Katie Hopkins claims NHS shouldn’t fund transgender people’s ‘life choices’
Katie Hopkins has claimed the NHS shouldn’t fund the ‘life choices’ of trans people, in an attack on gender and fertility treatments.
The controversy-monger made the claim on her LBC talk show over the weekend, after right-wing Tory MP Peter Bone attacked fertility provisions for trans people on the NHS, which allows people to freeze sperm and eggs before undergoing gender surgery.
As surgery often makes transgender people infertile, the routine choice is offered so they can have biological children later, as it is in similar cases for people undergoing cancer treatment and other surgeries.
But Hopkins attacked it as a “life choice”.
She said: “Is it OK that we are paying for these individuals and their life choices?
“As much as I love to wave the rainbow coloured banner and much as I see that that’s the way the world’s going, I don’t agree with it.
“I don’t think we should be paying for trans people to have their eggs frozen on the NHS.
“If we lived in a world of endless resources, there would be no problem with the amount of cash available but the fact is we are 2.4 for 5 billion pounds in debt with our NHS.”
“The fact is we’ve got cataract operations being cancelled, three out of four trusts now do not perform cataract operations until the patient is perfectly blind because we don’t have the funds to approve them.
“We have people waiting for operations 12 months to wait for an operation. I waited for mine personally for 3.5 years – I fell off the waiting list because it was so long.
“Do we really need to pander to the trans community and their whims? I say no.”
