The chairman of the US bishops’ Committee for Religious Liberty criticized the Biden administration for announcing regulations which, the bishops’ conference noted, “generally require health care workers to perform ‘gender transition’ procedures in the name of nondiscrimination.”
“The same core beliefs about human dignity and the wisdom of God’s design that motivate Catholics to care for the sick also shape our convictions about care for preborn children and the immutable nature of the human person,” said Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana.
Bishop Rhoades said that the Department of Health and Human Services’ final regulations implementing a section of the Affordable Care Act offered modest improvements over draft regulations issued in 2022.
“We appreciate that the final rule does not attempt to impose a mandate with regard to abortion,” he said. The final regulations, according to the bishops’ conference, “make modest improvements to the proposed regulations’ protections for the exercise of conscience, religious belief, and clinical judgment.”