The Department of Health and Human Services has approached the White House with a draft rule that would roll back Obama-era regulations extending equal protection to transgender health care consumers. The rule clarified the nature of a ban on sex-based discrimination in the Affordable Care Act, indicating that it applied to gender identity as well as people who do not conform with gender stereotypes.
Sign the petition to demand Congress protects the trans folks this change would harm and even kill.
Representatives of the religious right say this rule is unlawful, and claim it needs to be rescinded in order to protect health care providers from participating in procedures they have "moral" objections to. Their claims ignore the fact that transition-specific care is provided by people who voluntarily work with trans patients, and that trans people experience high rates of discrimination in health care settings.
This isn't about people being forced to participate in gender-affirming care. They think dentists should be allowed to refuse to treat kids if their parents are trans; that ambulance crews should be allowed to leave trans women by the side of the road rather than provide emergency care; that doctors should be able to refuse pregnancy care to gender nonconforming people. Whatever happened to "first, do no harm"?
Congress could circumvent the rulemaking process and pass legislation clarifying the nature of anti-discrimination protections in health care, explicitly including gender identity and gender nonconforming people. Enshrining these rights in law would make them much more difficult to abridge in the future.
All Americans deserve equal access to health care, no matter who they are. Sign on if you agree.
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