Planned Parenthood Complains about Religious Hospital Mergers

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.”

“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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

The point is that the Church is using public money to impose its religious practices on taxpayers who don't share the Church's beliefs. That's just not acceptable. An acceptable alternative would be for the Church to own and operate some hospitals according to their beliefs, using only private funds, but that's not a realistic option given the Church's financial condition. In the U.S., the Catholic Church has forked over more than a billion dollars in settlements and court awards (and plenty more is in sight) for its role in aiding and abetting pedophile priests to continue committing their crimes. They could have bought and endowed a few hospitals with that money.

The point is that the Church is using public money to impose its religious practices on taxpayers who don't share the Church's beliefs. That's just not acceptable.

They impose their beliefs by forcing taxpayers to use their institutions?

Every medical provider must provide every imaginable medical service?

From a different angle, they (and the Baptists) provide a limited range of medical services. The government knows that range is limited and has agreed to pay for the benficiaries of public medical programs like Medicare. Those individuals remain free to choose (or not) to use religious institutions. The Church isn't operating in a vacuum and doesn't control the payment system.

The government doesn't care whether or not the provider offers every medical service imaginable. The government holds the purse strings, they control the action. If it actually mattered to the government, they would not pay hospitals or individual medical providers that failed to provide a politically correct range of services.

I would have to disagree. Overall, I have certainly received the impression that more and more young people are pro-life and are willing to take a stand for their beliefs. I began to suspect this when the homecoming queen (and captain of the cheerleading squad) at the local public high school gave a speech on why premarital sex and abortion are wrong. The high school newspaper editor of the largest public school in the city had an ongoing debate column in the newspaper about abortion; she had started out as pro-abort but after dialogue via letters to the editor and reponses, she became pro-life, and admitted so in the paper.
It's kids like this who are our future leaders-and they are ready and eager to stand up for what they believe. For every nutjob bisexual transgendered pro-abort whatever-the-politically-correct-term-is-this-week nut out there, there is a kid who is ready to stand up and say "This is wrong." The people who fought for so-called "abortion rights" are dying off; some will replace them, but many more will come to our side. It is happening already; even the PP folks admit it (see the recent documentary in which a clinic worker wryly admitted that they were losing). Given 30-50 years, I would have to think that we have a fighting chance of making abortion illegal-or at least extremely rare. The numbers are dropping as I type and they will continue to drop.
As far as administration of antibiotics, I will bow to your greater experience (and that of your doctor).

They impose their beliefs by forcing taxpayers to use their institutions?

Socialism is an insidious thing, and you need to keep your eyes on the details. In many (perhaps most) states, the state government controls how many hospitals are allowed to exist. Hospitals need a state license to operate legally, and some states have elaborate schemes to limit the number of hospitals and hospital beds in a given area. The deciding factors are all about expense to the state, since the state funds a huge percentage of medical care, and not about what the taxpaying patients want.

This policy has been used against completely private medical practices which want to open small outpatient surgery centers to provide a narrow range of procedures in the doctors' area of expertise. If the procedures they proposed to do required a hospital license, the state can (and sometimes does) just say no. So the answer is that taxpayers often ARE forced to use whatever hospital the state has allowed to operate in their area, or undertake severe inconvenience and/or extra expense (i.e. using a hospital that is 100 miles away and inaccessible by public transportation, making it difficult or impossible for relatives to visit.

Every medical provider must provide every imaginable medical service?

Obviously I'm not suggesting that small hospitals with limited specialized staff, be required to do stuff like heart transplants. However, there is no hospital that has any ob-gyn department, where doctors aren't qualified to do early abortions and tie tubes. Another problem is that these hospitals often don't advertise their religious affiliation or notify patients in advance of basic procedures that the hospital will refuse to perform.

An example is the story told to me by an electrician who was doing some work on my house (entirely on weekends, since he needed the overtime to make ends meet). He and his wife married young, and figured on having 2-3 children. The first two were boys, so when the wife was asked at the hospital after the birth of the second one, whether she wanted her tubes ties, she said no because she and her husband had decided to have one more, as they hoped for a girl. About two years later, she went to the same hospital to deliver baby #3 (a girl), and planned to have her tubes ties while there. So after she arrived at the hospital, already in labor, she told the doctor or nurse that this time she did want her tubes ties. Surprise! "We won't do it, because the hospital was bought by a Catholic hospital operator last year." No change in the name of the hospital, no warning to patients. As a young family strapped for cash, they couldn't come up with the cash right away to have either of themselves sterilized somewhere else (much more expensive to tie tubes in a separate hospital stay, than in connection with a delivery). They resolved to save up and he would have a vasectomy. Unfortunately, she got pregnant again in the meantime, and they weren't comfortable with abortion. So now this young couple has an additional child they didn't want, and daddy is wokring long hours and spending little time with the kids, in order to make ends meet.

Sorry, but it is NOT okay for religious hospitals to be pulling that kind of stunt while operating primarily on public funding.

However, there is no hospital that has any ob-gyn department, where doctors aren't qualified to do early abortions and tie tubes.

I live in a relatively small community now down to one hospital. It's completely secular. No religious affiliation. They don't do any abortions. What does one make of that? It ain't religion yet they are theoretically "forcing" something or other on the powerless taxpayers. But what?

It's about an hour and a half's drive to the big, big city. You want it enough, you go get it.

Sorry, but it is NOT okay for religious hospitals to be pulling that kind of stunt while operating primarily on public funding.

You're letting the young couple off the hook for their own responsibility.

It wasn't a secret that the hospital changed hands and policy was going to change. Think there was a big stink about that in the news? Of course there was, there always is. Admittedly, a busy young couple might not pay attention to the news. But it was no secret. And it was 'their' hospital.

They knew they wanted tubal ligation. During the course of their pre-natal care this topic had to be raised with their doctor. They were experienced in the ways of doctors, hospitals and pregnancies by that point in time. They weren't innocent babes in the woods going through everything for the very first time.

They 'unfortunately' happened to become pregnant? Well, dang. I'm pretty sure the hospital changing policies and government social policy was not a consideration in that event.

My only point being, in addition to institutions, 'we the people' are part of the equation of responsibility. We can't just say 'they' did it to us. That's the victim mentality. If somebody really, really wants "reproductive health care services" they can get them. Maybe not as conveniently as they would like, but they can get them.

Jumping back to your original thought about the Church's financial disaster, part of the problem was the laity shirking their duty to be vigilant. Decades of trusting every priest to be a saint, when the honest ones tell you all the time they are sinners like everyone else, turned into an absolute moral and financial catastrophe. The priests and bishops were primarily responsible but the laity also had a part to play.

The responsibility thing holds true for the medical consumer as well as the Church layman. All that sexual activity entails tremendous personal responsibility.

The solution, of course, is to eliminate socialism, and make all medical care private. The first thing to happen after that, would be the disappearance of the vast majority of "full-service" hospitals. These animals are dinosaurs and 99% of the patients in one at any given time don't need to be in such a facility, and would get better care and better safety from infection, in a small specialized facility devoted to whatever type of medical care they happen to need at the time.

Frankly, I think the only reason hospitals as we know them still exist, is the socialism driven, blatantly unconstitutional system of medical residencies. Medical residents are providing the vast majority of below-market care of patients who require one or more night's stay in some kind of medical facility. Start tinkering with the existing system, which is inextricably intertwined with the phenomenon of large multi-department hospitals, and the whole residency scam will quickly disintegrate. That possibility terrifies the socialists.

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