Right Dismayed by Court Ruling Against Catholic Discrimination

Right wing media are aghast that a Catholic hospital in Maryland that recieves millions of dollars of public funds is expected to follow laws against discrimination.

by Evan Urquhart

In 2020, Jesse Hammons’ hysterectomy was abrubtly cancelled after a hospital administrator realized that he was trans. At St. Joseph Medical Center, a Catholic hospital that merged with the University of Maryland Medical System in 2012 and recieves millions of dollars in public funds after having merged with the University of Maryland Medical System in 2012, which hysterectomies are medically necessary is ultimately decided by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, a religious body with no medical expertise. Now, a court has ruled that UMMS and St. Joseph discriminated against Hammons, and that religious hospitals that are supported by public funds must be bound by the same regulations as anyone else.

In right wing propaganda, of course, the questions of whether institutions that recieve public funds should also be bound by nondiscrimination law is handwaved away. There, the story is a simple parable about the threat to religious freedom presented by transgender rights.

screenshot from the National Review

Catholic doctrine once insisted that the Earth was the center of the universe and violently suppressed anyone who said our planet orbited around the sun. It is in that same spirit that the Catholic church now seeks to place doctrine above medical evidence in trans medical care. Ultimately, what procedures are considered medically necessary should be decided based on medical evidence, not a Catholic philosophy that insists the evidence can’t possibly be true.