President Donald Trump's administration has reversed a rule that has prevented healthcare workers and insurance companies from providing services to women and transgender people.
The move could result in health providers denying to give coverage and care to women and transgender people amid the coronavirus pandemic, as reported by Independent.
The reversal also comes during Pride Month, on the anniversary of the Pulse massacre that saw shooters gun down 49 people inside a gay nightclub.
Religious freedom
The Department of Health and Human Services invoked "religious freedom" to reverse a rule that the Affordable Care Act put up that turned the government's perspective of sex discrimination around. The decision was based on the word "sex" being male or female and founded on biology.
The changes cause the removal of discrimination protection based on gender identity and sex, which includes individuals looking to have an abortion.
According to The Guardian, multiple organizations have announced their plans of protesting against the change and the Human Rights Campaign stated it would file a lawsuit. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has also announced that it plans to sue and revert the change made by the Trump administration.
The Obama administration made it so that hospitals would be required to provide services such as gender transitions if the medical facility provided the procedure to other medical conditions. The provisions were implemented to support the Affordable Care Act's anti-discrimination section.
The head of the health department unit, Roger Severino, stated that transgender people had been continually protected by other regulations. These directives remove discrimination in healthcare in terms of race, colour, national origin, and several other factors.
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Fighting back
Multiple LGBTQ+ groups, however, have previously argued that individuals looking for gender confirmation treatment and transgender people who need medical attention for health risks such as diabetes or heart problems require protection.
Several women's groups say the new rules also limit people's access to abortion should they want to have the procedure which is considered legal.
In January, Trump announced his support of the anti-abortion March for Life rally where the US president was the first country leader to speak at the movement, as reported by Global News.
The president of the National Women's Law Center, Fatima Goss Graves noted that no individual should be afraid of being cast away by medical providers for who they are or what heath decisions they chose to make.
The move to reverse the law is among a series of steps that the Trump administration has taken in revoking protections that the LGBTQ+ community has successfully achieved.
Trump and his supporters also made a move to restrict military service conducted by transgender people, giving homeless shelters the potential to turn away an individual for his gender identity. They reiterated that federal civil rights laws do not provide transgender people protection from workplace discrimination.
Planned Parenthood, a nonprofit organization, stated that not even a global pandemic or national uprising could put a stop to the Trump administration's attempt to discriminate, divide, and limit healthcare access from citizens.
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