Today At The University of San Francisco

Barbara Garcia

On Friday, May 17, the (Jesuit) University of San Francisco will hold the 2013 commencement exercises for Barbara Garcia, director of health at the San Francisco Department of Public Health. Ms. Garcia was appointed by then-Mayor Gavin Newsom in 2010. She is an open lesbian. Garcia is probably best known to the wider public following national news coverage of a decision of the San Francisco board of supervisors that the city’s Healthy San Francisco  program—that is, the taxpayers—will, in addition to coverage for abortion and contraception, provide free “gender reassignment surgery.” their School of Nursing and Health Professions. The commencement speaker and recipient of an honorary degree will be

As director, Garcia will be in charge of implementing this program. On November 10, 2012 Gay Star News reported “San Francisco will now offer mastectomies (removal of the breasts), genital reconstructions and other surgeries recommended for some transgender people under the city’s 5-year-old universal health care plan.” Garcia justified the procedures: “The community felt the exclusion on Healthy San Francisco was discriminatory and we wanted to change that as the first step.”

As the San Francisco program shows, there are many people who take gender reassignment surgery seriously, rather than seeing it as a mutilation born of mental illness. To put “gender reassignment surgery” into a proper perspective, let’s examine an identical syndrome called Body Integrity Identity Disorder. The noted bioethicist Wesley Smith, writing at the Human Exceptionalism blog at National Review, describes it: “BIID, also known as ‘amputee wannabe,’ is a terrible mental illness in which sufferers obsesses and truly anguish about becoming an amputee–which they perceive as their true identities.” He went on to explain his experience at something called the “transhumanist” conference:

Link (here) to read the rest at California Catholic Daily