Posted on 11/16/2005 2:00:47 PM PST by victim soul
Religiously run hospitals are now in the crosshairs of the abortion provider.
A new call to action from Planned Parenthood is hoping to frighten women with the rising number of hospitals run by faith-based organizations, many of which refuse to offer abortion services. According to the abortion provider, women are in danger of losing their “right” to reproductive services if they don’t step up and oppose mergers between community hospitals and faith-based healthcare providers. Those providers are usually Catholic, 7th Day Adventist and Baptist.
“Planned Parenthood isn’t content with getting all the abortions they want in secular hospitals, now they want to demand that religious hospitals perform abortions as well. They want to take us down with them and make everybody violate their morals and their religion in this quest for abortion and contraception on demand everywhere.”
That’s Kiera McCaffrey, Director of Communications for the Catholic League.
“It’s not about saying, ‘Let’s get everyone to a Catholic hospital or a Baptist hospital so that we can make them one of us or things like that, it’s about seeing a need and helping.”
Far from being “dangerous,” faith-based healthcare providers offer much to the communities they serve including aid to the poor and uninsured. Deirdre McQuade is with the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.
“The services that they provide in their whole integrity, they care for the person not only as a physical body, but as a whole person.”
McQuade says surveys indicate 86% of the hospitals in the United States do not perform abortions; of those that do, they report only a handful of the procedures every year. Frances Kissling, President of Catholics for a Free Choice, a pro-abortion group quoted in the report, did not return calls for comment.
Dangers of Hospital Mergers
by Molly M. Ginty 11.10.05 http://www.plannedparenthood.org/pp2/portal/files/portal/webzine/newspoliticsactivism/fean-051110-hospital-mergers.xml
In New Hampshire, a woman could not get an emergency abortion at her local hospital when her amniotic sac broke at 14 weeks of pregnancy, even though the fetus had no chance of survival and the woman faced a life-threatening infection. Her physician was forced to put her in a cab and send her 80 miles to the nearest hospital that would allow termination of her pregnancy.
In Illinois, a patient diagnosed with a dangerous ectopic pregnancy was sent from a community hospital to seek care elsewhere, despite the risk of injury and death.
"Many Catholic hospitals test the rape victim to see if she is ovulating, and if she is, they refuse to give her emergency contraception."
In California, a woman could not get her tubes tied immediately after giving birth to her ninth child because sterilizations were no longer allowed at the only hospital in town.
Stories like these have become more common in recent years, as community hospitals have merged with religiously sponsored hospitals that use doctrine to restrict women's access to reproductive health care.
Today, one in five hospital beds in the United States are owned by religious entities. Some of these religious organizations — particularly Baptist, Catholic, and Seventh-Day Adventist groups — ban or limit reproductive services. For the women treated at these institutions, that can mean no access to abortion, contraception, fertility treatment, or other vital reproductive health care.
Money Matters
Financial pressures from HMOs and government cost-cutting have forced more community hospitals to merge with or join large health systems. In search of financial stability, city and county governments have also contracted with private health systems to operate their facilities. Such mergers and hospital management arrangements often are bad news for local health consumers, because they can lead to elimination of services.
Women can be harmed when one of the merging hospitals operates under religious doctrine — and insists that the newly merged entity follow such doctrine. According to the New York-based MergerWatch, an estimated 200 mergers between sectarian and non-sectarian hospitals have occurred in the United States since 1990.
Though many of these unions took place in the 1990s, they still threaten women's health care today. Earlier this month, Modern Healthcare, an industry magazine, suggested another wave of mergers was on the horizon. According to the Washington-based Catholics for a Free Choice, half of hospitals affected by Catholic mergers have eliminated reproductive services and continue denying these services to women even though respected medical organizations, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, object to such restrictions.
Catholic Health Care Restrictions
Catholic hospitals operate under the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, guidelines approved by the Vatican that forbid medical procedures that contradict church teaching. The Directives bar abortion, birth control pills, condoms, in vitro fertilization, artificial insemination, family planning counseling, and other key reproductive health services — even for patients who are not Catholic or who have no objection to these services.
In cases of sexual assault, the Directives do permit Catholic hospitals to give women emergency contraception pills, which are up to 89 percent effective at preventing pregnancy if taken 72 hours after unprotected sex. "But many Catholic hospitals test the rape victim to see if she is ovulating, and if she is, they refuse to give her emergency contraception," says Jill Morrison, senior counsel at the Washington-based National Women's Law Center. Since the risk of pregnancy is highest around ovulation, if a woman actually needs emergency contraception to prevent unintended pregnancy, she can't get it.
Why Care?
If your hospital is non-denominational or you think your access to health services is secure, why should you care about religious hospital mergers?
The services you need could be taken away. In 1998, after Doctors Hospital in Little Rock, AR, merged with nearby St. Vincent's Hospital, the resulting entity — St. Vincent's Doctors Hospital — allowed women who gave birth there to continue getting post-partum tubal ligations (sterilization performed immediately following the birth) under a special arrangement.
In a leased space within the new hospital, independent doctors sterilized women who didn't want more children or who suffered from preeclampsia, in which blood pressure spikes so high that subsequent pregnancies can be life-threatening. But in 1999, Vatican officials stepped in and ended the arrangement because it was in "violation" of Catholic principles. Though sterilization is the most common form of contraception used by American women, the Directives hold that the procedure is "intrinsically evil."
Mergers can creep up on patients unexpectedly. Take Scripps Memorial Hospital in Chula Vista, CA, which merged with a local Catholic hospital in October 2004 without alerting the public. Community activists were also not informed. Nor were the hospital's doctors, who became aware of the merger's consequences only when they applied to renew their admitting privileges and were told they now had to follow the Directives. Heath advocates fear there could be more "sneak mergers" like this one.
Even if you don't go to a hospital constrained by religious doctrine, your tax money does. According to a 2002 MergerWatch study, hospitals with religious affiliations receive more than $45 billion in public funds each year, with half of their revenues coming from Medicare, Medicaid, and other government programs.
Even if you have access to contraception and reproductive care, other women do not. Since a quarter of religiously sponsored hospitals are in rural areas, these facilities are often the only ones within driving distance — and the only ones to which women can turn in medical emergencies. For women who are poor, uninsured, or underinsured, religiously run hospitals are often the only sources of available care.
What You Can Do
Health advocates say you should start by asking questions. "First, meet with your doctor," says Frances Kissling, president of Catholics for a Free Choice. "Ask 'Where do you practice medicine? Is that a Catholic hospital or affiliated with one? Are there any services you don't provide? And if I need to go to the hospital, where do you have admitting privileges and does that hospital restrict any services?'"
Next, reach out to MergerWatch to fight proposed mergers in your area. "We've helped 52 communities in 25 states face proposed religious hospital mergers," says Lois Uttley, the organization's director. "We defeated 19 of these proposals and forged compromises in 15 other cases that saved at least some threatened services. We have also unraveled eight existing mergers that were detrimental to reproductive health."
At Brackenridge Hospital in Austin, TX, MergerWatch helped health advocates (including Planned Parenthood of the Texas Capital Region) create a separate "hospital within a hospital" on the fifth floor of the city-owned facility so patients could continue getting tubal ligations and emergency contraception. The rest of the hospital was managed by a Catholic health system under contract with the city.
According to a survey by Catholics for a Free Choice, 85 percent of American women believe publicly funded Catholic hospitals should not be allowed to restrict women's health care. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 74 percent of women receive reproductive and contraceptive services. To make sure you remain one of them, know the facts about hospital mergers — and fight for services that are essential to your health.
Molly M. Ginty is a freelance writer living in New York City.
© 2005 Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. All rights reserved.
2. In most jurisdictions, a Catholic hospital that accepts public funding is Catholic in name only because it must sell its soul for the public money.
Alberta is an interesting place because of its unusual system of allocating tax dollars to schools. Taxpayers actually check off which local school "district" (public or "separate") they want to support when they pay their school taxes, so religious schools actually get as much public funding as their supporters want to give them. The only problem is that most people who are serious about their religion will tell you that the Catholic schools are not much better than the public schools in most areas related to faith and morals.
Most Catholics I know in Alberta send their kids to completely private/religious schools.
Kosher delis should offer pork. I demand it!
Try anyway...
The same goes for schools in some parts of the country. I can tell you right now that the New York City would collapse tomorrow if the Catholic schools in this diocese were to close.
Or the government could withdraw their funds, if it really mattered to them.
the Catholic Church in the U.S. has driven itself into financial ruin by aiding and abetting pedophile priests in their illegal and immoral activities, and doesn't have much left over to fund things like faith-compliant medical facilities.
So. They've all been closed? No problem then.
In the greater context of this subject I find the evaporation good and the danger welcome.
Who knows what evil lurk in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!
The baby killers never sleep.
No government entity is financially relying on a Catholic hospital to care for its citizens. If the Catholic hospital closed, it would reopen the next day under new management (quite possibly government management), since most of the money it survives on is government money. The Catholic Church is certainly not pouring money into hospitals. Various Catholic agencies are in the hospital business to MAKE money.
As for NYC schools, the Catholic schools are closing bit by bit, so the slack will have to be taken up by public and other private schools.
No, they haven't closed. They are not receiving any significant amount of money from the Catholic Church or from any Catholic-affiliated organization.
In most jurisdictions, a Catholic hospital that accepts public funding is Catholic in name only because it must sell its soul for the public money.
That may be true, I don't know but in Alberta, that is not the case. Several hospitals are run by Catholic organizations, are publicly funded, and refuse to provide abortion services. It is not really an issue because abortion clinics also exist.
Alberta is an interesting place because of its unusual system of allocating tax dollars to schools. Taxpayers actually check off which local school "district" (public or "separate") they want to support when they pay their school taxes, so religious schools actually get as much public funding as their supporters want to give them. The only problem is that most people who are serious about their religion will tell you that the Catholic schools are not much better than the public schools in most areas related to faith and morals.
Not quite accurate. Alberta allocates funds to school districts which, theoretically, should be on a per pupil basis but in reality, are not - rural schools have higher per student funding. Catholic schools are funded separately because of the BNA Act. One cannot determine which school district one supports in Alberta: Those who sign a stat dec stating they are Roman Catholic can have their tax dollars allocated to the Separate (i.e. Catholic) School Board in the appropriate municipality.
However, a certain number of dollars follow students no matter what school they attend - public, Catholic, or "charter" schools (as long as they follow the Alberta curriculum, and are approved by Alberta Education, they can enroll students and receive funding.
I would also disagree on morals. I am not Catholic. I am an Albertan, however, and my children attend a Catholic school. Morals were not an issue. It just happened to be the best school in the community, and many of its students are not Catholic. There is a real emphasis on Christian faith. There is a requirement for respect of each individual. School starts with prayer, and from kindergarten, religion is a component. In first grade, each child is given a blessed rosary. In each year, there is an emphasis on a Christian theme - such as collecting supplies/coats/etc. for needy children, making lunches for the homeless, fundraising for an inner city school's field trip, etc.
Most Catholics I know in Alberta send their kids to completely private/religious schools.
Most Catholics I know in Alberta send their children to Catholic schools. Most Albertan children attend public schools. There are charter schools, but they are in the minority, because Alberta school boards offer such varied programs.
That certainly appears to be true. So what was the point about the Church in financial ruin if the Church never was an important funding source in modern times?
From American Atheist magazine, Fall, 2003:
In America, as of 1999, 13% of all hospitals were religious (totaling 18% of all hospital beds); that's 604 out of 4,573 hospitals. (6) Despite the presence of organized religion in America, the Church has managed to scrape together only a few hospitals. Of these 604 hospitals many are a product of mergers with public, non-sectarian hospitals. Not all of these 604 hospitals are Catholic; many are Baptist, Methodist, Shriner (Masonic), Jewish, etc. Despite the religious label, these so-called religious hospitals are more public than public hospitals. Religious hospitals get 36% of all their revenue from Medicare; public hospitals get only 27%. In addition to that 36% of public funding they get 12% of their funding from Medicaid. Of the remaining 44% of funding, 31% comes from county appropriations, 30% comes from investments, and only 5% comes from charitable contributions (not necessarily religious). The percentage of Church funding for Church-run hospitals comes to a grand total of 0.0015 percent.
So if the Church is in complete and total financial ruin, it threatens .0015 percent. Not a big threat.
Okay, first of all, if a woman's amniotic sac breaks she has 48 hours before anyone STARTS worrying about infection (in this case, Group B strep, aka GBS). Second, that infection can be taken care of with antibiotics (see homebirths where things are allowed to take their time and, if things take longer than 48 hours, the mom is given antibiotics). As far as ectopic pregnancies go, they are not viable and they can be fatal for the mom; in an ectopic pregnancy, the baby implants in the fallopian tube (or in VERY rare cases, in an ovary or in the cervix) and when the baby is large enough, the tube can rupture, causing hemorrhage and possibly death. It would be highly unlikely that any doctor in his right mind would send a woman with an ectopic pregnancy that had ruptured/was about to rupture eighty miles away; one assumes that he knew that she would be fine if the laparoscopic surgery she needed was postponed for two hours. I would question why on earth he would have the woman in a car rather than a Medevac chopper or an ambulance, but that isn't the point.
Finally I fail to see the connecton between the prevention of pre-eclampsia and sterilization (aside from the obvious that if a woman doesn't have any more children she cannot be pre-eclamptic again). No one knows for certain what causes preeclampsia; treatments are designed to reduce symptoms (swelling, high blood pressure, constriction of blood vessels).
Frances Kissling is about as Catholic as Chappaquidick Ted and Dick Haskell Durbin.
Since when did the Vatican approve of contraception at any time? Seems to me like that would be in direct violation of the Church's teaching on such matters.
Finally, I hate to break this to Planned Barrenhood (but I guess I will anyway): You have become the minority. No matter how much you shriek, you will continue to be ignored as the culture of life is accepted by an ever-growing number of people. Get over it.
I own a company that employs several hundred people. About 2/3's consist of sales folks....
I sent down a very clear dictum...
No business with Planned Parenthood or any subsidiary under any conditions. Period! The contract will never be approved.
Research is still being done on when antibiotics should be given to women when the amniotic sac breaks. As one who had this happen in two pregnancies (before labour), I can tell you that I was put on antibiotics immediately as a precaution.
I don't think there is a "culture of life" in the U.S. or, for that matter, anywhere in the Western world.
I do believe that the view of the fetus as just a conglomerate of cells, as pro choice advocates have maintained for decades, is being challenged (quite successfully, I think) because of science and photos which demonstrate just how "human" a very young fetus really is.
Good for you!! My wife has been on the local CPC board since its inception about 15 years ago. Last week I noticed that she had visited the PP website. I asked her was she spying on the enemy. She didn't admit it but I b'lieve that's exactly what she was doing.
Damn, you got Moxie.
I like that.
Heck, I can't claim complete credit....
My CFO and VP of sales supports this policy also....
These women who want to kill their babies can find themselves an abortion clinic. This is just a ploy to force religous hospitals to change their policies.
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