Maryland health facility's trans-friendly policy could require minor patients to room with opposite sex

A mental health clinic at a Maryland hospital has instituted a policy by which minor patients who identify as transgender could be roomed with other minor patients of the opposite biological sex.

The Behavioral Health Center at Carroll Hospital in Westminster instructed staff to use the preferred pronouns of patients "regardless of their physical appearance, legal name, medical history, etc.," according to an April 2022 internal policy document obtained by Fox News Digital.

The policy at the Behavioral Health Center, which treats adults as well as adolescents, goes on to say that when patients are assigned rooms based on their gender, nursing staff "shall assign a transgender patient to a room in accordance with the patient’s self-identified gender, unless the patient requests otherwise."

A Behavioral Health Services social worker "will determine a patient’s self-identified gender prior to assigning the patient a room by reviewing the patient’s admitting/registration record," the policy states. "If the patient’s family members suggest that the patient is of a gender different from that with which the patient self-identifies, the patient’s view should be honored."

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The policy also notes that "complaints from another patient regarding a roommate’s gender identity or expression do not constitute grounds for an exception to the room assignment policy."

"Should hospital staff receive any complaints, the patient who made the complaint should be moved to another room as long as relocating the patient would be medically appropriate," according to the policy, which also stipulates that transgender patients are to be allowed to use the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity.

"The 2022 policy cited for accommodating transgender individuals applies only for the Behavioral Health Center at Carroll Hospital," a spokesperson for the hospital told Fox News Digital. "It is based on nationally recognized standards to promote the safe care of transgendered individuals and follows Maryland state guidelines for people who identify in that group."

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Former University of Pennsylvania associate dean Dr. Stanley Goldfarb told Fox News Digital that the center's policy "is just the latest example of the real harms caused by the infiltration of radical gender theory into medical institutions and the danger of allowing politics to supersede the best treatment for patients."

"The affirmation-only policy is not only detrimental to gender-questioning minors they are charged with treating, but also has potential wide-ranging impacts on the vulnerable children and teens in their care who are forced to cohabitate and share bathrooms with patients of the opposite sex," Goldfarb continued.

"It is unconscionable that even young patients who object to sharing a room with a patient of the opposite sex would be forced to live with that person during the course of their treatment at Carroll Hospital," he added.

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Goldfarb is the chairman of Do Not Harm, a group of medical professionals who aim to "protect health care from a radical, divisive and discriminatory ideology," and are speaking out against what they believe are the dangers of "gender-affirming care" for minors.