When the bishops say No
The good news is, the ACLU succeeded in convincing a Catholic hospital to provide a standard of care procedure despite its religious objections. The bad news is, it took the ACLU to get a Catholic hospital to provide a standard of care procedure despite its religious objections. All hospitals should be providing standard of care, and religion should have nothing to do with it. Hospitals are for medical treatment and care; they are not for religious observances. The function and purpose of hospitals is to provide treatment and care; it’s not to force patients to obey dogmatic harmful religious taboos. The religious beliefs or unbeliefs of the patients are none of the hospital’s business.
Under the threat of a potential lawsuit, a Catholic-affiliated hospital in California’s largest hospital network made an unexpected move. It approved a previously denied doctor’s request to perform a post-partum tubal ligation, also known as “getting your tubes tied.”
The approval from Mercy Medical Center was received yesterday, just days after we sent a letter on behalf of client Rachel Miller, charging that the hospital had unlawfully denied her reproductive health care.
They denied her the care on what grounds?
Rachel and her husband have one small child in their family and are eagerly expecting the arrival of their second baby next month. They have always known that their family would be complete with two children, so at the recommendation of her doctor, Rachel decided that she would like to get her tubes tied — a safe, standard and highly effective form of contraception — after she gives birth to their second child in late September. Her doctor fully supports this plan, as performing the procedure at the time of a C-section is the standard of care.
However, the hospital where Rachel is scheduled for delivery is part of a Catholic hospital system, and operates under binding “ethical and religious directives” issued by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Applying these directives, which refer to sterilization for the purpose of contraception as “intrinsically evil,” the hospital denied Rachel’s doctor’s request to perform this common procedure.
Those grounds. Those grounds are grounds that should have no purchase in any health care system. None. Bishops should have nothing whatever to do with the running of any health care system. It’s not their job, it’s none of their business, they have no relevant competence. No hospital anywhere should be bound by any “ethical and religious directives” issued by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. That should be right out. All hospitals should be required, with strict monitoring and enforcement if necessary (and it is very necessary), to provide standard of care no matter what the fucking Catholic bishops say.
After we sent a letter late last week threatening to file a lawsuit if the hospital didn’t allow Rachel’s doctor to perform the tubal ligation, the hospital agreed to grant an exception and Rachel’s doctor is now scheduled to perform the procedure when she gets her C-section.
While this is certainly a win for Rachel, there remains a clear conflict between the best interests of patients and the directives of the Catholic hospital system. All women should be able to make the medical decisions that are best for them, in consultation with their doctors. And religious institutions that provide services to the general public should not be allowed to claim religion as an excuse to discriminate or deny important health care.
That is correct. This needs to stop. Most people aren’t even aware of it – often the first they hear of it is when they are refused a procedure the way Rachel Miller was. This needs to be on everyone’s radar, and it needs to stop.
Catholic hospitals are increasingly ubiquitous in both California and across the United States, and they are often the only health care option for women, including in life-threatening emergencies. For instance, Rachel’s hospital is part of the Dignity Health hospital system, the fifth largest healthcare system in the country and the largest hospital provider in California, with 29 hospitals across the state. Because all of the surrounding hospitals with labor and delivery wards are also Catholic, Rachel would have needed to travel over 160 miles to get her tubal ligation covered by her insurance at the same time as her C-section.
And this isn’t some accident, either – Catholic systems are gobbling up all the hospitals so that they can force their loathsome dogma on unwilling patients.
Rachel’s story is not unique. To learn more about other women impacted by the Ethical and Religious Directives:
- Religious Hospitals and Primary Care Physicians: Conflicts over Policies for Patient Care, Journal of General Internal Medicine
- Below The Radar: Religious Refusals to Treat Pregnancy Complications Put Women in Danger, National Women’s Law Center
Tell everyone you know.
Other than the doctors in private practise whom i see, i currently have very poor healthcare options here in Whatcom County, Washington, because our only hospital and laboratory system is completely run by St Joseph Catholic religious organization. Each time i’ve had to go to their hospital, it has been horrible, and one time they literally almost killed me with improper treatment. I swore i would never go back to their hospital, but now i’m afraid what will happen if i have an emergency in the future (i’ve survived HIV since i was 19, now i’m 45, i’ve had less than 100 T-cells since 1996, so the drastic emergencies seem to occur every couple few years). My friend said maybe we could drive all the way to Skagit County to go to a non-religious hospital there, but i don’t think that will be very feasible.
Whatcom County is supposedly one of the more liberal places in the Pacific Northwest, but you wouldn’t know that if you are a person with AIDS who needs to go to the hospital. The prayers over the intercom made me want to rip out the IV needles from my arm and flee in deperation, but i stayed long enough to get better, long enough for the Catholic hospital to charge the insurance company and the Medicare for about seventy thousand dollars. I was so angry at MYSELF for helping the Catholics to profit from my illness, i vowed i would never return.
As my mother heard of it when she was refused the same service in 1967, though not at a Catholic hospital. The hospital was a Navy hospital, which routinely performed the procedure. The DOCTOR was Catholic, and refused to do his duty because he didn’t believe my mother should be entitled to make her own decisions.
For the record: my mother was not Catholic. My mother was a fully grown woman of 31, and had 5 children. My mother was intelligent enough and capable enough to understand the implications of the surgery and make her own decisions about what she wished to do.
When my mother showed up pregnant again 3 years later, the doctor (the SAME doctor) chewed her out for getting pregnant, in spite of his refusal to provide her with any sort of contraceptive assistance. She nearly died in that pregnancy, and would have left behind five small children and one dead baby (who would not have survived either) for my father to deal with.
That was my first experience with Catholics. Unfortunately, it would not be my last.
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