Guest post:
Originally a comment by iknlast on When the bishops say No.
often the first they hear of it is when they are refused a procedure the way Rachel Miller was
As my mother heard of it when she was refused the same service in 1967, though not at a Catholic hospital. The hospital was a Navy hospital, which routinely performed the procedure. The DOCTOR was Catholic, and refused to do his duty because he didn’t believe my mother should be entitled to make her own decisions.
For the record: my mother was not Catholic. My mother was a fully grown woman of 31, and had 5 children. My mother was intelligent enough and capable enough to understand the implications of the surgery and make her own decisions about what she wished to do.
When my mother showed up pregnant again 3 years later, the doctor (the SAME doctor) chewed her out for getting pregnant, in spite of his refusal to provide her with any sort of contraceptive assistance. She nearly died in that pregnancy, and would have left behind five small children and one dead baby (who would not have survived either) for my father to deal with.
That was my first experience with Catholics. Unfortunately, it would not be my last.
We only have a Catholic St Joseph’s PeaceHealth Network hospital in the county where i live, and i’ve had to stay there several times in order to survive some AIDS-related problems. I tried to be optimistic about it because i kept saying to my partner Tony, “Most people with AIDS don’t even get to go to hospitals, don’t even get medications, so i am doing all right. I only have these First World Problems. Most people with AIDS don’t get to survive as well as i do here. Lots of people with AIDS don’t get to have a best friend like you to be so helpful.”
But i was so scared of how i would handle any of it, while i was so sick, if i didn’t have that friend with me.
If a person who has been sick for two and a half decades goes into the hospital with life-threatening AIDS complications, nobody gets suspicious when that person dies in that hospital.
But when the hospital is Catholic, the staff is Catholic, and i am a person with AIDS who has spent the twenty-six years of HIV infection listening to what the Catholic church is doing regarding AIDS, i do not feel safe when i am in THEIR hospital. Who is going to investigate something suspicious when the AIDS patient dies in the hospital? The cops have to do something when gay-bashing happens out in public in the open in Whatcom County, but who is going to put any effort into checking on the death of a fag with AIDS… in the hospital? And i’m certainly not going to expect the Bellingham Police to be sympathetic to the fag with AIDS, whether in a Catholic hospital, or anywhere else.
So i vowed i would never go back there, no matter how sick i got. I talked to Tony about this many times recently, and then i said to him yesterday, “Something has changed over the last few years. I used to be afraid of how to deal with these problems, but now i feel a little different. I’m not afraid of the sick and dying parts any more. I’m not afraid of being killed by a fag-hater if i’m stuck in their Catholic hospital. I’m ready to die, i’m tired of putting effort into any of this. Let them kill me, something was going to kill me anyway, i don’t care any more. I don’t want to outlive my last friend anyway.” And i said i was finding peace with my situation. I have medication, i have doctors, most people with AIDS don’t. I’m dealing with it as a gay white American male, not as a black female. I’m at home, not in a prison cell. I’m dealing with it, and i have a friend who is helping. Many people don’t. I will have to settle for a Catholic healthcare system in Whatcom County every two months when i go to the lab, and maybe eventually during other emergencies, because things aren’t getting better, they’re getting more like this all over America, every day, and i can’t change the whole country, i can’t change the whole County, i can’t change the whole system. I’m not “giving up”, i’m just trying to not worry, to accept that i’ll have to deal with it no matter what the problem is.
I won’t let down my guard and be complacent, but i won’t go through *everything* in life in a constant state of paranoia. Alertness is important, but the perpetual paranoia is counterproductive. I’m too paranoid to trust that hospital ever again, but i still have my partner, my doctors in private practise, and healthcare coverage which provides me with medication to keep me alive. Some days i feel like i’ve run out reasons to bother putting effort into managing; but then i think about my partner Tony, and i figure, i’ll keep going. I don’t want to outlive him, but i DO want to be here every day to help take care of him the way he helps take care of me. It’s worked for us this far. And i’m too tired of it all to be afraid any more. My feeling that relief and peace will come to me is now stronger than my feelings of worry. We’ve outlived nearly all of our other friends, but it’s no accomplishment. Some people manage to deal with lots worse, so i figure i’ll somehow manage like i always have so far.