GOP Representative Rosendale Vows to Use Budgeting Process to Protect Female Veterans from VA Trans Intrusion

GOP representative Matt Rosendale (Mont.) said over the weekend that he plans to protect female veterans’ medical spaces at VA facilities from male encroachment through the budgeting process for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The department this year began enforcing in earnest a 2018 policy that allows males who identify as women to access females’ exam rooms and restrooms with the VA. Last week, National Review reported that clinical psychologists with the department faced retaliation and ostracism at work after they publicly opposed the policy in an op-ed. Ten days after the op-ed was published, co-author Nina Silander was removed from her role as a psychologist and subjected to an investigation over patient-safety and care concerns.

“The next tool I have available to me is through the budgeting process,” Rosendale, a member of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, told National Review.

The congressman addressed criticism from Democrats that Republicans may try to derail appropriation bills by including protections for female veterans.

“Those female veterans, if we prohibit transgenders from sharing their spaces and we say this is tied directly to funding, they’re not going to consider that ‘poison pills,'” he said. “If you ask the vast majority of Americans and the vast majority of veterans, I will assure you that they will tell you, ‘That’s not a poison pill. What it is, is just common sense.'”

In addition to Silander, the other authors of the op-ed, Edward Waldrep and Catherine Novotny, work in sexual-trauma recovery. They argue that the policy will put the safety of female veterans, some of whom may be victims of sexual abuse, in jeopardy.

“We know that the perpetrators of sex crimes are usually male,” the trio wrote in the op-ed. “We view this VA policy as a betrayal of our female patients.”

Allowing men into women’s medical spaces is not only dangerous but wasteful and counterproductive, because “the VA has just spent the last several years investing in gender-specific examination rooms for the primary care” of female veterans, Rosendale said.

“Then to see the Veterans Administration turning that literally on its head by trying to accommodate people that are going through gender issues and/or transition, it bewilders me,” he added.

Rosendale said that he and his Republican colleagues on the committee are considering escalating the issue to a hearing. Until then, he intends to deploy the power of the purse strings to combat gender ideology in the Veterans Administration.

Having had transgender veterans as patients, Silander said the urgency in the field to diagnose veterans with gender dysphoria ignores potential psychological comorbidities. To use gender ideology as a guide for their treatment undermines the medical discovery process, she said. It is creating an environment of ideological conformity with no toleration of dissent at the VA, Waldrep said.

On February 12, Rosendale and Representative Eli Crane (R., Ariz.), another member of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, wrote a letter to the secretary of the department opposing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives at the VA. They specifically targeted VHA Directive 1341(3), which allows men into women-only single-sex spaces, including bathrooms, exam rooms, and medical-exam areas irrespective of where the veteran is in his “transition.”

“We are concerned that this would put women veterans in danger and could be particularly traumatizing to sexual assault survivors who now might be in a sensitive space next to a biological male,” the lawmakers said. “Moreover, if a veteran were to voice her objection to this arrangement, she would be the one required to relocate. The VA must ensure that women veterans are not being put at risk to appease radical transgender activists.”