Left to the Church and its tribunals
Damn, I missed this – last month a judge dismissed Tamesha Means’s ACLU-backed lawsuit against the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.
The ACLU immediately appealed.
A federal judge in Grand Rapids has dismissed a Muskegon woman’s ACLU-backed lawsuit that claimed Catholic anti-abortion doctrine caused her to receive improper care at Muskegon’s Mercy Health Partners before she miscarried in 2010.
The ACLU immediately filed a notice of appeal to the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Catholic anti-abortion doctrine did cause her to receive improper care – she presented with a miscarriage and they told her to go home and wait. That’s not standard of care, it’s Catholic non-care.
The ACLU-drafted lawsuit contended Means “suffered severe, unnecessary, and foreseeable physical and emotional pain and suffering” because of policy directives set by the bishops and enforced at Mercy and other Catholic hospitals.
And risk, wholly unnecessary risk. Remember Savita Halappanavar? That risk.
Catholic hospitals that obey the ERD refuse to terminate miscarriages as long as the fetus still has a pulse.
The lawsuit sought damages and a declaration that the conference’s actions were negligent, “not only to provide a remedy for the trauma she suffered, but also to prevent other women in her situation from suffering similar harm in the future,” in the words of the legal complaint.
The policies at issue are called Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services. They prohibit pre-viability pregnancy termination and informing patients that deliberate termination is a medical option.
Even in the case of a pre-viability miscarriage, when the fetus is doomed no matter what. The stinking “Directives” still say the woman has to wait, even if it kills her. It did kill Savita Halappanavar, and it has killed others whose families didn’t make a stink.
On Tuesday, June 30, U.S. District Judge Robert Holmes Bell dismissed the lawsuit without a hearing on the evidence. He based his opinion on written briefs submitted by both sides.
Bell cited two basic reasons for the dismissal:
- Michigan federal courts have no jurisdiction over the bishops’ conference for policy directives issued by the Washington, D.C.-based organization.
- It’s improper for courts to interfere in religious doctrinal decisions, which Bell concluded was behind the anti-abortion policy directives. Considering the Muskegon woman’s negligence claim would “impermissibly intrude upon ecclesiastical matters,” the judge wrote in his opinion.
So churches can run hospitals and they can order the staff to deny life-saving treatment and there’s nothing we can do about it.
Bell noted that Means still had recourse in the courts to sue doctors or hospitals for medical malpractice if she received inadequate medical care – but not, the judge concluded, to sue a religious organization or officials for their religious doctrine.
But suing the hospitals one at a time is useless – it’s the policy and the orders that have to be stopped.
“It is not up to the Court to mandate the larger structural and policy reform to Catholic hospitals that Plaintiff seeks; that issue is left to the Church and its tribunals,” Bell wrote.
So the Catholic church can go right ahead and keep telling doctors to kill women in their hospitals.
According to the lawsuit, Means was 18 weeks pregnant – a little more than four months — in 2010 when her water broke. She made three visits to a Mercy emergency room within a couple of days with pain and other symptoms and was not informed that pregnancy termination was an option. On the third visit, with an infection-induced fever and while about to be discharged again, she delivered a baby who died within three hours.
The ACLU lawsuit contended that Catholic doctrine incorporated in the bishops’ policy directives prevented Means from getting appropriate care. The ACLU claims her care was negligent because the policy prevents staff from telling her “that terminating her pregnancy was an option and the safest course for her condition.”
According to the ACLU, Means was in “excruciating pain,” continuing her pregnancy posed “significant risks to her health,” and she suffered “extreme distress” and an infection that can cause infertility.
After Means filed her lawsuit, the bishop conference’s president denied that the conference’s church-based doctrines amount to negligence.
According to that statement, the Catholic Ethical and Religious Directives prohibit abortion but allow operations, treatments and medications for a pregnant woman to treat a “proportionately serious pathological condition,” even if doing so causes the unintentional death of the child.
Termination is the treatment for a miscarriage with PRM – premature rupture of the membrane. That’s the treatment, and the bishops prohibit it – so the president’s statement is lying bullshit.
Congress should do something about this, but it won’t. The Feds should do something about it, but they won’t. They’re either scared of religion or in thrall to it, or maybe both.
Oh well, it’s only women.
If the judge ruled about what the Catholics can do in their mass, that would be impermissible interference in religious doctrine. But in their mass, they are all Catholics who chose to be there and participate. (And I think they would still have some rights to terminate clearly illegal or harmful activities, such as human sacrifice or exorcisms, which so frequently end in tragedy).
Ruling about a Catholic doctrine that impacts human health issues that all other hospitals are subject to is not about interference in religious doctrine; it is about enforcing a minimum standard of care that the church should be held to if they choose to run hospitals. To run hospitals for the purpose of imposing their doctrine on health care is (to use a religiously-laden word that I really don’t like much but can’t find a better substitute for at this time) evil.
I wish just once one of these bishops would go into court and actually say what they mean. Well, judge, it was just a woman. It’s not like an actual person was involved here. Who cares if the incubator breaks? Just get another one.
When my husband recently fell ill on a trip, we ended up in a Catholic hospital, because the ambulance took us to the closest, as they are required to do. If he had needed to have his advance directive honored, and allowed appropriate end of life care, I would have had him removed from that hospital before they had a chance to say no. Fortunately, he recovered well and that was not necessary.
I would add that that was fortunate for other reasons too.
Ugh. I remember when all the hospitals in western Washington started getting consolidated and bought by the Catholics, and I got into an argument with a Catholic friend over this exact type of stuff. He thought I was out of my mind for being afraid of dogma affecting or influencing health care in the hospitals. “That will NEVER happen!” he insisted, repeatedly.
Ha.ha.ha. If only your friend were right.
I had such an argument with an *atheist* former friend, more of the faithiest variety, who thought it was perfectly fine for Catholic hospitals to exist and provide excellent care in other areas besides reproductive health and end of life. I pointed out all these issues of complications and rules about ambulances and lack of full service care in so many areas, but she was adamant, and eventually left our group. I am firmly of the opinion there should be no such thing as religious health care, and she thought I was being intolerant.
Federal courts have no jurisdiction over the bishops?? That judge has his head up his butt. A total misunderstanding of the meaning of “interfere in religious doctrinal decisions.” There is going to be trouble when he knocks on the door at The Pearly Gates and the down elevator opens. . .
It would help if the AMA criticized these policies. The Catholic bishops are practicing medicine without any knowledge or training in medicine. People have gotten into serious trouble when they practice medicine without a license. Of course, the AMA won’t do anything
Thanks, Ophelia, that was actually part of what my fortunate meant. It was sort of a general purpose fortunately, but I do note that it would have been devastating for me if his collapse had been…more permanent.
In the area where I live, it is basically rural, but there are three cities, with populations from 25,000 to 50,000, spaced about an hour apart. Those three cities have the hospitals for the area. Two of those hospitals are Catholic. I live in the one city that does not have a Catholic hospital, and though I have not been any too impressed with our hospital, it remains my hospital of choice.
When I was in a Catholic hospital back in the 1980s, a nun would stop by my room every morning, early. It was noted that I had insomnia and usually got to sleep very late, so she usually disturbed what little sleep I got, but that wasn’t what was the worst. She insisted on praying with me every morning. (You posted my earlier story about Catholics, so you understand why I have always had some animosity). I politely requested one morning for her not to come by, which was an amazing feat for me in those days. I suffered from severe depression and talked to almost no one, so it took quite a while for me to say that. She seemed surprised, promised that of course, she would quit disturbing me, and would list in my chart that I did not wish visits from “spiritual advisors” (she wasn’t “advising” me on anything, but was simply preying on me…excuse me, praying with me). Thereafter, she continued to show up every single morning like she had from the beginning. Still struggling with a potentially terminal depression, I was not able to make that request again.
Now? Woe to the nun that insists on praying with me when I don’t want to be prayed with. I drove a minister out of my hospital room last fall by simply standing up for myself and letting him know that he was not wanted.
WHat we need is a law stating that the owners of hospitals must allow doctors to act according to standard medical ethics or some wording to that effect, that forces the Church to *either* decide that its rulings cannot pressure the doctors into acting according to Catholic doctrine rather than standard medical procedures, or they have to sell off their hospitals.
Or maybe we could say women’s health is actually a critical issue for local economies and get communities to force sale of the hospitals to the community (socialism!) at a discount price.
My HIV physician is continuing her private practise, but because so much of the work involves the hospital, she might be actually moving her practise INTO the hospital by the end of this year. She said it’s a trend in Infectious Disease specialists.
It’s a Catholic hospital which has already almost killed me before.
When i try to tell her i’m concerned about this, she says she doesn’t see anything improper happening, she assures me she’ll keep taking good care of me the same as always. I didn’t have a chance to press the issue with her because we were too busy talking about medical physiological issues for me to even have time to get into these more abstract things. I told her i’ve always trusted her because she’s helped keep me alive for years, but i have so much paranoia being an AIDS patient in a Catholic building with Catholic crucifixes in the alcoves and Catholic crucifixes on the desk staff and Catholic prayers over the intercom… and almost entirely Catholic employees… employees who are very likely to be looking less favorably on the fag with AIDS who comes into their hospital, than they might look towards some other kinds of patients, good Christian faithful patients.
The paranoia is unproductive, i try to stop myself from going overboard, i don’t want to be afraid of Catholic boogeymen, the way that some Christians get their panties in a bunch around queer boogeymen.
But they’ve already demonstrated poor decisions during my previous inpatient stays at that hospital and one time it almost killed me (but i survived, but it was incredibly torturously painful what they were doing wrong for a few days continuously) so i have shaky confidence at best. The only thing that keeps me from giving up on the situation entirely is knowing that my partner will stick by my side if i have to be at the hospital. If i had to do any more of this ALONE, i would just be too paranoid and scared and i would give up.
This is part of why i think Ophelia’s blog is so important. It helps remind the queer atheist feminist gender-nonconforming vegan pacifist that there are people who care and people who have overlapping problems, and we can all look at them and discuss them together. No matter what our gender or personal characteristcs are, no matter how weirdly different, this blog is good for making people feel like they have somewhere to voice concerns that would get them into serious trouble if uttered in most other places.
Oh, gawd, Kevin, that sounds hideous. I’m so sorry.
I just think it’s awful that they do that. I think it’s intrusive and coercive (under the circumstances) and awful – I would think it if a secular hospital stuck atheist imagery everywhere (or anywhere), and I think it’s awful if religious hospitals do it. Hospitals should be neutral territory. It’s just wicked to exploit people’s illness and vulnerability to promote a worldview.
And thank you for the last paragraph.
But god how I wish Catholic managers could be more humane about this. It’s not humane to tie medical care to religious propaganda. It’s just not. They could perfectly well provide Catholic services on request without forcing them on every patient.
@ Karmacat,
ACOG does. And from the relevant part of the Committee Opinion, one case among many:
I’ll never forget this; it was awful—I had one of my partners accept this patient at 19 weeks. The pregnancy was in the vagina. It was over… . And so he takes this patient and transferred her to [our] tertiary medical center, which I was just livid about, and, you know, “we’re going to save the pregnancy.” So of course, I’m on call when she gets septic, and she’s septic to the point that I’m pushing pressors on labor and delivery trying to keep her blood pressure up, and I have her on a cooling blanket because she’s 106 degrees. And I needed to get everything out. And so I put the ultrasound machine on and there was still a heartbeat, and [the ethics committee] wouldn’t let me because there was still a heartbeat. This woman is dying before our eyes. I went in to examine her, and I was able to find the umbilical cord through the membranes and just snapped the umbilical cord and so that I could put the ultrasound—“Oh look. No heartbeat. Let’s go.” She was so sick she was in the [intensive care unit] for about 10 days and very nearly died… . She was in DIC [disseminated intravascular coagulopathy]… . Her bleeding was so bad that the sclera, the white of her eyes, were red, filled with blood… . And I said, “I just can’t do this. I can’t put myself behind this. This is not worth it to me.” That’s why I left.
Wow wow wow.
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