A British hospital has canceled a woman’s life-saving surgery after she objected to having a transgender nurse.
London’s Princess Grace Hospital told the anonymous woman it had to “protect staff from unacceptable distress” and canceled her operation, according to The Daily Mail.
The woman’s complex colorectal surgery had been scheduled for October 10.
The woman is a sexual assault victim and specifically requested all-female facilities. She was caught off guard when a person she believed to be a biological male who identifies as female in a blonde wig and make-up opened the door and made eye contact with her when she arrived for a pre-op assessment that involved intimate procedures.
The incident is currently being investigated by HCA, Princess Grace Hospital’s parent company.
This prompted the woman, a feminist retired lawyer, to make an urgent request for an all-female nursing staff.
“I began to wonder if it was just a coincidence that this member of staff with a ‘gender identity’ had made their presence felt to me in such an inappropriate way during my first visit,” the woman told The Daily Mail.
“I began to suspect that I had been targeted because my patient records showed that I refused to use pronouns and wanted single sex facilities, although I have no evidence of this,” she said.
“Then I began to panic that men would be attending to my intimate care at the hospital while I was immobilized for an entire week following major surgery,” the woman continued. “It was a slow, dawning realization. I felt sick. Alarm bells were ringing in my head. I cannot describe the fear that I felt. I cannot rationalize it.”
The woman wrote to HCA that evening to stress that she believed mixed-sex hospital facilities are dangerous to women.
“I do feel that the hospital should follow a protocol of offering ALL women patients single-sex nursing care,” she wrote.
“Please do not make life difficult for women when they are at their most vulnerable by forcing them into uncomfortable and embarrassing situations. I cannot believe that I am the first patient to have raised this with you,” she said.
In response, Princess Grace Hospital’s Chief Executive Officer Maxine Estop Green emailed her back and told her that her surgery was canceled.
The woman urged the hospital to keep her appointment, saying they must have misunderstood her perfectly legal requests.
The hospital said it could grant her a private room but would not cooperate with her request for female-only nurses after her surgery. The hospital also noted that the woman had voiced her opinions about gender identity pronouns and said it must protect staff from “discrimination and harassment.”
Afterward, the woman said she believed she was targeted by transgender activists within the hospital.
“I am still in a state of shock at this punitive and discriminatory reaction by the CEO of this hospital which specializes in women’s procedures,” she said. “Everything that has happened is so off the wall and irrational.”
The woman said the hospital’s action was about “appeasing men who claim a gender identity,” adding that she could not believe this was happening in the United Kingdom.
“They will punish anyone who tells the truth,” she said. “Women’s safety, dignity and privacy continues to be sacrificed on the altar of this quasi religion.”