The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty filed the lawsuit over the Obama administration’s rule in the Affordable Care Act potentially forcing doctors to perform gender-transition procedures, including surgery, for transgender children.

Becket Fund attorney Stephanie Barclay says the doctors want to treat patients based on their medical knowledge and what they consider the best interests of the patient. She points to a little irony in the government’s edict.

“The government doesn’t even require Medicare and Medicaid to cover gender-transition procedures because the Health and Human Service medical experts found that the risks were often too high and the benefits too unclear,” she explains.

“[Still], doctors will be in violation of this new government mandate and could face potential lawsuits and even job loss.”

According to the attorney, many doctors also are concerned that the mandate violates their religious beliefs, which would forbid doing the impossible – changing a person born male into a female and vice versa.

“This regulation provides no protection for a doctor’s ability to exercise both their medical judgment and their religiously inspired desire to care for society’s most vulnerable,” Barclay adds. “It has no protections that would leave room for that medical judgment or a doctor’s conscience.”

Texas, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Nebraska, and Kansas have joined medical professionals in the lawsuit to protect their right to not be forced to act on the basis of a politicized social agenda.