HHS Secretary Acknowledges Federal Penalties for Hospitals Opposing Gender-Affirming Surgeries

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra admitted during a congressional hearing on Wednesday that hospitals with religious objections to transgender mutilation will lose federal funding.

“Can you commit here today that your department will not withhold federal funding from hospitals or doctors who refuse to provide the gender-affirming care that you are, you know, mandating, if it violates their religious beliefs?” Republican Rep. Mary Miller, chairwoman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, asked Becerra.

Becerra ignored the question and scolded Miller for asking it.

“You’re going somewhere completely different. First, you started talking about how a doctor should have the rights to not offer particular care. Then you stretch it out to provide for the system-wide services. Very different,” Becerra said.

Undeterred by Becerra’s obfuscating, Miller pressed the Biden appointee further.

“You put out this guidance and doctors need to know what are you going to do if they refuse to provide this care?” Miller asked again.

Becerra claimed doctors with “religious objections” to cutting off the breasts and genitals of physically healthy people are protected under conscience objection rules and are “not required” to wreak irreversible damage on bodies.

The Biden administration, however, has worked overtime to undo these protections. Under President Joe Biden, health-care workers whose conscience rights were verifiably violated could not secure legal recourse. Sometimes they were forced to either leave their job or violate their faith to stay employed.

“So you’re committing here today that you will not withhold federal funding?” Miller asked.

“Doctors don’t get federal funding, ma’am,” Beccera replied.

“But the hospitals do,” Miller noted. “Doctors are working in these hospitals.”

Despite Becerra’s dodging, Miller asked again if the Biden administration would punish “health-care facilities” by withholding federal funding if they refused to participate in transing children and adults.

It was only then that the secretary admitted hospitals that fail to carry out the regime’s agenda will suffer financial retaliation from the federal government.

“If a health-care facility is violating the law and not providing the service they are required to, they are not entitled to federal funding,” Becerra said.

Becerra’s confession comes mere weeks after HHS finalized a rule amending President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act to prohibit providers that benefit from taxpayer funds from denying ill-named “care” such as chemical castration and transgender mutilation to anyone. Just about every large health-care provider accepts federal funds through programs such as Medicaid and Medicare.

A growing number of people — especially children — who undergo social or physical “transitions,” such as adopting false pronouns, undergoing mutilation, or taking sterilizing drugs, suffer harrowing, life-threatening consequences. Yet Democrats have made extremist gender ideology and all of its consequences a hallmark of their bureaucratic agenda.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.