Mar 4, 2008 / 02:19 am
A Catholic hospital that refused to allow its facilities to be used for breast implant surgery on a man that had undergone a sex-change operation will now allow the procedure, the California Catholic Daily reports.
In 2006 a doctor told Charlene Hastings, 57, that Seton Medical Center in Daly City would not allow him to perform breast-enhancement surgery on a transsexual. Hastings claimed that upon further inquiry a surgical coordinator at the hospital said to him, “It’s not God’s will” and “God made you a man.”
A 2006 memo sent by Seton Medical Center to physicians said, “transgender procedures or procedures that are part of the transgendering process may not be performed at Seton, as Seton is a Catholic Hospital.”
Hastings filed suit against the hospital in San Francisco Superior Court in December. The suit alleged that Seton violated state law, which allows religiously-based hospitals to refuse to perform abortions but makes no exemption for denying elective surgery for transgender operations.