Lawsuits Target Catholic Hospitals For Refusing To Provide Emergency Miscarriage Management

[cleanhippie]

Eight years ago, Dr. Lori Freedman began a study of how the medical practices of obstetrician-gynecologists are affected by abortion training they received during their residencies — and she stumbled on an unexpected finding.

Freedman’s study, “Where there’s a heartbeat,” found that OB-GYNs working in Catholic-owned hospitals were sometimes forced to delay inducing labor for women whose pregnancies threatened their health. Their hospitals’ ethics committees either insisted they wait for the fetal heartbeat to cease before terminating the pregnancy or that they transfer the patient to another facility. They did so because of how they interpreted the church’s “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services,” which ban abortion but allow operations that “have as their direct purpose the cure of a proportionately serious pathological condition of a pregnant woman … when they cannot be safely postponed until the unborn child is viable.”

The problem, as Freedman saw it, is that in practice, Catholic hospitals have differing interpretations of when they are allowed to terminate pregnancies. OB-GYNs told her they had to wait until it looked like their patient was going to die before ending her pregnancy. One doctor at a secular hospital reported accepting a patient transferred from a Catholic hospital who was already septic — i.e., dangerously infected — and hemorrhaging blood when she arrived.

--snip--

Three years later, the ACLU filed an unprecedented suit against the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which wrote the ethical and religious directives, for negligence and providing substandard care. A district court dismissed the suit last year, so they appealed to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. Oral argument in that case is scheduled for June 17.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/catholic-hospitals-miscarriage-management_us_5759bf67e4b0e39a28aceea6?utm_hp_ref=politics

Good! This kind of medical "care" should outrage everyone, especially liberal Catholics. But I'm not gonna hold my breath waiting for that to happen, instead I'll prepare the the onslaught of deflection and defending.

[Lordquinton]

1. If they can't do their jobs they should choose another field

If your beliefs interfere with your job, then maybe you shouldn't be in that job, especially when your actions can result in people, specifically women, dieing.

[cleanhippie]

2. We've been told here that women should just choose another hospital.