Biden to Pull Rule Allowing Health Care Workers to Refrain from Abortions, Sex Changes

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The Biden administration will withdraw a Trump administration rule that would have allowed any health care worker to refuse to participate in abortions, sterilizations, or sex-change operations for reasons of conscience.

Health care workers will still be allowed to opt out of abortions and sterilizations unless doing so would cause “undue hardship to their employer,” the San Francisco Chronicle notes, under an existing 1973 federal law.

And a recent judicial order barring a Biden administration mandate on transgender surgeries in a Catholic hospital remains in effect (even though the judge confined the effect of the ruling to the parties in the case).

However, they would not be able to opt out at will, and might not be able to apply that law to so-called “gender-affirming care,” the administration’s euphemism for surgery or drugs that mimic opposite sex characteristics and that fall short of formal sterilization (such as the removal of breasts as a treatment of gender dysphoria).

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