Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
There has been a lot of discussion in the media recently about the HHS contraception coverage mandate. Much of the talk has focused on women’s sex lives and the types of birth control that doctors prescribe for women in order to prevent pregnancy—as well as on the separation of church and state and the mandate’s infringement on religious freedom and the Catholic Church’s First Amendment rights. There has been much less talk about women’s health, women’s rights, and the use of birth control pills to treat certain female medical conditions, including polycystic ovary syndrome and endometriosis. Both of these conditions can cause severe pain and lead to other health problems. According to Bruce Nolan of The Times-Picayune, the Institute of Medicine—which is a non-profit advisory panel—recommended the contraception coverage because “those services are basic to individual health.”
Many Americans—especially women—think that contraceptive coverage and other “female-related” medical services ARE basic to women’s health. Catholic bishops, however, believe that contraceptive coverage and some hospital services are in conflict with the church’s “moral conscience.” The bishops contend that the church has the right to deny certain types of health insurance coverage for women who work for Catholic institutions. It doesn’t matter to the bishops whether the female employees are members of other religions…are atheists or agnostics. The church’s position is that all female employees of Catholic institutions should be denied access to all forms of contraceptives and not be provided medical insurance that would cover the cost of certain medical procedures. The bishops also believe that certain types of treatment and procedures—including tubal ligations—should not be provided to women at Catholic hospitals.
When I was doing research on an earlier post, The National Women’s Law Center Takes a Position on Contraceptive Coverage & “Extreme” Legislation, I came across some information about Catholic hospitals that caused me great concern. The information left me with the belief that Catholic bishops and the Catholic Church do not seem to value the lives of women as much as they value the lives of men and the unborn. In this post, I will look at the “usurpation of female patients’ rights” at Catholic hospitals. I think after reading my post you will understand why I drew the conclusion that I did.
In January of 2011, the National Women’s Law Center issued a report about women’s health and lives being at risk at some hospitals because of religious restrictions. The NWLC report includes a legal analysis of the implications of its study—which focused on Catholic-affiliated hospitals’ treatment of women with pregnancy complications.
From the National Women’s Law Center:
The Center’s report, Below the Radar: Ibis Study Shows that Health Care Providers’ Religious Refusals Can Endanger Pregnant Women’s Lives and Health, demonstrates that certain hospitals, because of their religious beliefs, deny emergency care, the standard of care and adequate information to make treatment decisions to patients experiencing miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies. The study and report focused on cases where no medical intervention was possible that would allow the patient to continue her pregnancy and where delaying treatment would endanger the woman’s health or even life. These hospital treatment practices violate federal laws and regulations that are intended to protect patients and ensure the delivery of quality health care services at hospitals receiving Medicare funds…
“Most women assume that when they go to a hospital they will be offered the best medical treatment options for their diagnosis,” said NWLC Co-President Marcia D. Greenberger. “But this report paints a chilling picture of women with ectopic pregnancies or suffering miscarriages who are not offered the full spectrum of medically appropriate treatment options because they have gone to a hospital whose religious affiliation conflicts with the provision of those options. To make matters worse, women denied certain medical options may never even be told that these options could, for example, improve their chances of having a healthy pregnancy in the future. Women who fail to receive appropriate treatment or to be informed that preferable options would be provided in another hospital can suffer serious harm with long-term adverse consequences to their lives and health.”
The reports highlight stark cases where doctors noted a discrepancy between the medically-accepted standard of care for miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy and the treatment provided by hospitals due to their religious affiliation. For example, while the standard of care for certain ectopic pregnancies requires patients to receive the medication methotrexate, doctors in the study reported that their hospitals forbade the use of the drug. Instead, patients were either transferred to another hospital or required to undergo unnecessary and invasive surgery to resolve their condition, thereby being denied the standard of care.
One doctor in the study reported several instances of potentially fatal tubal ruptures in patients with ectopic pregnancies at her Catholic-affiliated hospital. She said that her hospital subjected patients with ectopic pregnancies to unnecessary delays in treatment, despite patients’ exhibiting serious symptoms indicating that a tubal rupture was possible. These patients, therefore, were denied emergency care to which they were legally entitled.
In some of the miscarriage cases described in the Ibis Study, the standard of care also required immediate treatment. Yet doctors practicing at Catholic-affiliated hospitals were forced to delay treatment while performing medically unnecessary tests. Even though these miscarriages were inevitable, and no medical treatment was available to save the fetus, some patients were transferred because doctors were required to wait until there was no longer a fetal heartbeat to provide the needed medical care. This delay subjected these patients to further risks of hemorrhage and infection and could have violated their right to receive emergency medical treatment under federal law.
Early last year, the NWLC filed a complaint with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in which it identified violations of health care provider obligations “under the Medicare Conditions of Participation (CoPs) resulting from these practices.” The complaint urged “HHS to issue a notification reminding hospitals that they are bound by all CoPs; to require hospitals to institute policies and procedures to protect patients’ legally enforceable rights; to investigate the failure of hospitals to provide standard of care and informed consent, and to take corrective action to prevent further violations.”
Jill Morrison, Senior Counsel for NWLC, said that religious dictates should not “trump bedrock legal protections that entitle patients to the standard of care and informed consent in the American medical system.” She claimed that hospitals had been allowed to disregard their obligation “to prioritize women’s health and lives” for too long. Morrison added, “It’s time to shine a light on these serious violations and make hospitals accountable to protect the lives and health of the patients they serve.”
I think it is of great import for women to read the study. According to the National Catholic Reporter, “Catholic health care facilities form the largest not-for-profit health service sector in the United States, caring for nearly one-sixth of all U.S. hospital patients each year.”
In his article in the March/April 2011 issue of The Humanist, Rob Boston wrote about Catholic Hospitals’ usurpation of patients’ rights:
Healthcare has been in the news a lot lately, but much of the discussion has centered on the bill backed by President Barack Obama that Republicans in Congress are trying to repeal. Americans obviously have different opinions about that legislation. We can hope, however, that most Americans don’t support medical decisions being made subservient to religious dogma.
Yet about a fifth of all U.S. hospitals abide by a series of directives promulgated by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The directives ban abortions for any reason, forbid distribution of birth control (often including “morning after” pills for rape victims), deny sterilization operations such as vasectomies and tubal ligations, and nullify advanced directives and “living wills” that conflict with Catholic doctrine.
Catholic hospitals impose these narrow doctrinal views—which are so strict that even most American Catholics don’t support them—while receiving a windfall of public support through direct government subsidies and participation in Medicare and Medicaid programs.
Americans are increasingly finding that medical services they took for granted have evaporated as a spate of hospital mergers across the country has subjected many people to the bishops’ directives. Why is this? Because when Catholic hospitals merge with non-Catholic institutions, the latter are required to accept the directives as part of the deal.
Women’s rights groups and advocates of reproductive freedom have been speaking out, but too often their complaints fall on deaf ears. In Montgomery County, Maryland—an affluent suburb of Washington, DC, with a well educated population that leans toward progressive politics—state regulators recently ruled that a Catholic hospital group could build the county’s first new hospital in thirty years. In making this decision, the board bypassed a rival proposal from a group run by the Seventh-day Adventists. Although both groups are religious, the Adventists had promised to provide the full range of reproductive services.
Asked about the lack of reproductive healthcare at the new facility, one hospital regulator blithely said that people who needed those services could go elsewhere.
An Example of Catholic Courage
It is good to hear stories about people of conscience who work as administrators and doctors at some Catholic hospitals. These are individuals who choose to provide life-saving medical services frowned upon by bishops to pregnant female patients in emergency situations.
Sister Margaret McBride, a nun who worked as the administrator of St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix, Arizona, chose to sign off on an abortion “for a woman who was eleven weeks pregnant and suffering from life-threatening pulmonary hypertension.” The woman was twenty-seven-years-old and the mother of four children. Doctors at the hospital had determined that terminating the woman’s pregnancy was the only way to save her life because her heart and lungs were in jeopardy. The nun’s action did not sit well with Phoenix Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted. The bishop was “furious” and demoted Sister McBride. He also announced the she had automatically excommunicated herself from the Catholic Church by her actions. Olmsted also stripped the hospital of its affiliation with the Roman Catholic diocese.
In his New York Times column Tussling over Jesus, Nicholas Kristof said that Sister McBride appears to be the individual in this story who “emulated the life of Jesus” and not the bishop. Kristof wrote that Bishop Olmsted had spent much of his life “as a Vatican bureaucrat climbing the career ladder.” He added that what happened at St. Joseph’s Hospital “is a bellwether of a profound disagreement that is playing out at many Catholic hospitals around the country.” Kristof believes that we are likely to see more clashes like the one between the bishop and the hospital in Arizona in the future “as the church hierarchy grows more conservative, and as hospitals and laity grow more impatient with bishops who seem increasingly out of touch.”
Click here to watch a PBS video on the subject of Catholic-Secular Hospital Mergers. The video is just under ten minutes long.
SOURCES
Women’s Health and Lives at Risk Due to Religious Restrictions at Hospitals, New Center Study Shows: National Women’s Law Center Files Complaint with Department of Health and Human Services (National Women’s Law Center)
Below the Radar Fact Sheet: Religious Refusals to Treat Pregnancy Complications Put Women in Danger (National Women’s Law Center)
Assessing Hospital Policies & Practices Regarding Ectopic Pregnancies & Miscarriage Management (National Women’s Law Center)
Commentary: Dust-up over contraceptive rule ignores rights of employees (The Kansas City Star)
Catholic hospitals serve one in six patients in the United States (National Catholic Reporter)
U.S. Catholic Bishops Major Force Behind War on Women: Statement of NOW President Terry O’Neill (NOW)
The Men Behind The War On Women (Huffington Post)
Prescription For Disaster: Hospital Mergers And Heavy-Handed Tactics Are Giving The Catholic Hierarchy An Increasingly Problematic Role In American Health Care (Americans United for Separation of Church and State)
House Passes H.R. 358, the “Let Women Die” Act of 2011 (RH Reality Check)
Catholic Death Panels Coming to a Hospital Near You (Ms. Magazine)
Employees Need Birth Control Coverage Mandate (The Nation)
Hospital merger limits medical options: Catholic rules will bar tubal ligations at University hospital (Courier-Journal)
Catholic-Secular Hospital Mergers (PBS)
Medical Emergency: Catholic Hospitals Usurp Patients’ Rights (The Humanist)
Tussling Over Jesus (New York Times)
Americans almost evenly split over conscience exemption in birth control coverage (The Times-Picayune)
Contraception and Separation (Turley Blawg)
Okie-dokie, it’s time for me to come out of the closet.
Hopefully, I’m far enough along on the thread that no one will read this.
Here goes – I’m an evangelical. Of the Baptist persuasion. Southern. And a deacon. There, I said it.
I follow the Bible as best I can, not as someone directs. As evidenced by some of my posts on this blog, many in my church would ban me as a heretic if they knew my heart.
{Sorry if the following pains some of you; sorrier if you may think less of me but, seriously, just how much less could think of me?}
My take on the mandatory provision of contraceptive coverage in health plans flows directly from my evangelical beliefs. In that respect, I believe it is up to each individual whether to accept Jesus as Lord and Savior.
As an evangelical, I believe no one can make the decision to accept Christ for another person. Not your momma or daddy, nor your spouse, nor your pastor, priest, bishop, or Pope.
If God is willing to let each person make their own decision on the only matter that has eternal consequence, then I don’t see how I can do anything other than let all people make their own decisions for themselves. What a woman does with her body is up to that woman.
And if that isn’t sufficient for those who may disagree, I’ll add, “Keep your God damned hands off my daughters’ bodies.”
“Here goes – I’m an evangelical. Of the Baptist persuasion. Southern. And a deacon. There, I said it. I follow the Bible as best I can, not as someone directs.”
“As an evangelical, I believe no one can make the decision to accept Christ for another person. Not your momma or daddy, nor your spouse, nor your pastor, priest, bishop, or Pope.
If God is willing to let each person make their own decision on the only matter that has eternal consequence, then I don’t see how I can do anything other than let all people make their own decisions for themselves. What a woman does with her body is up to that woman.”
Oro Lee,
Even before this I was glad you had joined our ongoing soiree. After this, I am thrilled. I echo Gene in saying my already healthy respect for you has grown. If as Christian doctrine believes the ultimate judgment of a person is God’s alone, then one would think it follows logically that that person should have the free will to sin, or not. If in their hearts a person is a sinner how can God not know? Would the creator of the Universe be playing games with its creatures? Not likely.
As a retired Psychotherapist I always try to understand why people act in a certain way. I’m convinced that there are a number of “Christians” who want to restrain others because they have trouble restraining their own impulses.
Your words past and present indicate to me a pious person living by the true tenets of your faith. It is good to have the real Christianity represented here, since it adds to the multitudes of views.
You so eloquently talk about choice, and then want to take away the choice from your daughter away.. It is up to her whose hand touches her. You say you go by what you see the bible. Can you give me an example of that? I say hell is Gods light to the wicked. What do you say?
Lottakatz said:
“The basis of this whole debate is ridiculous IMO. It validates that the right to privacy between practitioner and patient (of either sex) is sacrosanct except for insurance companies and government.”
It certainly does, and I share your ire 1000%.
“It also ceded the actual treatment of illness to insurance companies.”
Yes is does, and again, I’m as pissed about it as you are.
“The whole industry needs to be fundamentally rebuilt.”
Damned right it does.
“It doesn’t matter what a doctor prescribes, it should be covered. Period.”
That’s the way it used to be, and in millions of one-one-one, patient/MD relationships, it was a marvelous dynamic. Then what happened?
“Either doctors provide medical care or they don’t. I think the public debate needs to devolve to some fundamentals.”
Ah, amigo, and therein lies the friction. Because ‘devolving to some fundamentals’ is absolutely spot on reasoning, and few players on any side of this ugly game really want to do that. It weakens their power, and it seriously affects their bank accounts.
“Fundamentals” would include acknowledging that medicine’s miscreants have been raping & pillaging the services payment systems for 50 years & more. Here’s a micro-example: 30 years ago this month an elderly neighbor friend asked me to go over his hospital bill with him. Although his co-pay was a mere $1,100 on a $19,000 bill, he was fretting over some of the charges. Of course he had every right to, since his coded bill included, among other cute little ditties, $98 for an egg-crate foam bed pad; $128 dollars for rolls of Transpore IV tape; and something like $27 for ‘mucous recovery systems’ (that would be a box of Kleenex)
Fundamentals would have to recognize that health care has brought the outside meddling decision-makers (and I resent this even more than you do) down on itself, by robbing insurance companies & patients blind at every opportunity. If your X-ray comes out blurry due to tech error, it isn’t the tech that gets double-charged – it’s you.
Tenet Health care and a crazed team of heart surgeons have paid out $520,000,000, to over 700 patient families for unnecessary operations. And that’s just one hospital in one decade.
Since the subject here is women’s health, any cursory research into the subject turns up the galling reality of literally millions of women undergoing millions of surgeries, for no better reason than physician & clinic wealth-building.*
Here’s 10 of the 2,490 MDs who couldn’t seem to stick to their Oath last year alone::
http://www.beckersasc.com/stark-act-and-fraud-abuse-issues/10-physicians-accused-or-convicted-of-fraud.html
So while it is a fact that we have far too many unwanted fingers in the patient-treatment pie, why on earth would any insurance provider trust anybody in a lab coat?
Health care’s current misery is a self-inflicted wound.
* http://www.gjel.com/verdicts/tenet1.html
** see Lynn Payer’s book, ”Medicine and Culture,”
In a hypothetical general-election contest, he leads Romney by six points, 50 to 44 percent, winning independents (46-39 percent), women (55-37 percent) and those in the Midwest (52-42 percent). Obama has even bigger leads with women over Santorum and Gingrich. Rush and the GOP war on women are taking their toll on the republicans. Catholic women are obviously not listening to the bishops.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/03/04/planned-parenthood-under-attack-fighting-back-in-texas.html What the GOP sweep in 2010 is doing to women’s healthcare and particularly poor women’s healthcare in Texas.
Mike,
Thanks for the link to that article.
An interesting take on this debate from a Jewish Rabbi’s perspective.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-daniel-brenner/jewish-perspective-on-contraception_b_1307197.html
Why women’s rights are under siege
By sarah Posner
2/29/12
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/29/why_womens_rights_are_under_siege/
Excerpt:
The role of religion in politics is as fraught a topic as one might imagine in a pluralistic democracy. But it doesn’t have to be this way. The Founders intended a secular government protecting the religious freedom of all, but over the past 40 years the Republican Party has evolved as the arm of a movement that insists the separation of church and state is a satanic, secularist purge of the pious. It doesn’t help when political reporters seem incapable of distinguishing Rick Santorum’s rant against church-state separation from a lament over loss of free expression.
The Republican position is now absolutist: We are a Christian nation (“Judeo-Christian,” when they’re feeling particularly magnanimous), and any challenges to that are reviled as anti-American. That’s why the Republicans who control the House Judiciary Committee see no irony in holding a hearing on the supposed threat to the Constitution from Shariah law, and later holding a hearing on how the contraception coverage requirement was a dire threat to (Christian) religious liberty.
Democrats and their allies, though, are largely stuck in a responsive muddle. In a bright spot, some of the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, notably New York’s Jerrold Nadler and Michigan’s John Conyers, came to this week’s hearing on “Executive Overreach: The HHS Mandate Versus Religious Liberty” armed with excellent preparation on religious exemptions, and held witnesses’ feet to the fire on constitutional questions. But the problems are deeper than the Republicans’ misrepresentation of the legal standards for religious conscience objections. The problem is that religion plays a role in health policy at all.
As Linda Hirshman and Irin Carmon have discussed in these pages, it remains to be seen whether the outrage over transvaginal probes will be enough to awaken a movement that will serve as a long-term backlash to violations of women’s reproductive autonomy, or merely a short-term effort to block the most physically intrusive of legislative initiatives.
If you really think about how powerful the RCC is all’s you have to do is look at the calendar we utilize for keeping track of days…… For some reason or another….. The Russian refused to utilize it until I think the 1900s….. Call that a power struggle if you will…..
Missing the Point: Contraception Debate is about Control of Women’s Health Decisions
By Katherine Greenier, Director, Patricia M. Arnold Women’s Project, ACLU of Virginia
https://acluva.org/9768/missing-the-point-contraception-debate-is-about-control-of-womens-health-decisions/
Excerpt:
The turmoil over access to birth control these past few weeks could result in disturbing scenarios for access to health care. If some lawmakers and religious groups, like the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, have their way, you may be denied critical health care services simply because of your employer’s religious or moral beliefs. For example, under their worldview, if your employer thinks premarital sex is sinful, you could be refused coverage of treatment or screening for STDs. If your employer objects to blood transfusions, you could find yourself without coverage for critical care for you and your family. It sounds crazy, but that’s just where the manufactured controversy over contraception could take us.
The “debate” over birth control is long settled. It has been nearly 50 years since the U.S. Supreme Court recognized that access to contraception is protected by the federal Constitution, and birth control is used by 99 percent of women at some point in their lives. Yet a debate about birth control has been raging for several months and will continue as there are powerful political actors who are determined to radically redefine the relationship between health care access and one’s personal beliefs.
What’s at issue is a federal rule requiring new insurance plans to include birth control in their coverage. The rule exempts houses of worship and will also ensure that religiously affiliated nonprofit institutions – like hospitals and universities – that object to contraception do not have to contribute to the cost of the contraceptive coverage.
The bishops are not satisfied. They have said they will not rest until all employers and insurers – religious and secular – are allowed to exclude contraception from their health insurance plans. They are on record as saying, “The only complete solution to this religious liberty problem is for (the government) to rescind the mandate of these objectionable services.” If they get their way, the CEO of a big manufacturing company or the head of a small home healthcare service could decide, based on his or her personal moral beliefs, to refuse to include coverage for birth control in employees’ health insurance plans.
The bishops’ response has crystalized what this fight has always been about – which is not religious liberty, but who gets to determine the future of women’s health care.
I’m No Longer a Catholic. Why Are You?
By Soraya Chemaly
Posted: 02/28/2012
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/soraya-chemaly/catholic-leadership-does-not-represent-women_b_1276929.html
Excerpt:
There are so many perspectives on the Obama/Catholic Church contraception debate that it is hard to keep track. But, after you’ve stripped it all of its partisanship, wonky indignation and misleading religious angst, what you are left with it whether or not you really think women are equal and how much that equality means to you personally.
At its core, this debate is about control. And not just birth control. Either you are willing to support and participate in a culture in which men, refusing to accept women as fully human, use a perverted claim of divine right to control women and their bodies, or you don’t. For me, equality — for everyone — and the way I want my children to understand their place in the world outweighed my commitment to a faith, which, no matter how much real good it does in the world, does more harm by its failure to recognize the fundamental humanity of its female adherents. This isn’t about freedom of religion; it’s about freedom from religion.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, in a now much quoted study analyzed in the Washington Post, “Data shows that 98 percent of sexually experienced women of child-bearing age who identify themselves as Catholic have used a method of contraception other than natural family planning.” Catholics are also more likely than non-Catholics to support Obama’s insurance provisions, even prior to any accommodations. There are organization like Catholics for Choice who are clearly committed to Catholicism, but in defiance of bishops.
Catholic lay people, modern members of a pluralistic democracy, are not adhering to the beliefs of their church fathers, who continue to tell them that using birth control is a sin. Survey after survey shows that they believe that contraception (and other progressive social issues) is a matter of individual and private choice. Catholic women and men understand the conflict between the primacy of conscience and obedience to Church authority — and are choosing their consciences. In the words of one Catholic woman, “I will start paying more attention to the bishops’ position on birth control on the day a Catholic bishop becomes pregnant.”
When I was a student at Georgetown University, a Catholic (albeit Jesuit) school, it was impossible to get birth control. Except that it wasn’t. Any girl or woman who needed it could walk into the life-saving midwifery office on campus, talk to a practitioner and secure her contraceptive of choice. We were just not supposed to talk about it and were expected to quietly skulk about, so as not to jeopardize the efforts of the only people on campus, who happened to be Catholic women as well, who understood our need.
AY, Mike S., & Swarthmore mom,
It’s possible it could be a combination of two agendas. The bishops could be attempting to show they have “moral” conscience after the clergy sex scandal and also be trying to grab some political power.
I definitely agree with what Swarthmore mom said about lapsed Catholics. I doubt this approach by the bishops would bring us lapsed Catholics back into the flock. If anything, I believe it reinforces our decision to leave the church.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/13/1064410/-Coincidence-Mitt-Romney-sides-with-bishops-on-birth-control-loses-nbsp-independents
Reuters) – The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is a powerful institution, at least on paper.
But a recent debate over contraception coverage has exposed a deep divide between the 271 active bishops and the rank-and-file U.S. Catholics who are supposed to follow their moral authority. It also has raised questions about why some prominent Catholic intuitions ignore the bishops’ teachings – and whether the bishops will be able to reassert their authority.
The gulf has left some politicians, ever eager to court the Catholic vote, struggling to figure out who now speaks for the Church. Some ordinary Catholics in the pews are wondering the same.
“The bishops have lost their monopoly on speaking, and they have lost a lot of their clout,” said Father Thomas Reese, a Georgetown University theologian and church scholar.
Led by Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, the bishops have been pressing a muscular campaign to fight a federal mandate that would have required all health insurance plans, including those offered by religious employers, to offer free birth control.
“Most lapsed catholics are far more liberal than the bishops.”
SwM,
I’m not saying that this is a smart tactic to woo people back. In fact to me it is a tactic of desperation coupled with an inability to accept that in this modern world the parameters of faith have changed. Had the RCC only built on the work of Pope John XXIII, they might have bee more viable and relevant today. My parents closest friends were all Catholic Italians and I spent many happy moments in their homes and churches at holiday times growing up.
These were people who had deep faith, but retained the right of thinking freely for themselves. Pope John was moving towards modernizing the Church’s belief system and making it truly Christian in attitude. The reaction to his changes by those so caught up in doctrinaire patterns boomeranged into hardened resistance. The current Pope and his predecessor were leaders of this resistance ad the veering away of the RCC from the teachings of John is the result, to the detriment of the RCC.
Most lapsed catholics are far more liberal than the bishops. I don’t think it is an appeal to get us back but rather a power grab. It is having the opposite effect on lapsed catholics and many liberal women church goers. We have lots of lapsed catholics on this blog and I don’t think anyone is running back. Everyone I talk to is disgusted with the bishops whether they are lapsed or not.
Treatment Denied: Catholic Hospitals Refuse Care
by Lindsay Spangler
May 10, 2011
http://www.care2.com/causes/treatment-denied.html
Excerpt;
Kathleen Prieskorn gasped in shock as her medical nightmare began. Still reeling from the heartbreak of an earlier miscarriage, Prieskorn was three months pregnant and working as a waitress when she felt a twinge, felt a trickle down her leg and realized she was miscarrying again.
She rushed to her doctor’s office, “where I learned my amniotic sac had torn,” says Prieskorn, who lives with her husband in Manchester, N.H. “But the nearest hospital had recently merged with a Catholic hospital — and because my doctor could still detect a fetal heartbeat, he wasn’t allowed to give me a uterine evacuation that would help me complete my miscarriage.”
To get treatment, Prieskorn, who has no car, had to instead travel 80 miles to the nearest hospital that would perform the procedure — expensive to do in an ambulance, because she had no health insurance. Her doctor handed her $400 of his own cash and she bundled into the back of a cab.
“During that trip, which seemed endless, I was not only devastated, but terrified,” Prieskorn remembers. “I knew that if there were complications I could lose my uterus — and maybe even my life.”
Ordeals like the one Prieskorn suffered are not isolated incidents: They could happen to a woman of any income level, religion or state now that Catholic institutions have become the largest not-for-profit source of health-care in the U.S., treating 1 in 6 hospital patients. And that’s because Catholic hospitals are required to adhere to the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services — archconservative restrictions issued by the 258-member U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Because of the directives, doctors and nurses at Catholic-affiliated facilities are not allowed to perform procedures that the Catholic Church deems “intrinsically immoral, such as abortion and direct sterilization.” Those medical personnel also cannot give rape survivors drugs to prevent pregnancy unless there is “no evidence that conception has already occurred.” The only birth control they can dispense is advice about “natural family planning” — laborious daily charting of a woman’s basal temperature and cervical mucus in order to abstain from sex when she is ovulating — which only 0.1 percent of women use.
The Catholic directives involve not just abortion and birth control but ectopic pregnancies, embryonic stem cell research, in-vitro fertilization, sterilizations and more. “The problem with [the directives],” says Susan Berke Fogel, an attorney at the National Health Law Program in Los Angeles, “is about substandard care becoming rampant in the U.S., threatening women’s health and women’s lives.”
Religious hospitals’ restrictions sparking conflicts, scrutiny
By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/19/AR2011011907539.html?sid=ST2011011907548
Excerpts:
In Texas, a Catholic bishop made two hospitals cease doing tube-tying operations for women who are not going to have more babies. In Oregon, another bishop cast a medical center out of his diocese for refusing to discontinue the same procedure. In Arizona, a nun was excommunicated and the hospital where she works was expelled from the church after 116 years for allowing doctors to terminate a pregnancy to save a woman’s life.
Such disputes between hospitals and church authorities appear to be arising because of a confluence of factors: Economic pressures are spurring greater consolidation in the hospital industry, prompting religiously affiliated institutions to take over or merge with secular ones, imposing church directives on them. At the same time, the drive to remain competitive has led some medical centers to evade the directives. Alongside those economic forces, changes in the church hierarchy have led increasingly conservative bishops to exert more influence over Catholic hospitals.
The clashes have focused attention on the limitations on care available at Catholic hospitals. In Montgomery County, concern about those constraints has emerged as an issue in the battle over whether Holy Cross Hospital, a Catholic institution in Silver Spring, or Adventist HealthCare in Rockville should be authorized to build a new hospital in the county.
A coalition of advocacy groups Wednesday urged the state to reject Holy Cross, citing concerns about access to reproductive health care, especially for poor women and teenagers. A decision in that case is expected Thursday.
Such conflicts are likely to intensify as new flash points arise, such as the spread of infertility treatments considered taboo by the church and the possible availability of therapies derived from human embryonic stem cells.
Although the issue has erupted at a variety of institutions, women’s health advocates are especially alarmed about Catholic hospitals, a leading source of health care in the United States.
“Physicians are being told they must refuse to provide certain services even when they believe their refusal would harm their patient and violate established medical standards of care,” said Lois Uttley, who heads MergerWatch, a New York-based group that fights the takeover of secular medical centers by religiously affiliated hospitals.
*****
Bishops intervene
In addition to barring abortions, the directives prohibit tubal ligations, the surgical sterilization of women and the second leading form of contraception in the United States.
In Texas, CHRISTUS St. Michael’s and Trinity Mother Frances Hospital agreed in 2009 to a request by Bishop Alvaro Carrada to discontinue the practice. But St. Charles Medical Center in Bend, Ore., refused a similar request, prompting Bishop Robert F. Vasa in February to sever ties with the 92-year-old institution, which was founded by nuns.
“Sterilization has the direct effect of destroying a properly functioning part of the human body,” Vasa said in a telephone interview.
As was the case at St. Joseph’s in Phoenix, the decision meant that Mass could no longer be celebrated in the hospital’s chapel, and the hospital had to return religious objects to the church.
Several doctors interviewed across the country, particularly in rural areas, described frustration over being barred from taking a few extra minutes during a Caesarean delivery to tie the tubes of women who no longer want children or face complications if they become pregnant again.
“I feel very stuck,” said a doctor at a hospital in an isolated town in a western mountain state whose institution barred the procedures after the Phoenix case. “I don’t know where to turn.”
Jessica Graham, 33, delivered her second child through a Caesarean in September at the Sierra Vista Regional Health Center in Arizona, but she had to schedule a second operation to have her tubes tied after the hospital decided to become part of a Catholic hospital group and ordered a stop to all tubal ligations.
“It’s very unsettling,” said Graham, whose kidney problems increase the risk of another pregnancy or another surgery. “Now they are going to have to back inside my body again and cut me open again.”
Mike….
Not to take this off topic….. But the church is finding out how costly the sec scandal has need so what better rouse than this……
AY,
You are correct in the assumption that this is a smokescreen to try to recoup the lost believers due to the ongoing pedophile scandal. It is trying to rouse sympathy among lapsed Catholics, by appealing to the indoctrination in their youth of being part of the RCC.
The basis of this whole debate is ridiculous IMO. It validates that the right to privacy between practitioner and patient (of either sex) is sacrosanct except for insurance companies and government. It also ceded the actual treatment of illness to insurance companies. The whole industry needs to be fundamentally rebuilt. It doesn’t matter what a doctor prescribes, it should be covered. Period. Either doctors provide medical care or they don’t. I think the public debate needs to devolve to some fundamentals. Once it does these kinds of issues become superfluous. If the debate was over medical care and the responsibility of corporate-supplied medical insurance this would be a non-issue.
Yea, yea, I’m just ranting but I am so tired of everybody and their brother standing between my doctor and me, we practically have to shout to each other now as all the busybodies in the exam room chat among themselves. Bah, humbug.
Blouise, Thank you, it is beautiful! That it’s a fractal is just perfect, what a great gift.
I forgot where we were talking or I’d have visited without prompting. Srsly, senility takes its toll. 🙂