Let’s look at a little more…
Some Catholic hospitals, contrary to the opinion of leading Catholic ethicists and theologians, apply the Directives to prohibit doctors from providing any treatment to a woman having a miscarriage if there are still fetal heart tones, even when a doctor has determined that nothing can be done to save the pregnancy and the woman’s health is placed at risk by delaying immediate treatment. These hospitals will require that doctors withhold treatment until there are no fetal heart tones, or there are specific indications that a woman’s life is at risk, such as the onset of a serious infection.
You see? Or there are specific indications that a woman’s life is at risk, such as the onset of a serious infection. That’s what happened in Savita’s case. There were specific indications, and by that time it was too god damn late.
Catholic hospitals shouldn’t be making that decision; the patients should. No hospitals should be making that decision. No hospitals should be prohibiting doctors from providing any treatment to a woman having a miscarriage if there are still fetal heart tones. Their patient is the woman and it’s their job to treat her.
Some hospitals will transfer the patient elsewhere for medical treatment if the woman’s life is not yet at risk, despite the current threats to her health. As shown in the Study, some hospitals will allow treatment only after doctors perform additional unnecessary viability tests, despite doctors’ existing medical certainty that the fetus is not viable. In these cases patients are being denied emergency care to which they are legally entitled, as further described below.
No hospital has any business doing that. That’s not what hospitals are for. They’re not there for the purpose of making a display of their religious morality, they’re there to treat patients.
In the US Catholic hospitals are buying up secular hospitals at an increasing rate. This is appallingly dangerous.