An Obama-era law that outlines requirements for faith-based hospitals, insurance providers and doctors to perform gender-reassignment surgeries may be eliminated.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has submitted a proposal to the White House that would eliminate a 2016 law that required health care providers to perform and provide gender-reassignment surgeries and procedures.
The proposal comes after Judge Reed O’Connor in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas issued a nationwide injunction against the mandate in 2016. He said the rule would violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Meanwhile, LGBT supporters and a former Obama administration official, says reversing the mandate would be “potentially devastating.”
“If the Trump administration rescinds the protections against sex stereotyping and gender identity discrimination, the effect will be potentially devastating not just for the trans community, but for any other patients who are gender-nonconforming, including lesbian and gay individuals,” Jocelyn Samuels, the director of the HHS Office for Civil Rights under Obama who helped implement the rule, told The New York Times.
The original mandate applied to most doctors and hospitals that accept Medicare and Medicaid. Under the rule, those facilities could not turn away patients who…
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