AMA blasts reasoning for military’s transgender policy

SAN DIEGO (AP) — A new Trump administration regulation set 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 Thursday that the policy and its wording mischaracterizes transgender people as having a “deficiency.”

It contends it defies science by classifying the need to transition to another gender among “administratively disqualifying conditions” that include those the Pentagon has labeled as a “congenital or developmental defects.”

The Pentagon says its use of the word deficiencies refers to failing to meet military standards and does not refer to identifying with another gender.

The policy requires transgender troops to adhere to their biological sex.