The Vatican has an absolute prohibition on sterilization for the purposes of birth control. The U.S. Catholic bishops consider the procedure “intrinsically immoral,” on par with abortion. Yet for years, Genesys Health System, a Catholic medical center near Flint, Mich., allowed doctors delivering babies there to tie the tubes of new mothers who wanted to ensure they never got pregnant again.

Genesys’s policy wasn’t hard to fathom: Performing a tubal ligation immediately after childbirth is the long-established standard of care, especially if a woman is having a cesarean section. “She’s already cut open — her tubes are right there,” said Sarah Ward Prager, an associate professor in obstetrics and gynecology and director of family planning at the University of Washington Medical School. Subjecting a new mother to a second surgery carries “unnecessary risk,” Prager said. “It is simply unethical to say, ‘I’m going to make you come back to a different hospital to have another surgery in six weeks because the bishop says I can’t tie your tubes right now.”

Then, seemingly out of the blue, Genesys reversed course. Starting November 1, sterilization with the “direct” aim of preventing pregnancy — as opposed to for some other medical (“indirect”) reason — was banned. Patients who had planned to have the procedure after childbirth were left scrambling; their irate doctors were, too.

More: U.S. Bishops Take Aim at Sterilization - ProPublica

IN WHAT parallel world does this make sense?