AMA blasts reasoning for #Trumps bigoted military's transgender policy

AMA blasts reasoning for military’s transgender policy


https://www.fayobserver.com/news/20190411/ama-blasts-reasoning-for-militarys-transgender-policy

By Julie Watson, Associated Press
Posted Apr 11, 2019 at 4:25 PM Updated Apr 13, 2019 at 8:50 AM


SAN DIEGO — A new Trump administration regulation that was scheduled to go into effect Friday directs military secretaries to kick out transgender service members who refuse to serve in their birth sex and “given an opportunity to correct those deficiencies.”

The American Medical Association told The Associated Press on Thursday the policy and its wording mis-characterizes transgender people as having a “deficiency” and defies science by classifying the need to transition to another gender among “administratively disqualifying conditions” that include those the Pentagon has labeled as “congenital or developmental defects.”

The new regulation strips transgender troops of rights they only recently secured under the Obama administration to serve openly and receive care if they choose to transition to another gender.

The Department of Defense said its use of the words “deficiencies” is military lingo for when an individual fails to meet standards to maintain a lethal force. Lt. Col. Carla Gleason said it is not a reference to gender dysphoria, a condition of extreme distress from not identifying with one’s biological gender.

The department says transgender people can serve if they remain in their biological sex. It would allow current service members who transitioned before the Pentagon issued its directive, though the government also has said it retains the right to eliminate that protection.

“The only thing deficient is any medical science behind this decision,” said Dr. Barbara L. McAneny, president of the AMA. “The AMA has said repeatedly that there is no medically valid reason — including a diagnosis of gender dysphoria — to exclude transgender individuals from military service.”

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“They can dress it up in whatever words they want, but when you carefully look at this it’s total disrespect for these human beings by saying a core piece of them is not acceptable,” Gale Pollock, former acting U.S. Army surgeon general.

Pollock signed a statement with two former U.S. surgeons general and two other former military surgeons general, saying they are “troubled by the Defense Department’s characterization of the need to undergo gender transition as a ‘deficiency,’ and by the addition of gender dysphoria to official lists of ‘congenital or developmental defects’ that include bed-wetting and ‘disturbances of perception, thinking, emotional control or behavior.’”

An estimated 14,700 troops identify as transgender..............................