As Reach of Catholic Hospitals Grows, So Does Risk to Patient Reproductive Health Care
By the close of 2011, one in nine hospital beds in this country existed in a Catholic or Catholic-sponsored health-care facility. If viewed together as one corporate entity, the ten largest Catholic-sponsored health systems of hospitals and clinics would constitute the largest in the country. And these hospitals are routinely denying medical care to women, citing Catholic doctrine as justification.
Case in point: It took months of appeals and the threat of a sex-discrimination lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union before one Catholic hospital in California reversed course this month and agreed to allow an area doctor to perform a postpartum tubal ligation on a patient. Mercy Medical Center, owned by Dignity Health of San Francisco—a not-for-profit benefits corporation that was founded by the Sisters of Mercy in 1986 and that operates Catholic hospitals and ancillary care facilities in 17 states—had previously refused to allow Rachel Miller to undergo the procedure when she delivers her third child later this month via a scheduled cesarean section.
More: As Reach of Catholic Hospitals Grows, So Does Risk to Patient Reproductive Health Care