Why the Trump Administration’s New Gender Definition Worries Doctors
Just a few years ago, the federal government was cracking down on health providers that made transgender people feel uncomfortable.
Under President Barack Obama, a branch of the health department called the Office for Civil Rights would occasionally investigate complaints of discrimination because of gender identity, and in some cases it forced doctors, insurers, and hospitals to change how they treat transgender people. The agency told a wellness program in Colorado that it should cover mammograms for trans women, in addition to cis women, for example. It made LabCorp refer to a transgender person by his or her preferred name and gender.
Since then, protections for it might not investigate health-care discrimination claims involving transgender people. Now the administration is urging government agencies to define “sex as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that a person is born with … Any dispute about one’s sex would have to be clarified using genetic testing,” according to a by . In the ’ interpretation, this definition would write transgender people “out of existence,” essentially claiming that the genitals a person is born with are those he or she should have for life.
