Rocky Mountain Voice

Tag: Medical Ethics

Lawmakers Investigate Claims Wealthy Foreigners Bypassed Americans for Organ Transplants
Fox News, Approved, National

Lawmakers Investigate Claims Wealthy Foreigners Bypassed Americans for Organ Transplants

By Greg Wehner | Fox News More than 100,000 Americans remain on transplant waiting lists while wealthy foreigners are allegedly allowed to skip the line. House lawmakers are launching a congressional investigation into two major hospital systems amid allegations they allowed wealthy foreign patients to bypass U.S. organ transplant waiting lists, as more than 100,000 Americans remain on those lists and thousands die each year waiting for life-saving organs. Reps. Jason Smith, R-Mo., and David Schweikert, R-Ariz., who lead the House Ways and Means Committee’s oversight effort, sent letters Tuesday to the University of Chicago Medical Center and Montefiore Medical Center in New York demanding records by Feb. 10 and warning they will issue subpoenas i...
Colorado Hospitals Halt Gender Treatments for Minors After Federal Warning
TownHall.com, Approved, State

Colorado Hospitals Halt Gender Treatments for Minors After Federal Warning

By: Amy Curtis | Townhall On December 18, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announced new and sweeping regulatory changes that would bring an end to "gender-affirming care" for minors. This includes a ban on puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical procedures for those under 18 years of age. The reforms mean that hospitals that continue to provide such "gender-affirming care" to children would be stripped of all federal funding as a condition of their participation in Medicare/Medicaid programs. In his announcement, Kennedy said, "Doctors assume a solemn obligation to protect children. Yet doctors across the country now provide needless and irreversible sex-rejecting procedures that violate their sacred Hippocratic oath, endangering t...
Why two House bills on medical transition procedures produced different votes
Rocky Mountain Voice, National, Top Stories

Why two House bills on medical transition procedures produced different votes

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice The U.S. House passed two bills this month aimed at restricting federal involvement in medical transition procedures for minors. They used different enforcement tools. And they produced different voting coalitions. One bill passed without a single Republican voting against it and drew limited Democratic support. The vote on the second bill was closer, with some crossover support and a number of members listed as not voting. Republican Rep. Gabe Evans (CD-8) backed the funding restriction but rejected the felony approach. The difference lies in how each bill was written to be enforced. Two bills, two approaches H.R. 498, the Do No Harm in Medicaid Act, is a funding bill tied to how Medicaid dollars are used. It bars M...
Behind closed doors: Gender doctors admit they are ‘winging it’ with minors
The Free Press, Approved, National

Behind closed doors: Gender doctors admit they are ‘winging it’ with minors

By Leor Sapir | The Free Press In footage obtained exclusively by The Free Press, gender doctors acknowledge they perform life-altering procedures on vulnerable youth with no supportive evidence—and they are proud of it. At their conferences, closed to outsiders and the press, the gender clinicians allowed themselves to speak freely. They spoke about the boys who said they wanted to be girls and the girls who felt they were meant to be boys, and the medical and surgical interventions that would make them appear as the opposite sex. The clinicians also discussed new procedures for a new type of patient—some of them adolescents—who wanted to be made to look as if they had no sex at all. In one of the videos, obtained exclusively by The Free Press, from the 2021 conf...
Inside the story Colorado rarely hears: Trauma, transition and the path back to truth
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Inside the story Colorado rarely hears: Trauma, transition and the path back to truth

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice “It took me almost two decades to realize the error,” Antoinette De La Cruz told a Fort Collins audience on November 20. “Transitioning didn’t fix anything. It delayed the inevitable. Healing.” It was the first time many Coloradans had heard a detransitioner describe her path into transition, what it cost her and what brought her back. Read RMV’s reporting on the event here. Here she shared the fuller account of her story. Where it began De La Cruz said her transition began long before hormones or surgery. “I learned very young as a little girl that I was not valued as a woman, and I definitely was not safe as one,” she said. When she was seventeen she met someone who told her she could become a man. “I had no idea you could even do ...
Fort Collins event connects youth gender care concerns to upcoming Colorado ballot measures
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Fort Collins event connects youth gender care concerns to upcoming Colorado ballot measures

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice “Is it really true that when a confused hurting kid goes to the doctor the doctor turns the knife around and puts it on them and profits from it,” Colorado physician Dr. Travis Morrell asked a Fort Collins audience on November 20. “It is true.” His remarks were part of From Heartbreak to Hope, an event hosted by Protect Kids Colorado at Dayspring Christian Church that brought together parents, detransitioners, attorneys and policy experts to examine what speakers called a growing collision between gender medicine and parental rights in Colorado. Speakers at the From Heartbreak to Hope event on November 20. Top row left to right: Dr. Travis Morrell and Dr. James Lindsay. Bottom row left to right: Antoinette De La Cruz, Erin Friday and ...
From stomachache to ideology: How Colorado’s “Right to Know” built a hospital compliance registry
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

From stomachache to ideology: How Colorado’s “Right to Know” built a hospital compliance registry

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Just after midnight, an 18-year-old Colorado woman—identified here as “Clarity” to protect her identity—went to the ER, hoping the pain was only a severe case of gastritis. She’s a recent high-school graduate now working for a Colorado nonprofit and was granted anonymity by RMV. When Clarity was finally told she could leave, someone brought over an iPad and said she needed to finish a few discharge questions before going home. On the screen was Colorado’s Patients’ Right to Know Act Service Availability Form—pages of items about gender-affirming care, abortion services and end-of-life options. “She was yelling at us over Zoom, saying, ‘Do you understand that you have access to these services and you’re knowingly denying them?’” Clarity ...
Nearly half of Americans blame COVID hospital protocols for loved ones’ deaths
Rasmussen Reports, Approved, National

Nearly half of Americans blame COVID hospital protocols for loved ones’ deaths

By Brian Joondeph | Commentary, Rasmussen Reports A new Rasmussen Reports survey reveals an unsettling reality: nearly one-third of American adults say someone they know died of COVID-19 while hospitalized, and almost half believe hospital treatment protocols likely contributed to that death. That perception warrants attention, not dismissal. During the pandemic, hospitals faced tremendous pressure, yet several systemic factors, including financial incentives, rigid therapeutic protocols, and strict visitor restrictions, may have influenced patient outcomes in ways that were never fully explored. Under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, Medicare reimbursed hospitals an extra 20% for inpatient COVID-19 diagnoses. A positive PCR test alone ofte...
Supreme Court case claims Colorado’s conversion therapy ban erases gay identity, silences counselors
Washington Examiner, Approved, National

Supreme Court case claims Colorado’s conversion therapy ban erases gay identity, silences counselors

By Mia Cathell | Washington Examiner A controversial Supreme Court case challenging a ban on so-called conversion therapy, as it pertains to treating transgender children, is attracting unlikely allies. At issue in Chiles v. Salazar, soon to be argued before the Supreme Court, is whether a Colorado law prohibiting “conversion therapy” for pediatric patients unconstitutionally restricts a counselor’s free speech rights, via viewpoint discrimination, when that therapist wants to counsel children experiencing gender dysphoria toward embracing their biological sex. A number of traditionally progressive third parties are siding with the plaintiff, Kaley Chiles, a licensed Christian counselor who nudges clients to “live consistently with God’s design.”...
Trump Admin Supports Nationwide Bill to Shield Children From Transgender Procedures
Daily Wire, Approved, National

Trump Admin Supports Nationwide Bill to Shield Children From Transgender Procedures

By Leif Le Mahieu | Daily Wire The legislation would allow kids to sue their doctors within 25 years of their 18th birthday.  The Trump administration is backing legislation that would ban doctors from performing transgender procedures on children and allow lawsuits against doctors or hospitals who greenlit such procedures.   The Justice Department said Wednesday that it had “transmitted a legislative proposal to Congress that protects and defends children from chemical and surgical mutilation under the guise of ‘gender-affirming care.’” In the press release, the DOJ said it was backing a proposal from Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Rep. Bob Onder (R-MO) that would protect children nationwide from transgender procedures. “The Department of Justice has h...