Lack of Transgender Care a Health Crisis?

Fr. Rob Jack and Dr. Morse discuss the American Medical Association’s first openly gay president, who declared a lack of transgender care in some states is a medical crisis.

Fr. Jack: Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse heads the Ruth Institute, which is an interfaith nonprofit organization helping defend the family and repair the damage of the sexual revolution. Her most recent book is really a primer and, in some ways, a prophetic fulfillment of what we’re living called The Sexual State: How Elite Ideologies Are Destroying Lives. Thanks for being with us today, Dr. Morse.

Dr. Morse: Oh, thanks for having me and good to be here.

Fr. Jack: Well, with all of this stuff going on, how do you maintain your hope, Doctor, in the midst of this ongoing chaos that we’re living in?

Dr. Morse: Oh, daily mass, daily rosary, adoration, weekly confession. You know, the usual.

Fr. Jack: The usual. Well, I’m glad it’s usual for you, because maybe for some of our listeners it isn’t. And it does. It starts wearing you down. You watch these things that are going on and it seems like another brick falls, another thing gives in. More people do this. And it’s, you know, people try to blot it out. But this is something that’s not going to go away, is it?

Dr. Morse: No, that’s right. It’s not going to go away. And I think what is helpful to me is to… When you’re spending time in adoration, it helps you to take the, it helps your perspective of, you know, when we and this is true, whether you’re thinking about big political problems or whether you’re thinking about big family problems or crises or whatever.

You know, if it’s just you and Jesus there in the Adoration Chapel or in the back of church after mass or whatever it is, you know, it helps you to take a longer run perspective. And you realize, God put me in this particular time and place for a reason. And I need to do I need to figure out what he wants me to do.

And that’s the end of it. That’s all she wrote. There’s nothing more to think about. You know what I mean? Because he’s got the whole thing planned out, and it might look like it’s all going down the tubes in the short term. But if you’re doing what he wants, then you know that you’re on the best long term path you possibly can be on.

That’s the thing. I mean, look, his time horizon is longer than ours, right?

Fr. Jack: That’s right.

Dr. Morse: We’re just looking right at the nose on the front of our face. Right.

Fr. Jack: And the thing is, the Psalms teach us such an important lesson. It said put no trust in mortal men in whom there is no hope. And we have today the case of the physician who’s the head of American Medical Association. He doesn’t seem to be about promoting medicine, does he?

Dr. Morse: Oh, yes. Well. Well, that guy. The AMA is so proud of, the fact that they have the first openly gay president of the American Medical Association and the first word out of the guy’s mouth, it seems like at least what was reported there in the news was that he’s so concerned about threats, a health care crisis because of restrictions on abortion and restrictions on what is called trans medicine.

But which you and I don’t think of as really being medicine. He’s all upset about those things. So what does that mean? That means his first priority is ideological. I mean, we have every right to say, his first concern is ideology, not medicine, right? If that’s what he’s really worried about. And then he’s making noises about how I can’t practice evidence based medicine in these different states and stuff.

And so, you know, to which I reply, well look, let’s talk about the evidence, sir, shall we? Shall we talk about evidence? You know, because you and I talked about this, what had happened in the case of Florida, the state of Florida, they went to their state medical board. I forget exactly what it’s called, but every state has a regulatory board that regulates a variety of matters within that state that have to do with health care and medicine and so on.

And one of the questions they ask is how shall we spend federal Medicaid dollars within our state? Because each state has discretion. You know, that’s been part of Medicaid. You know, the federal government pushes people around a lot. There’s no doubt. But the states do have some decisions that they get to make. And so what the state of Florida did was say, let’s look at the evidence on trans medicine.

And they came to the conclusion that the evidence supporting, the evidence around trans medicine procedures that purportedly changed the sex of the body, that the evidence in favor of those procedures was weak to very weak. Okay. And so on that basis, they said, you know what, we’re not going to, the state of Florida is not going to spend its Medicaid dollars on this type of stuff.

Full stop. Okay, that’s evidence. There’s evidence. So, you know, if.

Fr. Jack: And that’s their right to do that.

Dr. Morse: And it’s absolutely it’s their responsibility to do that. And one of the things that I’ve stumbled across in this area, this may sound a little arcane, but it’s, I think, important for listeners to realize is that the ideological organizations around trans medicine, they talk as if they have approved, “standards of care.” That language, standards of care, is an important marker within the practice of medicine.

And qualified medical professionals decide, okay, this is the standard of care. This is what we expect everybody in the field to do.

Fr. Jack: It’s the measure, it’s the bar that everyone must stand at that, yeah.

Dr. Morse: It’s best practices. It’s the measure, okay. And the advocates of a wide, broad access to this type of care, they act as if they talk, as if they have standards of care. But if you look closely, you will find that these are recommendations of their professional society, and their professional society, if you look closely, anyone can join it.

You don’t have to be a doctor to join WPATH. That’s the professional society that talks about these things. Okay. Any activist can pay their dues and join that society. I could join it. You could join it. We could get all the listeners of Sacred Heart Radio to join that, join that association. And we could vote, you know. Which is different from what a full-fledged, honest to goodness medical association is supposed to do, which is to have only qualified practitioners in the field making the decisions.

Okay. And so that is a kind of rhetorical sleight of hand that they’re doing to make you think that they have standards of care. But in many cases, they do not really have what would ordinarily be considered standards of care. And so that’s what I wanted to talk about in our news release this week, when, you know, when I saw this guy making these noises like, boo hoo, we can’t do anything we want in some of these states. Isn’t that terrible? It’s a crisis. I’m like, Give me a break, buddy. Give me a break. Let’s talk about evidence, okay?

Fr. Jack: But that’s absolutely the case because, I mean, all of this is being promoted on lies. And one of the things that was interesting, I remember when I used to teach ethics, one of the ethical principles is that there were four professions in every civilization that were necessarily tied to the truth. In other words, they must have that. That’s their standard, is the truth.

And these professions are law, education, medicine and clergy. And every single one of those classic forms of cultural formation and civilizational formation have now been poisoned in many ways by this sexual revolution.

Dr. Morse: Boy, you know, I didn’t know that, Father. I didn’t know that was a thing. Now, say it again. What you said, the four, four professions that what?

Fr. Jack: There are four basic professions on which civilization is built. This comes from Saint Thomas, and it’s the profession of law, of education, of medicine and of clergy. Those are like the quintessential professions that are necessary for the functioning of society.

Dr. Morse: I see. That’s so interesting because, you know, at some point early on in the whole COVID debacle, I wrote a column. I think it was called. I wrote it for the Register, and it was something along the lines, I forget what the headline was. But it was something like, no one really believes in moral relativism anymore, people.

Because what I was saying is, if you’re going to the emergency room, if you are learning about treatment and the doctor’s telling you you need this treatment or that treatment, you don’t want his truth. You want the truth. You don’t want people making stuff up in the emergency room. You want to know that they are following what they know to be true to the best of their ability.

Of course, people make mistakes and have incomplete information, but that’s a whole different thing from moral relativism. There’s my truth and there’s your truth. You don’t want to hear that when somebody’s life is at stake.

Fr. Jack: Dr. Morse, can you stay with us over the break and we’ll continue this?

Dr. Morse: You know, we better because I’m so excited about this. We’ve got to keep talking, Father.

Fr. Jack: We’re talking today with Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse of the Ruth Institute about, in a way, how the sexual revolution has co-opted the four building blocks of civilization, the four professions that are part of civilization, the legal, the educational and the medical and the clergy. Now, Doctor, of course, many people, you know, they discard the clergy nowadays because for $19.95, you know, you can get so-called ordained and, you know, be a marriage person by the state.

You know, it’s pretty lame, but it’s clear. I mean, we got our own problems. We got Father James Martin starting this outreach group to LGBTQ, and bishops themselves supporting this sexual revolution thing. But these four, as I said, if we can’t have the law speak the truth, and we know that’s not happening, or educators talk about the truth?

No. We’re doing CRT. And doctors deciding, well, you know, do no harm is really gone because we can abort children and we can mutilate children and then clergy. Well, I’m going to leave that one alone. I can go on forever about that. You can begin to see the very diabolical plan in terms of really upending a civilization.

Dr. Morse: Yes. And that’s why I was so interested when you expressed that, because, you know, a couple of years ago at the Ruth Institute, at our Summit for Survivors of the Sexual Revolution, our whole theme was reclaiming the professions. And that was our theme, Father, that every major profession had been corrupted. I didn’t know St Thomas had the big four there.

If I had known that, I would have used that somehow. But anyway, you know, in addition to what you mentioned, you know, there’s the therapeutic professions and library science, and social workers and you know, any, any profession you can think of has been has somehow been corrupted.

Fr. Jack: Anything that has a direct impact on the lives of people.

Dr. Morse: Yes. And where people need, where society needs people to do these jobs. And we need to be able to trust them. You know, society is entrusting these people with certain powers and authority. And if they’re not exercising those things in accordance with the truth, we’re all going to be in a lot of trouble. Right. And it’s not only that they’re not exercising it in accordance with the truth.

They’re exercising their power and authority in accordance with something else. You know, they have some other priority besides the truth, which is this agenda, you know, this desire to remake the world in their own image. Right? You shall be as gods. Well, we shall remake the universe in our image and likeness. We want a world where sex doesn’t make babies.

We want a world where kids don’t really need their parents. The kids are so resilient that parents can do anything they want and the kids are just going to be fine. We want a world where your body doesn’t really matter and you can hack it and chop it and redo it any way you want and nothing bad is going to happen to you.

You know, that’s the world that we want to make and the rest of us are going, “What just happened here?” And so, as usual, Thomas gets to the heart of the matter, which is that these important professions are not operating in accordance with the truth, and therefore they’re betraying the public trust.

Fr. Jack: And that’s why we, at least as Catholics, you know, all of a sudden the Catholic Lawyers Guild or the Catholic Medical Association or Catholic Education, we have to set up our own, if you will, parallel group in which we will be seen as these extremists and outliers, when in fact we’re the ones carrying the truth. 

Dr. Morse: That’s right. We’re the ones who are going to carry the ball forward. Without us, it’s not going to happen. So, you know, I just want to say to all of your listeners, whatever your profession may be, whatever your line of work may be, you may not realize it. You may feel like you can’t do anything and you’re hopeless and your situation is beyond help, hope and help.

But the fact is, your neighbors are counting on you to carry the truth and implement the truth and live in the truth because if you don’t, nobody else will, that’s for sure. Right. So no pressure, people. But that’s the way it is.

Fr. Jack: Well, and you know, today is the feast of Saint Thomas More and Saint John Fisher. And they stood up against the king. And what was an issue, was sex and politics basically, was King Henry the eighth’s issue. And Thomas More and John Fisher and many other good martyrs, priests, lay people, you know, stood up and lost everything, lost everything but their integrity.

Dr. Morse: That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. That’s a great point because I heard a little bit of what you were talking about before I came on the air. You know, that’s a very important fact that Thomas More was the king’s good servant, but God’s first.

Fr. Jack: That’s right.

Dr. Morse: What he was asking was, he recognized the king’s authority. He wasn’t trying to tear down the king’s authority, but he also recognized that the king’s authority is limited. And that has always been part of the Catholic tradition. And one should say that, too, that Catholic political thought has never said that divine right of kings in the sense that the king gets to do anything he wants.

We have never said that. We have never taught that. And in fact, that’s why we are always in trouble with somebody, because we’re saying, you know, I get that you’re the top guy in this society. I recognize your authority. But no, we’re not going to do what you say.

Fr. Jack: But the question is, how much do you listen to the guy above you who is one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit as shown to us through Jesus Christ. And if you’re not willing to follow his way, well, then it’s been nice knowing you. In which case, you know. But he has more power than you do. So he’ll say, it’s been nice knowing you.

And I say, Well, I’m sorry. We probably won’t meet in the afterlife. I’ll be with the Lord. You, where you’ll be. Well, that’s up to God to decide. But I’m not. I’m not cheering for you. Let’s just say that.

Dr. Morse: Well, and I don’t want to take any chances on that, you know.

Fr. Jack: Absolutely. We’ve been talking today with Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse about the latest attacks of the AMA president on simply medical common sense. Doctor Morse, if people want to see your latest Dr. J Show and get your weekly newsletter from the Ruth Institute, where can we send them?

Dr. Morse: Please come to Ruth institute dot org and we will be very happy to fix you up with any kind of information you’re looking for.

Fr. Jack: Well, thank you very much for being with us today. I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

Dr. Morse: Thanks, Father.

About the Ruth Institute

The Ruth Institute is a global non-profit organization, leading an international interfaith coalition to defend the family and build a civilization of love.

Jennifer Roback Morse has a Ph.D. in economics and has taught at Yale and George Mason University. She is the author of The Sexual State and Love and Economics – It Takes a Family to Raise a Village.

To schedule an interview with Dr. Morse, contact media@ruthinstitute.org.

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