The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit will soon hear oral arguments in the case of American College of Pediatricians v. Becerra. The Biden administration is mandating that doctors perform so-called “sex-change surgeries” and provide harmful, life-altering drugs to their patients on demand, even for children, even if doing so violates a doctor’s medical judgment or religious beliefs. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is acting upon an executive order signed by President Biden shortly after he took office, instructing his administration to reinterpret “sex” in federal law to include “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.” While the legal question before the court is focused on whether the physicians and other health-care professionals have standing to seek relief from the courts, much more troubling cultural currents loom beneath the surface: the politicization of medicine and laws made by the unelected and unaccountable branches of government.
For the 3,000 members of the American College of Pediatricians and the Catholic Medical Association, along with innumerable physicians across the country who abide by the Hippocratic Oath to “first, do no harm,” permanently altering the healthy body of a child is unthinkable. However, the potential consequences of the Biden administration’s gender-identity mandate loom like the Sword of Damocles over the heads of those whose personal and professional ethics are at odds with the ongoing politicization of medicine. In its public statements and actions, the administration has given every indication it plans to enforce its controversial mandate against these doctors — threatening to drive them out of the practice of medicine altogether. In court, though, the administration has carefully avoided making any explicit commitment to prosecute specific doctors, insisting they haven’t decided yet which ones they’ll come after.
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