16 healthcare groups and doctors announce lawsuit against Trump Administration's anti-trans, anti-abortion regulation

I told you when I wrote about it last night that Trump's latest attack on the transgender community wasn't going to go unanswered.

From Buzzfeed:

Sixteen health care groups and doctors sued the Trump administration Tuesday to block a rule that enables health workers to refuse to perform abortion or sex reassignment surgery. 

The 183-page lawsuit, filed in the US District Court in Santa Clara County, California, argues the rule sends a message to health care providers around the country that they should limit or stop providing abortion care and sex reassignment or risk losing vital government funding. 

This, the advocates behind the suit argue, will make abortion and transgender services even less available in rural areas where state laws make it increasingly difficult to access that care. 

Trump’s rule, released in early May, states its aim is to protect “providers, individuals, and other health care entities from having to provide, participate in, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for, services such as abortion, sterilization, or assisted suicide,” if they have a moral or religious objection to those procedures. 

 . . . “This rule is yet another example of the Trump administration turning religious freedom into a weapon to discriminate,” Genevieve Scott, a senior staff attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights told BuzzFeed News. “The rule encourages religious and moral views to overwhelm the medical needs of a patient … which has enormous consequences for the patient including the possibility of death.” 

. . . Among the groups and doctors suing over the rule are several LGBT community centers and health groups, Medical Students For Choice, gynecological centers, and Santa Clara County, in conjunction with CRR, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and Lambda Legal, a legal defense fund focusing on LGBT issues. They’re not the only ones suing, however. Last week two dozen states, counties, and cities sued the Trump administration over the rule as well, in a federal court in Manhattan, arguing that the rule aimed to “coerce” states into limiting access to abortion, assisted suicide, and transgender health services.

The entire article is here and worth a read and share.