ACLU Sues Catholic Hospital for Putting Religion over Medical Care

[niyad]

(F*** the goddamned religious "health care system" that does not give a flying F*** about women. and F*** every "doctor", every "health care worker", who cares more about their damned religious beliefs than about actually performing their duties)

ACLU Sues Catholic Hospital for Putting Religion over Medical Care


The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a complaint with the Department of Health and Human Services against a Michigan Catholic hospital for refusing to perform a postpartum tubal ligation on a pregnant brain cancer patient, a violation of the nondiscrimination provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Jessica Mann’s doctor had informed her early in her pregnancy that conceiving any additional children could be life-threatening, and recommended she undergo the sterilization during her cesarean section. According to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the fallopian tubes are cut through the same incision made for the cesarean, sparing a high risk patient the dangers associated with an additional round of anesthesia. The procedure is considered to be very quick and low-risk, and is a method of birth control used by over 10 million women in the United States.

The hospital waited more than three months to review the special request submitted by the patient’s doctor, eventually citing the Ethical and Religious Directives put forward by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops as the reason for their refusal. The guidelines, frequently cited by Catholic hospitals, prohibit basic reproductive healthcare services for women, including contraception, sterilization and infertility treatments, as well as abortion—even when the patient’s life and health is at risk.

“At a time when I should have been focused on getting ready to bring my baby into the world, I instead had to frantically search for a new doctor and a new hospital to get the care I needed to protect my life, because the local hospital where I had been a patient for fifteen years forbid it,” said Mann in a statement. “I don’t want other women to be turned away from hospitals that let their religious views trump their patients’ serious medical needs.”

A report issue in May by the ACLU and MergerWatch found that one in six hospital beds in the country are located in Catholic facilities that deny critical reproductive healthcare services, even when the patient’s life is at risk. In some areas, more than 40 percent of all hospital beds are in a facility that follows Catholic directives, leaving many women without access to essential care.

http://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2016/10/27/aclu-sues-catholic-hospital-for-putting-religion-over-medical-care/

[Mendocino]

1. When mythology replaces

science, it's time to remove the former.

[niyad]

2. so very true

[hunter]

20. There's nothing "scientific" about U.S. medicine.

Mostly it's about the size of revenue streams.

How many hospital administrators talk about "profit centers" more often than they talk about patient health?

How many health insurance and pharmaceutical companies seem to care only about their "market share," their executive salaries, their "friends" in Congress, and the quality of their company jets as status symbols.

I'm not defending Catholic hospitals, but the U.S. money cult kills and maims more people.

[Mendocino]

23. Is the profit margin in hospitals

the overriding factor? Certainly. Is the dogma the overriding factor in catholic hospitals? Likely more often than we think.

[hunter]

25. What's the difference? Both are religious cults.

Money and religion are both invented things, supported by nothing more than faith.

[Mendocino]

26. If given a choice

would you go to a catholic hospital or an independent?

[hunter]

28. I hate hospitals.

My most recent stay I was locked up in the psych ward for a few days.

It's usually psych stuff with me, or asthma and asthma related crap like pneumonia.

Before modern meds I was a frequent flyer to the E.R..

These modern meds were developed using the scientific method.

I've also got a lot of formal training as a scientist, and I've worked in medical labs.

The quality of hospitals varies widely, usually without rhyme or reason.

I've lived in places where the Catholic hospital was the best bet for most situations, but no, not anything to do with abortions, or risk of abortion.

I'm a Catholic heretic myself, my wife and I were married in a big Catholic wedding, our children were born in a Catholic hospital (because that was the best hospital in town, and it also accepted the crappy insurance we had at the time), and we raised our children Catholic. But we're also aggressive supporters of Planned Parenthood, sex education, and birth control. That's how we prevent abortions. That's the only reasonable way to prevent abortions. Sometimes abortion is the best option for an unplanned pregnancy or medical emergency that endangers the life of a pregnant woman, and it's 100% hers to decide.

My wife's parents and my parents had a mess of kids Catholic style, and later became advocates for birth control when the family vans and station wagons got too crowded. My mom had "choose life" license plate frames on her car but my siblings and I knew everything about sex and birth control before it mattered to us personally. No surprises, very much unlike the right-wing Catholic or Evangelical Christian non- education, which apparently is little more than don't even think about sex before marriage, Jesus is watching you, and pregnancy is a punishment for sinful behavior and always the young woman's fault, even if she was raped.


Still, I don't see any difference between refusing necessary medical care for religious reasons and refusing medical care for financial reasons. I'm a socialist. Every resident of the United States ought to have access to high quality appropriate medical care. Nobody, not religion, not insurance companies, not some accounting department, should stand in the way of that.

[Mendocino]

30. I'm not catholic

however I found myself married to one. It is my opinion and hers, as she left the church, that the RCC is a cult bent on total control of it's members.

[hunter]

37. It really depends where you live. The Church is not monolithic.

Conservative communities get conservative priests, liberal communities get liberal priests. My wife and I live in a liberal cosmopolitan place.

My parents used to live in a place where going to Mass was intolerable, right wing, and authoritarian. Every other week, some scolding about abortion, never anything about war or racism or the death penalty. All the other churches in town were like that, even sects that tend to be liberal, because the town was like that. My parents have left that place.

My wife's parents live in a liberal place.

The worst places I've lived, the priests were dumber than rocks, warm bodies filling the space, in churches essentially run by very conservative women. Everyone knows what the problem is; not enough men want to be priests, for obvious reasons. The only reliable supply for priests in the U.S. is men from rougher nations who want to live in the United States. So churches also get priests who don't speak English or Spanish well.

When I was a kid there was a pedophile priest in the parish who got sent to Ireland when he was exposed. My mom is ferociously anti-Catholic at times, even as she is an enthusiastic supporter of Catholic anti-war and anti-death penalty initiatives. As a kid I once witnessed my mom having a girl-fight with the Bishop; they were literally slapping and shoving one another like two drunk women in a bar, or girls on a middle school playground. And OMG, the language.

My mom had wanted to be a nun when she was a teenager until she ran into a hard drinking, chain smoking, venal, and leering priest. Then she met my dad, they got married, and had lots of kids Catholic style.

I grew up as basically a Jehovah's Witness until they kicked my mom out of their Kingdom Hall for her political activities, and then we were Quakers. Our larger family was a place of intense religious warfare, especially around Christmas when all the adults went insane trying to impose their version of Christianity on the children.

I'm comfortable in most any place of worship, even the most anti-science creationist churches, largely because I can regard it as some sort of anthropology expedition. But I get really fierce when they try to bring their crap into public schools. My own favorite science, one I've got some formal training in, is evolutionary biology.

[Warpy]

27. Thank you for so clearly telling everyone you know notheing about medicine

and how it is practiced.

Given the choice between a tent revival faith healer and a hospital, I'll chose the latter, thanks, because unlike those poor folks in the tent,, I expect to have an illness treated in the hospital.

Trying to promulgate some sort of equality between them is false equivalence, disingenuous, and utterly ignorant.

You might not like the health care business model. I don't think anyone outside of CEOs living like sultans on the proceeds do like it. However, please don't suggest that the practice of medicine is a cult when it is demonstrably not.

[hunter]

29. You really have no idea.

I'm in the eye of the hurricane. The leaves have been stripped off my trees, and the odds are always good that whenever the winds pick up again I'll end up on the streets as a crazy homeless person with walking pneumonia. I've been there before.

I don't have any security beyond friends and family, whom I'm very good at alienating when I'm at my worst.

Don't let any hatred of Catholics blind you to the larger horrors of U.S. medicine, mostly having to do with The Cult of Big Money and false Productivity.

The right wing has declared war on public school teachers and primary care medical providers. Working conditions in many communities are becoming intolerable. Working conditions in some communities have always been intolerable. (My first professional foray outside a medical or computer lab, I wanted to be a Welcome-Back-Kotter style science teacher. My own high school experience was so awful I quit high school. But I was just a shooting star teacher, quickly burnt out...)

I do maintain some degree of anonymity here on DU because I like to rant and let off steam and I don't want to embarrass my wife or kids or progressive co-conspirators, but my dinner table Erdős numbers numbers in the fields of California State education and medicine policy are low. I will say Jesuit trained Governor "Moonbeam" is currently the most competent State Governor in the U.S.A., much as Obama is among the most competent U.S.A. Presidents. Ever.

Don't mind me, I'm a token nut, and a small one at that.

_{This message has been brought to you by Hunter's kinked and highly twisted ego.}

[rug]

33. How do you propose to do that?

[smirkymonkey]

3. Good!

It's about time.

[niyad]

4. far past time, actually

[Dawson Leery]

5. Sue the shitbags.

I will not even walk into a church anymore.

[niyad]

7. only set foot in a church when there is a speaker or event I want to attend that

has nothing to do with church.

[Mendocino]

11. I have only been in churches

in the last 45 years for weddings or funerals. Like you it nothing to do with the religion.

[Dawson Leery]

12. Evangelical/Catholic churches are out of the question.

[niyad]

13. unity and the uu's have some excellent programs. and one of the methodist churches

hosts the chamber orchestra. those things I can handle. have not been to a wedding or a funeral in years.

[Dawson Leery]

19. I agree.

Evangelical/Catholic are out of the question. As are Mormon churches. Their politics are not mine.

[Mendocino]

24. So if your best friend was getting married,

would you not attend the ceremony if it were held in a Catholic church?

[Mendocino]

6. When these facilities

put dogma before health, they should be prepared to lose any public funding.

[niyad]

8. so very true

[yortsed snacilbuper]

9. Charge them with attempted murder,

people die on account of these a$$e$.

[niyad]

10. that is so very true. and think about a rape victim who goes to one of those facilities.

[Mendocino]

14. Or a gay person or transgender.

Do we really believe they are going to get best treatment possible?

[niyad]

15. no

[Mendocino]

16. I went to see my physician

yesterday, routine followup. He had a button on that said "Deplorable and proud of it". Well Doc, i think I'm going to find someone new.

[niyad]

17. May you find an excellent one.

one of my friends is currently looking for a new primary. her current one proudly announced that he was voting for the apricot asshole. she immediately left.

[Mendocino]

18. On the basic level

I don't want to support monetarily, someone who supports someone as loathsome as the orange turd. On a deeper level, I don't want to be treated by someone who's medical opinions may be tainted by an underlying RW bias.

[niyad]

38. exactly!!!!

Last edited Tue Nov 1, 2016, 12:22 PM - Edit history (1)

[hunter]

22. Can we throw a few insurance and pharmaceutical company executives in the same pit?

[dembotoz]

21. my hmo sorta pushs me to catholic operations

the ability to pick your doctor died long before obamacare

[Warren DeMontague]

31. Another reason to support the ACLU

[CharlotteVale]

32. It should be illegal for Catholic hospitals to endanger women in the first place.

[icymist]

34. All the hospitals in Kitsap county, WA state are owned by the Catholic church.

I had complained that sexual minorities can't get proper care at one (trans people are called anti-human) and that the nearest non- Catholic one is in Seattle, a fifty to one hundred mile drive, or a costly ferry ride away. I was told that sexual minorities needed to find another hospital because the church owns the ones nearby.

[Skittles]

35. they need to keep that crap in church

it's got no place in the healthcare system, or anything reality-based

[Mc Mike]

36. Did you see Sam Bee's recent stories on Catholic Hospitals' religious guidelines to treatment?

Her overview segment said Catholic Hospitals are the single biggest owner of hospitals in the country, they own 1 in 6 hospitals, and a lot of hospitals got taken over, and the patients never knew it until they ran into the religious guidelines that made them victims of insane malpractice.

She has a bunch of web extra interviews with different women who saw the American Bishops' insane anti-woman restrictions, first hand. I think it's 10/27. Very informative and worth watching.

[niyad]

39. . . .