This should make your hair stand on end:

When There’s a Heartbeat: Miscarriage Management in Catholic-Owned Hospitals. Lori R. Freedman, PhD,corresponding author Uta Landy, PhD, and Jody Steinauer, MD, MAS:

The findings reported here were not the original focus of our research. In the process of conducting a qualitative study about abortion provision in the clinical practice of obstetrician–gynecologists, we interviewed 30 obstetrician–gynecologists around the United States. During the interviews, which were conducted in 2006, 6 physicians working with or within Catholic-owned hospitals revealed that they were constrained by hospital policies in their ability to undertake urgent uterine evacuation. They reported that Catholic doctrine, as interpreted by their hospital administrations, interfered with their medical judgment. For example, some of them were denied permission to perform an abortion when uterine evacuation was medically indicated and fetal heart tones were still present.

The Savita Halappanavar situation. It happens here too.

Catholic-owned institutions and their employees must adhere to medical practice guidelines contained in the “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services” (hereafter called “the directives”) written by the Committee on Doctrine of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.⁸ The directives state that abortion is never permitted. However, regarding emergency care during miscarriage management, the manual used by Catholic-owned hospital ethics committees to interpret the directives states that abortion is acceptable if the purpose is to treat “a life-threatening pathology” in the pregnant woman when the treatment cannot be postponed until the fetus is viable.⁹ The experiences of physicians in our study indicate that uterine evacuation may not be approved during miscarriage by the hospital ethics committee if fetal heart tones are present and the pregnant woman is not yet ill, in effect delaying care until fetal heart tones cease, the pregnant woman becomes ill, or the patient is transported to a non–Catholic-owned facility for the procedure.

Risking the pregnant woman’s life, in other words.

Obstetrician–gynecologists working in Catholic-owned hospitals described cases in which abortion was medically indicated according to their medical judgment but, because of the ethics committee’s ruling, it was delayed until either fetal heartbeats ceased or the patient could be transported to another facility. Dr P, from a midwestern, mid-sized city, said that at her Catholic-owned hospital, approval for termination of pregnancy was rare if a fetal heartbeat was present (even in “people who are bleeding, they’re all the way dilated, and they’re only 17 weeks”) unless “it looks like she’s going to die if we don’t do it.”

In another case, Dr H, from the same Catholic-owned hospital in the Midwest, sent her patient by ambulance 90 miles to the nearest institution where the patient could have an abortion because the ethics committee refused to approve her case.

She was very early, 14 weeks. She came in … and there was a hand sticking out of the cervix. Clearly the membranes had ruptured and she was trying to deliver… . There was a heart rate, and [we called] the ethics committee, and they [said], “Nope, can’t do anything.” So we had to send her to [the university hospital]… . You know, these things don’t happen that often, but from what I understand it, it’s pretty clear. Even if mom is very sick, you know, potentially life threatening, can’t do anything.

That should be malpractice.

In residency, Dr P and Dr H had been taught to perform uterine evacuation or labor induction on patients during inevitable miscarriage whether fetal heart tones were present or not. In their new Catholic-owned hospital environment, such treatment was considered a prohibited abortion by the governing ethics committee because the fetus is still alive and the patient is not yet experiencing “a life-threatening pathology” such as sepsis.

You see what they’re saying there? A situation that will lead to sepsis is not enough, they have to wait until sepsis develops – by which time it may be too late, as it was for Savita Halappanavar.

This should be a crime. The hospitals should be not just sued but prosecuted.

Dr B, an obstetrician–gynecologist working in an academic medical center, described how a Catholic-owned hospital in her western urban area asked her to accept a patient who was already septic. When she received the request, she recommended that the physician from the Catholic-owned hospital perform a uterine aspiration there and not further risk the health of the woman by delaying her care with the transport.

Because the fetus was still alive, they wouldn’t intervene. And she was hemorrhaging, and they called me and wanted to transport her, and I said, “It sounds like she’s unstable, and it sounds like you need to take care of her there.” And I was on a recorded line, I reported them as an EMTALA [Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act] violation. And the physician [said], “This isn’t something that we can take care of.” And I [said], “Well, if I don’t accept her, what are you going to do with her?” [He answered], “We’ll put her on a floor [i.e., admit her to a bed in the hospital instead of keeping her in the emergency room]; we’ll transfuse her as much as we can, and we’ll just wait till the fetus dies.”

Ultimately, Dr B chose to accept the patient to spare her unnecessary suffering and harm, but she saw this case as a form of “patient dumping,” because the patient was denied treatment and transported while unstable.

And this is all because the hospital is Catholic.

More to come, because I don’t like to make posts too long.