Category: United States

Transgender kids get puberty-blocking drugs, sex-changing hormones; MDs say numbers are rising

Washington Post

Associated Press

CHICAGO – A small but growing number of teens and even younger children who think they were born the wrong sex are getting support from parents and from doctors who give them sex-changing treatments, according to reports in the medical journal Pediatrics.

It’s an issue that raises ethical questions, and some experts urge caution in treating children with puberty-blocking drugs and hormones.

An 8-year-old second-grader in Los Angeles is a typical patient. Born a girl, the child announced at 18 months, “I a boy” and has stuck with that belief. The family was shocked but now refers to the child as a boy and is watching for the first signs of puberty to begin treatment, his mother told The Associated Press. . . [Full text]

 

 

HHS mandate, Kennedy and the Berlin Wall

Former governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee, told the audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference that President Obama’s birth control regulation reminded him of President John F. Kennedy’s statement to the people of Berlin after the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1963: “Ich bin ein Berliner.”  Huckabee,a Baptist, said, “In many ways, thanks to President Obama, we’re all Catholics now.”[ABC news]

 

Catholic nuns protest HHS regulation forcing them to buy birth control insurance

Sisters for Life, a Catholic religious order in New York City, has protested the Department of Health and Human Services regulation that will force them to buy insurance coverage for surgical sterilization, contraceptives, and embryocidal drugs. [Statement]

 

Arizona House Judiciary Committee moves against federal HHS mandate

The House Judiciary Committee in the Arizona state legislature has approved HB 2625, which will amend state legislation to provide a religious exemption to the state’s own mandate for insurance coverage for contraception.  The amendment will also revoke the narrow definition of “religious employer” that was copied in the federal regulation at the centre of a controversy about religious freedom in the United States.

 

Committee hearing held on HHS mandate

Representatives of Judaism and Christianity appeared before the US House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to explain the reasons for their opposition to the Obama administration’s plan to force employers to provide insurance coverage for surgical sterilization, contraceptives, and embryocidal drugs.

Some committee members protested because only two women appeared as witnesses.  However, Dr. Laura Champion explained, “This is not about politics, this is not about contraception, and this is not about depriving women of health care. Rather, this is personal. This is about my daily life as a physician, a Christian, and a Medical Services Director.”

John H. Garvey, President of the Catholic University of America, said that the regulation “makes hypocrites of us all, in the most important lessons we teach.”  Dr. Allison Garrett of Oklahoma Christian University told the Committee that the alternative scheme proposed by the administration “does not present a workable solution. The Administration has not yet proposed anything new. . . All the Administration has offered to do is to discuss the issue further.”

The Committee heard from ten witnesses.