HHS Transgender Decision Might Have Strange Consequences; Cervical Exams For Transgender Women But Not For Transgender Men
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HHS Reverses Trump's Decision Against Transgender People
WASHINGTON, D.C. (May 10, 2021) - HHS, reversing a decision made under the Trump administration, has determined that federal laws forbidding sex discrimination in health care also protect gay and transgender people, and that the HHS Office for Civil Rights will once again investigate complaints of sex discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
While most people are likely to praise the move as preventing discrimination against persons who claim their sexual identity is different from their anatomical gender, such a policy could lead to strange consequences - or at least it reportedly has under the British medical system.
Transgendered individuals with a penis but no vagina are being asked to have medical tests on their nonexistent cervices, while transgendered persons with a vagina and cervix will not be asked, under new guidelines which appear to place lives at risk and encourage a physically impossible medical exam on organs which simply do not exist, notes public interest law professor John Banzhaf.
And, carrying this absurdity to its totally illogical conclusion, a patient with a penis and a full beard was offered a cervical test because, despite his clearly masculine appearance and style of dress, he registered himself as being gender neutral.
The Legal Complications
These are just some of the legal complications which can result when people's gender must be determined not by their genitals nor by their chromosomes, but rather by how they claim to feel at any given time, says Banzhaf, who is a supporter of equal rights for transgender students, workers, and those seeking to use places of public accommodation.
While these examples from the United Kingdom may stretch credibility even more than laws in many states which permit persons with a beard and penis to undress and shower along with typical women and even girls if they simply claim to feel female, they begin to suggest some of the problems which can arise from permitting counter-anatomical self-defined determinations of sex or gender to have legal consequences.
A member of Parliament pointed out that "this NHS effort to be politically correct is putting the lives of women who claim to be men at risk" because they will not be advised to have routine pap smear and mammogram tests in order to diagnose cancer while it still be treatable. He also said that the new policy was "wasting the time of men who claim to be women by offering them tests for organs they do not have."
But a so-called "trans health adviser" claimed that this now policy was required. He reportedly argued that offering cervical tests could be uncomfortable for "trans masculine people" who are biological women as it could offend how they perceive themselves. He also asserted that words and references to the biological organs of men and women "can trigger feelings of gender dysphoria in the transgendered."
Perhaps, as Charles Dickens once wrote, "the law is a ass," and at least in some situations, well meaning changes to the law may have asinine consequences, suggests Banzhaf.
