ceased trying to make their bodies resemble those of the opposite sex, have been getting increased attention in the media in recent years.
Oftentimes such people have been on cross-sex hormones for years, resulting in significant or irreversible changes to their bodies; in other cases, they have undergone irreversible surgeries. Extensive medical work can be required to attempt to return their bodies to normal function.
In a “veto letter” provided to CNA by the governor’s office on Wednesday, Hobbs said the measure was “unnecessary and would create a privacy risk for patients.”
On its website, the Arizona State Senate Republican Caucus said Hobbs in her veto of the bill was “aiding doctors and insurance companies taking advantage of a vulnerable population.”
State Sen. Janae Shamp, who sponsored the bill, argued on Tuesday that doctors “must be prepared to undo the damage” of gender transition procedures “as much as possible.”
Insurance companies should also pay for such reparative procedures, she said.
“Shame on Gov. Hobbs for sending a message that the institutions tasked with protecting their health and well-being have turned their backs on them,” Shamp said on the state senate GOP’s website.
Advocates say detransitioners demonstrate why doctors and health officials should proceed cautiously with transgender procedures, especially given that many of those procedures cannot be easily reversed, if at all.
Some formerly transgender-identified individuals, such as young adult Chloe Cole, have spoken out strongly against what they say is a too-permissive medical culture that rushes into “gender-affirming” models of care.
In the Netherlands earlier this year, a study found that nearly two-thirds of children who had wished that they belonged to the opposite sex as adolescents ultimately became comfortable with their biological sex in early adulthood.
In an interview with the New York Times last month, meanwhile, English pediatrician Hilary Cass warned there is no comprehensive evidence to support the routine prescription of transgender drugs to minors with gender dysphoria.
The doctor earlier this year published the independent “Cass Review,” commissioned by the National Health Service in England, which prompted England and Scotland to halt the prescription of transgender drugs to minors until more research is conducted.
Shamp, the Arizona senator, this week pointed to Chloe Cole as an example of the perils of transgender medicine.
Cole was “given puberty blockers and underwent a double mastectomy” at a young age and now struggles with “the severe damage left behind,” the senator said.
“It’s unfathomable that we consider mutilating an undeveloped child’s body as ‘health care,’” Shamp said, “but what’s even more horrifying is the fact that we deny them access to care when they go on to suffer the mental and physical consequences.”
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CNA Staff, Jun 18, 2024 / 17:08 pm (CNA).
A Texas doctor has been indicted for allegedly breaking federal law after he accessed patient records as part of an exposé into child transgender surgeries. In 2… […]
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CNA Staff, Jun 18, 2024 / 13:15 pm (CNA).
A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked a new Biden Title IX rule in six states that included “gender identity” in Title IX’s long-standing protection against discrimination by… […]
USCCB President Archbishop Timothy Broglio speaks at the bishops’ spring meeting, Thursday, June 13, 2024 / USCCB
Louisville, Ky., Jun 14, 2024 / 08:00 am (CNA).
The president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, in a speech to his fellow bishops gathered in Louisville, Kentucky for their spring meeting, discoursed on the subject of the incompatibility of “sex change” with the teachings of the Catholic Church.
In his speech to kick off the meeting, Archbishop Timothy Broglio, who serves as Archbishop for the Military Services and is president of Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), reflected on the war in the Holy Land, the migrant crisis, the National Eucharistic Congress, and the persecution of the Church in Nicaragua, among other issues.
The largest portion of his address, however, was devoted to a catechesis on the subject of the dignity of the body, with the prelate citing Pope Francis’ recent declaration on gender ideology, and referring specifically to the issue of “sex change.”
Broglio’s remarks come less than a month after news broke that a woman identifying as a man had attended seminary and was living a religious vocation as a male hermit in Kentucky, with the apparent approval of Bishop John Stowe, who leads the Diocese of Lexington.
In his speech to the bishops, Broglio quoted heavily from Pope Francis and his recent document on gender theory.
“We are grateful for the recent declaration Dignitas Infinita from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. There we read a clear message about many issues that plague our times. In particular, ‘Regarding gender theory, whose scientific coherence is the subject of considerable debate among experts, the Church recalls that human life in all its dimensions, both physical and spiritual, is a gift from God,’” he said.
“‘This gift is to be accepted with gratitude and placed at the service of the good. Desiring a personal self-determination, as gender theory prescribes, apart from this fundamental truth that human life is a gift, amounts to a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God, entering into competition with the true God of love revealed to us in the Gospel,’” Broglio quoted from the Vatican document.
Broglio also cited the the “Catechism of the Catholic Church,” saying it “expressly invites us to recognize that ‘the human body shares in the dignity of ‘the image of God.’”
“Such a truth deserves to be remembered, especially when it comes to sex change, for humans are inseparably composed of both body and soul,” Broglio said.
He concluded his discourse quoting from Pope Francis again on the dignity of the human body.
“Teaching about the need to respect the natural order of the human person, Pope Francis affirmed that ‘creation is prior to us and must be received as a gift. At the same time, we are called to protect our humanity, and this means, in the first place, accepting it and respecting it as it was created…”
At a press conference at the conclusion of the first day of the meeting, Broglio fielded a question about his speech.
Asked whether the closed door sessions during the bishops’ meeting had included any discussions of the transgender hermit in the Diocese of Lexington and possible implications for action by the conference, Broglio said the subject had come up at the “committee levels.”
“There certainly hasn’t been any discussion in the general assembly of the bishops. There is concern that has been expressed at some of the committee levels because of the nature of what hermetic life is in the Church and also the preparation necessary for that,” Broglio said.
“And also it’s just the general honesty that should be a part of that whole process of determining a vocation and responding to that vocation. At this point, that’s basically where the discussion is,” he said.
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Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Mar 4, 2024 / 17:40 pm (CNA).
A comprehensive new study from researchers in Finland found that providing adolescents with transgender drugs or surgeries does not appear to solve the underly… […]
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty’s Lori Windham joins Montse Alvarado, president and COO of EWTN News, and Josh Payne, a lawyer with Campbell Miller Payne, on “EWTN News In Depth” on March 1, 2024. / Credit: “EWTN News In Depth”
CNA Staff, Mar 4, 2024 / 17:15 pm (CNA).
An Indiana Catholic couple is in the grips of a “nightmare” after their son was seized from them when they refused to adhere to his chosen transgender identity, an attorney told EWTN News on Friday.
After Mary and Jeremy Cox didn’t use the pronouns requested by their teenage son when he began to identify as a girl, Indiana Child Services removed their son from his home. The parents sought legal action and their case, M.C. and J.C. v. Indiana, is now being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Despite no evidence of abuse or neglect, the Coxes’ son has not been returned to them. The attorney for the Cox family, Lori Windham, told “EWTN News in Depth” anchor Montse Alvarado the couple is “living every parent’s nightmare.”
Windham, vice president and senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, explained that the Coxes’ son “was removed from their care by state officials even after they investigated for months and found out that these were fit parents.”
“They had not abused or neglected him in any way,” she said of the parents. “[Indiana] still used the disagreement over gender as a reason to keep him out of their home until he turned 18.”
“What’s shocking is the Indiana courts upheld this, and now the Supreme Court is their last stop and their last hope to make sure this doesn’t happen again to others,” she said.
Windham said she hopes the court will “wipe this stain off of Mary and Jeremy’s record.”
“They have other young children at home. They don’t want something like this to happen again,” she said.
The parents hope the Supreme Court will “send a clear signal to lower courts and to states that you cannot interfere with parental rights, you cannot interfere with religious liberty by removing kids from the home of loving parents just because they disagree over gender,” she said.
Three additional cases related to transgender rights have been appealed to the Supreme Court. In November, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) appealed to the nation’s highest court to block a ban on transgender surgeries for minors in Kentucky. The group also appealed to reverse a similar law in Tennessee. Another appeal asks justices to allow Idaho’s ban on gender transitions for minors to take effect after a lower court judge blocked it earlier this year.
Josh Payne, a lawyer with Campbell Miller Payne, a law firm that helps “detransitioners” sue their doctors for pushing gender transition surgeries, filed a friend-of-the-court amicus brief in the transgender-related Supreme Court case that began in Idaho.
These detransitioners, who are often minors, believed that gender-affirming care would resolve their gender dysphoria and allow them to live healthy lives but later felt “misled into these procedures,” Payne explained on “EWTN News in Depth.”
Their clients, he said, detransition after they realize “that they were misled into these physical changes to their bodies that did not help their mental health, gender dysphoria problems, but instead simply left them with mental anguish and in many cases, without their natural, healthy bodies and without their body parts.”
They are now “seeking justice,” Payne said, and hoping that others won’t make the same mistakes they did.
The testimonies, Payne said, “put a face to why these regulations are so necessary and so important in the lower courts.”
Indiana is not the only state where parental rights are under threat, Windham said.
“California and Washington have both passed laws that authorize state officials to take custody or to refuse to tell a parent where a child is for the purpose of allowing that child to access what they deem ‘gender-affirming care,’” she noted.
“Other states, like Maine, are considering similar bills,” she added. “What we’ve said all along about the Coxes’ case is that if this can happen in Indiana, this can happen anywhere.”
Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York. / Credit: Jonah McKeown/CNA
CNA Staff, Feb 21, 2024 / 18:05 pm (CNA).
Priests at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City were surprised by the “irreverence and disrespect” that occurred during a funeral for … […]
Woman with transgender symbol on her hand. / Juanje Garrido/shutterstock
CNA Staff, Dec 21, 2023 / 14:52 pm (CNA).
Saint Mary’s College — a Catholic women’s school in Notre Dame, Indiana — is reversing its controversial transgender admissions p… […]
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