Most of you probably remember the tragic and preventable death of Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year old dentist who died in Ireland in 2012, killed by the policies of the Catholic Church.
The story is well known: Halappanavar contracted a serious infection at 17 weeks of pregnancy, one that would kill both her and the fetus if it were not removed. Grania’s post gives more details:
Her husband recounts that repeated requests for termination (in reality, an evacuation of the uterus) were refused because the fetal heartbeat was still present, and they were told, “this is a Catholic country”. She was left with a dilated cervix for three days until the fetal heartbeat ceased. Four days later [Halappanavar] died.
It wasn’t until a year later that it became legal in Ireland to abort a fetus to save the mother’s life!
Here’s her photo to remind us that Catholic dogma has horrible effects on the lives of many:
This almost happened in 2010 in the U.S., to a Michigan resident named Tamisha Means, who now tells her story in The Guardian. Means was 18 weeks pregnant and started to miscarry, but was refused admittance to Mercy Health Muskegon, a Catholic hospital. Bleeding copiously and in terrible pain, Means went back to Mercy (an inappropriate name!) the next day, and was once again refused admission.
The next day she returned to the hospital for the third time, and only then, when she started going into labor on the spot, was she admitted. The baby died, but, no thanks to Mercy, Ms. Means survived. Apparently, doctors could have told her that her child had no chance of survival and terminated her pregnancy, but they didn’t. They withheld crucial information. As Means writes in her article:
Mercy Health Muskegon is a Catholic hospital required to follow policies drafted by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. As the Guardian recently reported, they have religious directives that guide their medical treatment and decision-making, which includes prohibiting healthcare workers from administering any treatment or information that could result in pregnancy termination. That includes decisions where the woman’s life is at risk, as mine was, and the baby could not yet live outside of the womb, as mine couldn’t.
I was not seeking to end my pregnancy. I was seeking proper medical care. I didn’t have control over my miscarriage, but the hospital had control over the care I would receive at that devastating time. Instead of acting in my best interest, religious beliefs were used to deny me the right type of medical care.
This is insupportable. As the Guardian reports at the link above, five different women had their lives endangered in a year and a half by Mercy’s refusal to terminate their pregnancies. In all five cases, the babies died. The religious directives governing such cases are ambiguous, and it looks as if Catholic health workers simply make judgment calls.
Means says she’s filed suit against the Catholic bishops with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union. A lower court dismissed her case, but she and the ACLU have appealed. Until the government forces all hospital to treat women appropriately, and not according to religious dictates, this will keep happening. (The proportion of hospital beds under control of the Catholic Church is growing in the U.S.) And Means says she’ll keep fighting:
Since filing the case I’ve learned about the bigger issue at stake: US hospitals are becoming increasingly affiliated with religious organizations. Ten of the 25 largest hospital systems in the country are Catholic-sponsored, and nearly one in nine hospital beds is in a Catholic facility. And in all these facilities, medical professionals should act in the best interests of their patients, not based on religious rules.
I hope that my case will help ensure that when we enter into the medical system to seek care that we are truly receiving it, unbiased and with respect. No woman should have to fear for her own life as she tries to create a new one.
The only hospital in my locality is catholic. That fact has concerned me, and this article reinforces those concerns.
Related problems caused by religious/catholic beliefs:
Lady Gaga commented on Instagram yesterday about being a survivor of rape. She said she didn’t want to accept. On her words: “And it took me a long time to even admit it to myself because I’m Catholic and I knew it was evil but I thought it was my fault.” It’s available here https://www.instagram.com/p/BCbnltKpFLJ/?taken-by=ladygaga
What would happened if she hadn’t thought it was evil? Probably he’d accept ir earlier and all the process would be more easy.
As Sam Harris has said, this is religious thinking making people pretend to know what they don’t.
I don’t know much about the U.S. Constitution, but publicly funded hospitals that impose religious doctrine on their patients strike me as a clear-cut violation of the First Amendment.
Indeed.
+ 1
Here in Northern California, we have seen two instances in the past 6 months or so where a “Dignity Health” (former Catholic Healthcare West – make what you will of the name, but I favor Indignity Health) hospital has refused to allow a willing doctor to perform a planned tubal ligation after Caesarian birth. In each case, the woman had decided on sterilization for birth control after the birth of the child, and it is apparently very sensible medically to do it after the Caesarian, since the abdomen is already opened for the birth. In the first instance, as I recall, the woman sued, and the hospital relented, so the dispute went away; in the second, quite recently, there was also a suit but the judge (incomprehensibly, in my opinion) ruled that the hospital could deny the sterilization as it did not do male sterilizations – no sex discrimination, thus forcing the woman to travel 75 miles to give birth in a hospital that would permit the procedure. I believe there is an appeal on file, but I’m not sure. There is a very real question in my mind whether a hospital receiving public funds (and these hospitals all do, if they take Medicare or Medicaid/MediCal patients) can deny medical care on this basis. The problem from the litigation perspective is that the issues are transitory and the clock runs fast on getting the case decided, so it’s easy for cases to be dismissed as moot after the birth wherever it takes place – but if they keep repeating, it becomes more likely that a judge will decide that even though the particular woman’s care will not be affected, future women will be and a substantive ruling needs to be made.
Another reason why those of us who live in countries where religious institutions don’t own hospitals are lucky. It’s inconceivable that this situation would arise in most of the Western world.
As far as I’m concerned the only reasons for a religion to own a hospital is to force their practices on others and control the behaviour of their own followers.
Listening to the CBC morning program here in N.S. Canada yesterday (The Current) I caught a discussion about “Catholic” hospitals here and the subject of physician assisted end of life. It appears that the Catholic yet publicly funded hospitals will NOT implement the federal approved legislation for physician assisted end of life. This apparently purely on grounds of faith and Catholic dogma. I didn’t catch the whole program and need to carry out some research but it appears that the institution cannot refuse on religious grounds because of public funding but individuals can and presumably will and the net result will be that patients requiring this service will be referred to another facility.
One can easily imagine the effect of this In a country the size of Canada in remote areas where alternative choice is not easily available. It would appear that the costs associated with referral will have to be borne by the hospital carrying out the referral and met from existing budget. This could obviously be considerable and one wonders what the effect will be on existing patient care.
I suspect that there is more to come about this subject.
Apparently these hospitals do the same regarding the provision of abortion services and get around it by claiming that the additional surgical facility costs cannot be justified. This argument cannot be used for physician assisted end of life as no “extra” facilities are required.
I can imagine there will be very little physician assisted end of life in RCC Provinces in Canada such as P.E.I.
We’re still going through that discussion here. There is strong demand for physician-assisted end-of-life, and a huge percentage of doctors have admitted in confidential surveys that they’ve helped a patient to do it themselves. The only thing really stopping it here is gutless politicians and the religious lobby (mainly Catholic). It will go through eventually and I suspect when it does, doctors will have the option to opt out. However, as all public hospitals are government run and no private ones are owned by religious organisations afaik, it shouldn’t a big problem here. Where I can see an issue is in aged-care facilities as many of them are owned by religious organisations. However, they all receive govt funding and almost always have visiting doctors rather than staff doctors, and even if they have staff doctors they also have visiting doctors, so it may be OK.
Absolutely agree with you on the voluntary euthanasia topic.
Incidentally, I’m not sure you’re 100% right that no religious institutions own hospitals in NZ. Mercy Hospital in Auckland (where I had a heart op) was originally Mater Misericordiae hospital and definitely Catholic. But when I was there, there were no signs of religion whatever. It’s still private, but I’m not sure if there’s any Catholic shareholding. And so far as I know, there’s no shortage of ‘reproductive health’ (including abortion) services in all main centres. (Provision of any health services in remote country districts is a perennial problem, of course, which successive administrations struggle with).
cr
I forgot about Mercy, but as you say, it’s not an issue here. Smaller centres have good access to reproductive health stuff including abortions via all the district hospitals. e.g. in the Waikato, Thames, Tokoroa, Te Kuiti and Taumarunui all have weekly or fortnightly clinics with visiting specialists from Waikato Hospital.
The weekly clinic at Thames even has four or five protestors who sit under a tree in view of the hospital every Friday morning.
And to make money.
Yes!
Am a devoted catholic as well but if it was confirmed that it was risky for her life she deserved to have the abortion done n carry on with her life. God who have judged her not we the fellow humans. may her soul rest in peace!
“I was not seeking to end my pregnancy. I was seeking proper medical care. I didn’t have control over my miscarriage, but the hospital had control over the care I would receive at that devastating time.”
As written, this is much worse than requiring that the catholic hospital perform abortions — they were not willing to admit her thereby making it likely there would be a miscarriage on their grounds! — they seem to have decided that she was in some way responsible for the bleeding, or simply that the survival of fetus and mother was in god’s hands!
If this Catholic hospital decided to leave “survival of fetus and mother … in god’s hands”, perhaps they should get out of the business they’re in and leave it all in god’s hands. There should be no religious ownership of hospitals that involves imposition of church beliefs on patients.
Is there ever a problem with Catholic hospitals being willing to treat (I don’t mean abortion, just treat for injuries) a woman who may be a rape victim?
Not so long ago:
http://www.kath.net/news/39811 (begin with apologists)
normal press:
http://www.tagesspiegel.de/weltspiegel/koeln-katholische-krankenhaeuser-lehnen-vergewaltigungsopfer-ab/7648984.html
http://www.focus.de/panorama/welt/spurensicherung-in-koeln-verweigert-katholische-kliniken-weisen-vergewaltigungsopfer-ab_aid_899708.html
Tamisha Means treatment sounds like a possible violation of the federal EMTALA law, which guarantees appropriate evaluation and emergency treatment of any patient presenting at any hospital emergency department (public or private), regardless of ability to pay, race, ethnicity, or religious preference. If so, Mercy Health Muskegon could be liable for federal sanctions and huge fines.
As an example of the concept of Catholic mercy, the hospital at which I am regrettably employed located an indigent Haitian teenager suffering from an advanced sarcoma and arranged to have him brought to our hospital in the US for treatment. There were multiple problems with this plan, not the least of which was the fact that this hospital does not have a pediatric oncology service nor the subspecialty surgical and medical services generally necessary to support children undergoing cancer treatment. To make things worse, this child spoke no English, and was separated from his family (parents were not invited to accompany him for treatment). The whole episode was absolutely shameful and a horrible moral failure, and I am unable to comprehend at any level how the proponents of this miserable fiasco justified their actions in the name of Catholic mercy. The child died during treatment, alone, separated from his loved ones and unable to understand the language of his caretakers. There is an inscription in a garden pathway outside the hospital that reads “Mercy Is Everywhere”. God save me from their mercy.
Pity would be no more
If we did not make somebody poor
And Mercy no more would be
If all were as happy as we…
(William Blake: ‘The Human Abstract’)
Those are the kind of people Blake spent his life railing against: people for whom qualities like pity and mercy constitute abstract rules that you are required to follow, and are not feelings that arise naturally and spontaneously in particular situations.
That is horrible. An example of how detachment from reality, egocentrism and sanctimony can result in clueless, ethically reprehensible actions.
I was going to say “that sounds like lawsuit territory”, but they’re obviously well beyond the foothills and heading for the upper slopes of Mt Lawsuit.
normally, I’m not one to encourage the landsharks, but this is one where they have my wholehearted support. Go after them and make them bleed like they’re having the miscarriage.
And for the religious advisors, may you eternally be passing kidney stones!
Yes, agreed.
And for the advisors, kidney stones in perpetuity. And with the medication as prescribed by Mother Teresa – that is, none. Suffer!
(I had one of those last week. Paracetamol + ibuprofen = a bloody miracle!)
cr
Ouch! I suspect that the Victorian pioneers of anaesthesia were too polite to be caught in public saying “let those who defy the development of anaesthesia, need it!”
Regarding Catholic Hospitals
In Canada in a related development, the Federal government is reviewing how to implement (by the passage of laws) a ruling by the Supreme Court that they must allow Doctor Assisted Death for a patient requesting it. The debate is about how young the person requesting assistance can be, and what the criteria (certain death, intolerable pain etc.)should be, but they have to make a law I think by June.
Just Wednesday and Thursday of this week, near where I live in Ontario, some Catholic Hospitals (not even remotely private but pretty much just standard hospitals with full provincial funding) have taken to openly stating they may not offer the legally required service when it becomes law.
See
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/news/st-joe-s-wants-to-opt-out-of-providing-doctor-assisted-death-1.3473745
http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/physician-assisted-death-catholic-1.3468567
Paraphrasing Hitch, is there anything that religion does not poison?
Carl Kruse