Health advocates representing American hospitals, medical groups, insurers and civil rights associations condemned the Trump administration on Saturday for rolling back protections for transgender patients, and for doing so amid a global pandemic.

The new rule, long sought by conservatives and the religious right, narrows the legal definition of sex discrimination in the Affordable Care Act so that it omits protection for transgender people. It also opens the door for health care providers to refuse to treat patients who have had abortions. The move is part of a broad set of policy changes that weaken safeguards for transgender people across multiple sectors, including education, employment and housing. The changes to the Affordable Care Act, often referred to as Obamacare, were proposed last year.

“This is a sad day,” Ricardo Lara, California’s insurance commissioner, said in a statement on Friday evening. “The Trump administration has once again sacrificed the health and safety of vulnerable Americans.”

Mr. Lara, who had written a letter signed by 18 state insurance commissioners urging the administration to reject the proposal, criticized the president for releasing the rule during June, which is Pride Month, and on the fourth anniversary of the massacre at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, where 49 people were killed and more than 50 wounded on June 12, 2016. Read more via New York Times