In order to enhance diversity, it was necessary to suppress it dept.: “She feels as if she’s been treated as if she has no rights,” said the attorney for m-to-f transgender San Francisco resident Charlene Hastings, who’s suing Daughters of Charity/Seton in Daly City alleging harassment and discrimination because it’s not among the many Bay Area hospitals that would be happy to assist in Hastings’s breast augmentation procedure. (Melissa Underwood, “Transgender Woman Sues Catholic Hospital for Refusing Breast Augmentation Surgery”, FoxNews.com, Jan. 18; Barbara Feder Ostrov, “Transgender woman sues Seton hospital”, San Mateo County Times/InsideBayArea.com, Jan. 6). [Title edited after commenter pointed out inaccuracy]
Catholic hospital won’t perform transgender-related surgery
In order to enhance diversity, it was necessary to suppress it dept.: “She feels as if she’s been treated as if she has no rights,” said the attorney for m-to-f transgender San Francisco resident Charlene Hastings, who’s suing Daughters of Charity/Seton in Daly City alleging harassment and discrimination because it’s not among the many Bay […]
19 Comments
Hey, whatever happened to being pro-choice? The hospital chooses to decline providing this elective surgery and she’s the one who feels violated? Where is it written that you can compel others to do something that conflicts with their own sense of right and wrong?
This self-described woman is selfish, and wrong. Go find someone else to do your boob job.
First of all, the title is wrong. Breast augmention isn’t considered “sex reassignment surgery. Secondly, Hastings is a post operative transsexual and is legally a woman. She cannot be discriminated because of her being transgender. As a business the church is not exempt from the laws of the state and federal government. Denying care is a violation of the Unruh Act which says:
“All persons within the jurisdiction of this state are free and equal, and no matter what their sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, medical condition, marital status, or sexual orientation are entitled to the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, privileges, or services in all business establishments of every kind whatsoever. (Emphasis added)”
Since breast implantation is an elective procedure and non life threatening, why can’t the hospital refuse? Catholic hospitals already have policies that state they do not perform elective tubal ligations and other procedures. Are we going to use the courts to force religious institutions to act against their religious beliefs?
throckmorton,
What part of ““All persons within the jurisdiction of this state are free and equal, and no matter what their sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, medical condition, marital status, or sexual orientation are entitled to the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, privileges, or services in all business establishments of every kind whatsoever. (Emphasis added)” do you not understand? Transgender women are LEGALLY women. If you’re making a distinction between different kinds of women, that’s discrimination.
No one is forcing the church to be in the business of health care.
Marti: What statute defines the word, female, the way you do? I would like to read it.
No one is forcing the church to be in the business of health care, but apparently Ms. Hastings seeks to “force” the church to perform transgender related surgery.
If the church performed some transgender surgeries and not Ms. Hastings’ for no good reason your point, would be better taken.
But, if Ms. Hastings seeks to force the issue the church may stand on its principles and shut down entirely.
I fail to see how a “boob job” is transgender surgery.
They don’t claim it is – they refuse their premises to be used for any transgender-related surgery.
Other hospitals have taken this to mean any surgery on anyone transgendered, such as setting a broken leg, but I doubt that’s the case here. It may be though.
The surgeon in question has a particular technique that gives the best results in some cases. I’m not aware that he has any surgical privileges at other hospitals nearby.
From a legal standpoint, as the patient is a woman, and they provide facilities for other women, and there is no exception to allow religious-related institutions to discriminate against Blacks, Jews, or any other minority, they broke the law.
Supremacy Claus – an excellent question! No-one’s sex is defined legally and consistently in the USA. The usual thing to do is to use the Birth Certificate to prove sex, but some states don’t accept the validity of out-of-state birth certificates, despite the constitutional “full faith and credit” clause. Kansas even allows mothers who have given birth to be considered male, based on them having xy chromosomes, as some women do.
BTW, I’m Intersexed – chromosomally male (mostly, anyway), somatically female (mostly, anyway). In some US states, I could only marry a man. In others, a woman. And in Texas, it would depend on which county I’m in. The whole thing is a mess, and the law a sad joke.
Zoe: Thanks for the review, and your honesty that this question is less than settled, legally.
I await Marti’s statutory citation of the law in Daly City, as it applies to this case.
I read the complaint at:
http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/Hastings_complaint.pdf
I am surprised it does not address this basic question of law.
The problem is not so much the basic question of law, but the inordinate number of different answers – some of the quite bizarre – in different jurisdictions. See Deakin Law Review 22 (2004) Re Kevin In Perspective
Are any breast augmentation surgeries performed at the hospital in question? If they ban the procedure regardless of patient, then no problem. If they ban it for this particular patient and not others without an extenuating medical reason, then they have a problem.
They do allow breast augmentation surgeries to be performed there. The problem is not the procedure, it’s the person.
And the official Vatican pronouncement on the subject, which was sent sub secretum in 2000, allowed transgender surgery in some cases. From Catholic News Service :
For an extensive discussion in the comments section, together with references to numerous medical papers and canon law round the year 1080, see the California Catholic Daily.
Zoe: That list of factors sounds like lawyer make work by needless argument, an attempt to obfuscate, and pandering to a favored group. I assume, the factors also require “balancing,” a lawyer synonym for arbitrary personal preference.
Over 140 times, the Supreme Court has held, the dictionary meaning is the legal meaning of a word.
Any statutory definition of gender, that Marti cites, deviating from the dictionary definition violates dozens of Supreme Court decisions.
Here is the dictionary definition of male:
“Of or pertaining to the sex that begets or procreates young, or (in a wider sense) to the sex that produces spermatozoa,”
If a being can fertilize but cannot bear fruit, you have a male. Other definitions are self-deception, of which a court should have no part.
The index of discrimination is, if a heterosexual male demands a huge breast augmentation, would the hospital refuse? If the answer is yes, then it applies to the plaintiff, and no discrimination has taken place.
To me, the real question is, who in their right mind would want to have surgery in a hospital that didn’t want him/her? I want the best care possible, and I don’t expect that where I am unwelcome. It sounds more like someone trying to make a political and legal point, rather than really looking for medical care.
Supremacy Clause – you’ve defined “male” in a very creative way. It would still include vasectomised men, as sperm could be extracted with a syringe. But it wouldn’t include sterile men, nor pre-pubescent boys, nor some rare men and rarer women who have been biological fathers, but also have ovarian tissue containing fertile eggs.
Ms Hastings, by your definition, is not male. She’s post-op.
It’s not that simple. And people like myself whose apparent sex changes naturally really bollix up the system. To have my legal sex depend upon whether the anomalous tissue removed from me 27 years ago contained fertile eggs or not shows what bizarre and surreal results such facile definitions as yours produce.
Care to define “Female” now? Unless you’re very careful, you’ll end up with people neither, or both. It’s genuinely not that simple.
I think you folks are wasting FAR too much time splitting hairs over legal definitions of sex/gender.
What difference does it make if Hastings is a man, woman, or neuter?
From a moral standpoint, the bottom line is that barring a life threatening emergency, courts shouldn’t be able to force a Church to do something against it’s religious beliefs. This is elective surgery, and non-life threatening.
From a legal standpoint, it’s interesting that Marti thinks his legal statement about “all being equal” only applies to patients in a hospital, and not to the people that work there. They also have full rights to practice their religion under the law. Can a customer also enter a Muslim-owned grocery and demand that they sell pork products?
The debate over who is legally a male or female is interesting, but it is beside the point here.
The point is, what business does court have determining a Church’s religious beliefs?
To Marti – if I walk into a Muslim owned grocery or a kosher shop, can I demand that they sell me pork products? Can I take them to court if they refuse?
Can a customer also enter a Muslim-owned grocery and demand that they sell pork products?
Yes – if they already sell them to, say, everybody except Jews.
There are legal limits in religious practices, though not belief. Human Sacrifice may be a culturally and religiously mandated practice in the worship of Huitzilopochtli, but it’s still illegal to practice it.
And John – I just finished a 20-month legal fight just to get a passport. I got one, eventually, and an apology for the inconvenience that meant that others in my situation won’t get the same treatment.
I was originally offered a document good for leaving the country, but not re-entry, even though I’m a citizen. We’re used to this kind of thing, but we don’t accept it any more.
Marti’s a “she” too, not a “he”.
[…] involving a lesbian applicant. As Bookworm Room points out (Aug. 19), and as we noted in the earlier Bay Area conscience controversy over gender-switch breast surgery, it makes a practical difference […]