US bishops ban Catholic hospitals from performing sex change surgeries

The nation’s Catholic bishops voted last week to bar Catholic hospitals from performing surgeries or giving hormones that attempt to change a person’s sex. The move updates the ethical rules guiding one of the largest health care networks in the country. 

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops approved the change in a 206-8 vote during its 2025 Plenary Assembly in Baltimore, according to Catholic Vote. Seven bishops abstained. 

The updated rules appear in the seventh edition of “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services.” 

The change brings the document in line with recent guidance from the Vatican and a doctrinal note issued by the bishops. Those statements conclude the human person has inherent dignity that cannot be separated from the body. 

Secular medical groups have pushed the opposite message in recent years, but the bishops said Catholic institutions need to stay anchored in their mission. 

The directives say attempts to alter the human body for reasons unrelated to medical healing cannot be permitted in Catholic facilities. 

“Catholic health care services must not provide or permit medical interventions, whether surgical, hormonal, or genetic, that aim not to restore but rather to alter the fundamental order of the human body in its form or function,” the document says. 

The rule gives examples of what Catholic hospitals must avoid, including procedures “that aim to transform sexual characteristics of a human body into those of the opposite sex (or to nullify sexual characteristics of a human body).” 

The bishops said such practices “risk threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.” 

The guidance also addresses how Catholic hospitals should care for patients struggling with gender identity issues. 

The bishops said people facing this distress deserve compassion and real medical care, but only within human limits and the natural order. 

The directive cites the mission of Catholic health care, which traditionally emphasizes service to the vulnerable. 

It says providers “must employ all appropriate resources to mitigate the suffering of those who experience gender incongruence or gender dysphoria” while respecting the body rather than mutilating it. 

The update comes as many public systems push aggressive sex-change policies. But Catholic leaders have said their institutions cannot mirror those trends because doing so would abandon the principles that separate faith-based care from the secular model.