The Ruth Institute congratulated the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) for its clear-headed and compassionate “Doctrinal Note on the Moral Limits to Technological Manipulation of the Human Body.”
“With little fanfare, the USCCB has given a clear set of guidelines that, if followed, would end an enormous amount of suffering and confusion,” said Ruth Institute president Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D, “as they stand against ‘gender reassignment.'”
“Science shows that ‘watchful waiting’ is the best policy for the vast majority of young people who experience gender dysphoria,” Morse said. “Roughly 80-95% will accept their sex by late adolescence. The bishops’ guidelines for addressing gender incongruence would gently steer these youth and their families away from irreparable damage and into the relatively safe strategy of psychological support.”
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The USCCB statement provides two requirements for medical intervention to be morally acceptable: if it repairs a defect in the body, and if it sacrifices part of the body for the sake of the whole. Removing cancerous tissue or a gangrenous limb is not mutilation, but therapeutic intervention.
“The typical person requesting medical intervention to attempt to change the sex of the body has no defect or disease that threatens his or her life,” Morse said. “Other less intrusive means can and must be found to alleviate the suffering of the person experiencing gender incongruence.”
“The bishops’ statement is consistent with the best modern medical knowledge. Trans surgery does not prevent suicide, and hormonal treatments cause a cascade of serious medical side effects whose full extent is not yet known.”
“Less intrusive methods of dealing with gender dysphoria are both morally and medically superior to many of the current practices. Thus, this statement by the USCCB is not only in keeping with Catholic moral tradition, but also with the Hippocratic Oath for medical practitioners to ‘first, do no harm.’”
“The Ruth Institute is grateful to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops for this important and timely statement. May Catholic medical professionals across the country take its wisdom to heart.”
For more information on the harms of the transgender ideology, see the Ruth Institute’s Transgender Resource Center.
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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