When Charlene
Hastings of San Francisco called Seton Medical Center, a
Catholic hospital in Daly City, Calif., about
breast-enlargement surgery, she was told, "God made
you a man."
According to
The [San Jose] Mercury News, Hastings,
57, said she had found and chosen a surgeon at
the hospital, Leonard Gray, who was willing to perform
the procedure. When he was denied the rights, Hastings filed
suit against the hospital, challenging its ability to
operate according to religious principles.
While she had
already undergone the major part of her gender-reassignment
surgery, she was denied the breast augmentation by a
surgical coordinator, who said the facilities were not
to be used for transgender surgeries.
"She kept saying,
'It's not God's will,'" Hastings said. "I could not
believe it. It's a blatant case of discrimination."
While state law
does allow religious hospitals to refuse to perform
abortions, there are no specific exemptions for elective
transgender surgery.
Kristina Wertz,
legal director of the Transgender Law Center in San
Francisco, said this isn't the only such incident. "Seton
and other hospitals in the area have put up
significant barriers to care for transgender people."
"There's simply
no religious exemption in the Unruh Act," Wertz said
about California's law that prohibits discrimination on the
basis of gender, gender identity, or sexual
orientation. "We're talking about a type of care
that's OK for one class but not another."
"Seton Medical
Center provides medically necessary services to all
individuals," said Elizabeth Nikels, vice president of
communications for the Daughters of Charity, an
organization that operates Seton and five other
Catholic Hospitals in the area. "However, the hospital
does not perform surgical procedures contrary to Catholic
teaching."
Hastings's
lawyer, Christopher Dolan, said the case not just about the
hospital's religious procedures but also about civil rights.
"It is about
transgender people being able to use businesses and
other facilities on an equal basis as other people. If you
took out 'transgender' in the lawsuit and replaced it
with 'African-American,' this would be a no-brainer,"
he said.
The hospital does
allow female patients who are not transgender the right
to breast-enlargement surgeries. (The Advocate)
