The federal government and quasi-governmental entities should let critics of gender ideology operate without interference.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which represents Catholics across the country, recently admonished efforts by the federal government to force hospitals to assist in transgender procedures, such as surgeries that remove healthy organs and can permanently make someone sterile or infertile .

The bishops’ conference also criticized the false notion that transgender surgeries make someone healthier. The interventions “do not repair a defect in the body: there is no disorder in the body that needs to be addressed; the bodily organs are normal and healthy.”

Furthermore, “these interventions are intended to transform the body so as to make it take on as much as possible the form of the opposite sex, contrary to the natural form of the body. They are attempts to alter the fundamental order and finality of the body and to replace it with something else.”

“Any technological intervention that does not accord with the fundamental order of the human person as a unity of body and soul, including the sexual difference inscribed in the body, ultimately does not help but, rather, harms the human person,” the USCCB wrote.

Religious institutions have First Amendment rights to refuse to be involved with medical procedures that violate their teachings and beliefs.

Even the Council on Academic Accreditation, a quasi-governmental entity, conceded as much last summer when it reapproved Brigham Young University’s speech therapy program despite earlier threats against its certification due to its decision to end its voice program. The Mormon university completely ended its speech therapy services for all individuals so it would not need to assist gender-dysphoric individuals who wanted to present themselves as the opposite sex.

The USCCB is basing its assessment partially on the teachings of the Catholic Church on sex and the gender binary, a view held by many religious institutions and a fact affirmed through objective reasoning and scientific reality. BYU similarly based its decision on its religious beliefs.

While the challenges to the federal government’s mandate that healthcare providers assist individuals in “gender transitions” come from religious institutions, there are good reasons why hospitals may also want to fight back against the regulations.

The personal testimony of “ detransitioners ,” or people who went through transgender drugs and surgeries they later tried to reverse, shows that there are risks to the procedures, and some individuals experience regret. Furthermore, two individuals killed themselves in a National Institutes of Health-funded study on the use of hormone interventions. Healthcare companies may look purely at the data, setting aside the biological reality of sex, and decide it is too risky now to participate in those procedures.

It is best to let everyone opt out of these drugs and surgeries, which harm individuals and will likely produce long-term damage that will continue to be exposed.

Matt Lamb is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He is an associate editor for the College Fix and has previously worked for Students for Life of America and Turning Point USA.