Doctors Saved a Trans Woman’s Life But the Hospital is Being Sued Anyway

Today the NY Times has published the story of a trans woman named Jennifer Capasso. Capasso, who lives in New York, was diagnosed with multiple tumors which had spread throughout to various organs. Capasso was still getting medical treatment, including surgeries to remove the tumors, at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan. In March 2022, Capasso set her phone to record what the doctors were saying during the operation.

“I wanted to know what’s going on,” she recounted. She turned on the audio recorder on her phone before the anesthesia hit. “Knowledge is power.”

The surgeon removed part of her lung. She did not get around to playing the recording until a few weeks later. Though the audio was muffled, she could follow some of what the surgical team was saying before the procedure began. Someone was going out for coffee — did anyone want something from Starbucks? The conversation then shifted.

“ — still has man parts.”

It seemed to Ms. Capasso that they were talking about her genitalia.

Later on in the story the Times explains that there was a particular reason the doctors were discussing Capasso’s status as a trans woman. The medical system at the time listed her as female, which meant that when Capasso arrived the nurse offered a pregnancy test.

On the recording, which was shared with The Times, it appears that the medical workers are discussing their feelings about transgender identity…

“Not that it’s not right.”

“It’s not.”

“It doesn’t make sense.”

“I don’t get any of it, I’m sorry.”…

At various points during the conversation, there are repeated mentions of something that had happened earlier, when Ms. Capasso arrived.

She had been asked to take a pregnancy test, a routine preoperative step for female patients. Even though she doesn’t have a uterus, she had offered to do whatever was easiest.

Whatever was easiest? Well, how about not making the staff do a pregnancy test on a man? That seems pretty easy. In any case, that led to another conversation in the operating room about changing the sex designation in Capasso’s medical records.

“It’s not supposed to just say ‘female,’” one can be heard saying. “It’s supposed to say ‘transgender female.’”

“It’s still wrong per se,” someone says.

Then, the conversation takes an unexpected turn. One health care worker announces that she will contact an administrator who works on improving care for L.G.B.T.Q. patients. “She’s, like, in charge of this trans stuff,” the worker says.

A phone call ensues. After explaining the situation — “they’re ordering pregnancy tests on the patient, too” — the medical worker explains that she has updated Ms. Capasso’s medical records, and wonders if that was the correct thing to do.

“So then we have to have it changed back to ‘female?’” the worker asks. “I was just trying to make things right.”

Capasso claims the recording wasn’t intended to trying to catch her doctors talking about trans identity, but whatever the original intent , Capasso later decided to sue. The hospital responded by pointing out that it’s medically necessary for them to know the patient’s actual sex. And even the NY Times story agrees with this.

In legal filings, Memorial Sloan Kettering states that “its records accurately reflect Plaintiff’s sex assigned-at-birth as male.”

“Such information is relevant to and necessary for the provision of standard-of-care treatment,” the hospital stated in court papers.

Medical journals and research articles have emphasized that doctors should be fully aware of the anatomy of their transgender patients — as well as the sex they were assigned at birth — in order to screen for diseases such as cancer and to properly interpret lab results.

It has been 3 1/2 years since the surgery and the recording. Capasso has already lived twice as long as expected in 2022. Capasso’s cancer has returned and so more treatment, including radiation therapy, is now underway. Capasso is getting that treatment from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, the same hospital Capasso is suing. Asked about this, Capasso told the Times, “they’re the best.” Capasso added, “I’m still alive.”

Nothing on Capasso’s recording should be grounds for a lawsuit. Doctors and nurses are allowed to have opinions about trans issues so long as those opinions don’t impact their work. Indeed, the reason they were discussing it seems to be that they had offered a male a pregnancy test based on inaccurate medical records. The fact that Capasso is still alive indicates the doctors have done good work, regardless of his genitals. But of course the Times story seeks to present this as some sort of outrage, as if anyone who voices the forbidden idea, that trans women aren’t really women, deserves to be punished.

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