Tag: US Conference of Catholic Bishops

  • This woman is dying before our eyes

    The rest of that article on miscarriage management (or the lack thereof) in Catholic hospitals.

    Some doctors have decided to take matters into their own hands. In the following case, the refusal of the hospital ethics committee to approve uterine evacuation not only caused significant harm to the patient but compelled a perinatologist, Dr S, now practicing in a nonsectarian academic medical center, to violate protocol and resign from his position in an urban northeastern Catholic-owned hospital.

    I’ll never forget this; it was awful—I had one of my partners accept this patient at 19 weeks. The pregnancy was in the vagina. It was over… . And so he takes this patient and transferred her to [our] tertiary medical center, which I was just livid about, and, you know, “we’re going to save the pregnancy.” So of course, I’m on call when she gets septic, and she’s septic to the point that I’m pushing pressors on labor and delivery trying to keep her blood pressure up, and I have her on a cooling blanket because she’s 106 degrees. And I needed to get everything out. And so I put the ultrasound machine on and there was still a heartbeat, and [the ethics committee] wouldn’t let me because there was still a heartbeat. This woman is dying before our eyes. I went in to examine her, and I was able to find the umbilical cord through the membranes and just snapped the umbilical cord and so that I could put the ultrasound—“Oh look. No heartbeat. Let’s go.” She was so sick she was in the [intensive care unit] for about 10 days and very nearly died… . She was in DIC [disseminated intravascular coagulopathy]… . Her bleeding was so bad that the sclera, the white of her eyes, were red, filled with blood… . And I said, “I just can’t do this. I can’t put myself behind this. This is not worth it to me.” That’s why I left.

    From Dr S’s perspective, the chances for fetal life were nonexistent given the septic maternal environment. For the ethics committee, however, the present yet waning fetal heart tones were evidence of fetal life that precluded intervention. Rather than struggle longer to convince his committee to make an exception and grant approval for termination of pregnancy, Dr S chose to covertly sever the patient’s umbilical cord so that the fetal heartbeat would cease and evacuation of the uterus could “legitimately” proceed.

    How’s that for a horror story?

    Dr G also circumvented the ethics committee in her southern Catholic-owned hospital. She opted not to check fetal heart tones or seek ethics committee approval when caring for a miscarrying woman for fear that documentation of fetal heart tones would have caused unnecessary delays. This led to conflict with the nurse assisting her.

    She was 14 weeks and the membranes were literally out of the cervix and hanging in the vagina. And so with her I could just take care of it in the [emergency room] but her cervix wasn’t open enough … so we went to the operating room and the nurse kept asking me, “Was there heart tones, was there heart tones?” I said “I don’t know. I don’t know.” Which I kind of knew there would be. But she said, “Well, did you check?” … I said, “I don’t need an ultrasound to tell me that it’s inevitable … you can just put, ‘The heart tones weren’t documented,’ and then they can interpret that however they want to interpret that.” … I said, “Throw it back at me … I’m not going to order an ultrasound. It’s silly.” Because then that’s the thing; it would have muddied the water in this case.

    The nurse probably could have gotten her fired for that.

    Physicians working in Catholic-owned hospitals in all 4 US regions of our study disclosed experiences of being barred from completing emergency uterine evacuation while fetal heart tones were present, even when medically indicated. As a result, they had to delay care or transfer patients to non–Catholic-owned facilities. Some physicians violated the authority and protocol of the ethics committee to deliver what they considered safe medical care that reflected the standard of care learned in residency. The extent to which this might occur needs to be researched further but may be difficult to assess, because most physicians are not likely to discuss such behavior even in a confidential interview.

    It’s one long horror story.

    H/t ema.

  • Unless it looks as if she’s going to die

    This should make your hair stand on end:

    When There’s a Heartbeat: Miscarriage Management in Catholic-Owned Hospitals. Lori R. Freedman, PhD,corresponding author Uta Landy, PhD, and Jody Steinauer, MD, MAS:

    The findings reported here were not the original focus of our research. In the process of conducting a qualitative study about abortion provision in the clinical practice of obstetrician–gynecologists, we interviewed 30 obstetrician–gynecologists around the United States. During the interviews, which were conducted in 2006, 6 physicians working with or within Catholic-owned hospitals revealed that they were constrained by hospital policies in their ability to undertake urgent uterine evacuation. They reported that Catholic doctrine, as interpreted by their hospital administrations, interfered with their medical judgment. For example, some of them were denied permission to perform an abortion when uterine evacuation was medically indicated and fetal heart tones were still present.

    The Savita Halappanavar situation. It happens here too.

    Catholic-owned institutions and their employees must adhere to medical practice guidelines contained in the “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services” (hereafter called “the directives”) written by the Committee on Doctrine of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.8 The directives state that abortion is never permitted. However, regarding emergency care during miscarriage management, the manual used by Catholic-owned hospital ethics committees to interpret the directives states that abortion is acceptable if the purpose is to treat “a life-threatening pathology” in the pregnant woman when the treatment cannot be postponed until the fetus is viable.9 The experiences of physicians in our study indicate that uterine evacuation may not be approved during miscarriage by the hospital ethics committee if fetal heart tones are present and the pregnant woman is not yet ill, in effect delaying care until fetal heart tones cease, the pregnant woman becomes ill, or the patient is transported to a non–Catholic-owned facility for the procedure.

    Risking the pregnant woman’s life, in other words.

    Obstetrician–gynecologists working in Catholic-owned hospitals described cases in which abortion was medically indicated according to their medical judgment but, because of the ethics committee’s ruling, it was delayed until either fetal heartbeats ceased or the patient could be transported to another facility. Dr P, from a midwestern, mid-sized city, said that at her Catholic-owned hospital, approval for termination of pregnancy was rare if a fetal heartbeat was present (even in “people who are bleeding, they’re all the way dilated, and they’re only 17 weeks”) unless “it looks like she’s going to die if we don’t do it.”

    In another case, Dr H, from the same Catholic-owned hospital in the Midwest, sent her patient by ambulance 90 miles to the nearest institution where the patient could have an abortion because the ethics committee refused to approve her case.

    She was very early, 14 weeks. She came in … and there was a hand sticking out of the cervix. Clearly the membranes had ruptured and she was trying to deliver… . There was a heart rate, and [we called] the ethics committee, and they [said], “Nope, can’t do anything.” So we had to send her to [the university hospital]… . You know, these things don’t happen that often, but from what I understand it, it’s pretty clear. Even if mom is very sick, you know, potentially life threatening, can’t do anything.

    That should be malpractice.

    In residency, Dr P and Dr H had been taught to perform uterine evacuation or labor induction on patients during inevitable miscarriage whether fetal heart tones were present or not. In their new Catholic-owned hospital environment, such treatment was considered a prohibited abortion by the governing ethics committee because the fetus is still alive and the patient is not yet experiencing “a life-threatening pathology” such as sepsis.

    You see what they’re saying there? A situation that will lead to sepsis is not enough, they have to wait until sepsis develops – by which time it may be too late, as it was for Savita Halappanavar.

    This should be a crime. The hospitals should be not just sued but prosecuted.

    Dr B, an obstetrician–gynecologist working in an academic medical center, described how a Catholic-owned hospital in her western urban area asked her to accept a patient who was already septic. When she received the request, she recommended that the physician from the Catholic-owned hospital perform a uterine aspiration there and not further risk the health of the woman by delaying her care with the transport.

    Because the fetus was still alive, they wouldn’t intervene. And she was hemorrhaging, and they called me and wanted to transport her, and I said, “It sounds like she’s unstable, and it sounds like you need to take care of her there.” And I was on a recorded line, I reported them as an EMTALA [Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act] violation. And the physician [said], “This isn’t something that we can take care of.” And I [said], “Well, if I don’t accept her, what are you going to do with her?” [He answered], “We’ll put her on a floor [i.e., admit her to a bed in the hospital instead of keeping her in the emergency room]; we’ll transfuse her as much as we can, and we’ll just wait till the fetus dies.”

    Ultimately, Dr B chose to accept the patient to spare her unnecessary suffering and harm, but she saw this case as a form of “patient dumping,” because the patient was denied treatment and transported while unstable.

    And this is all because the hospital is Catholic.

    More to come, because I don’t like to make posts too long.

     

  • Left to the Church and its tribunals

    Damn, I missed this – last month a judge dismissed Tamesha Means’s ACLU-backed lawsuit against the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

    The ACLU immediately appealed.

    A federal judge in Grand Rapids has dismissed a Muskegon woman’s ACLU-backed lawsuit that claimed Catholic anti-abortion doctrine caused her to receive improper care at Muskegon’s Mercy Health Partners before she miscarried in 2010.

    The ACLU immediately filed a notice of appeal to the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

    Catholic anti-abortion doctrine did cause her to receive improper care – she presented with a miscarriage and they told her to go home and wait. That’s not standard of care, it’s Catholic non-care.

    The ACLU-drafted lawsuit contended Means “suffered severe, unnecessary, and foreseeable physical and emotional pain and suffering” because of policy directives set by the bishops and enforced at Mercy and other Catholic hospitals.

    And risk, wholly unnecessary risk. Remember Savita Halappanavar? That risk.

    Catholic hospitals that obey the ERD refuse to terminate miscarriages as long as the fetus still has a pulse.

    The lawsuit sought damages and  a declaration that the conference’s actions were negligent, “not only to provide a remedy for the trauma she suffered, but also to prevent other women in her situation from suffering similar harm in the future,” in the words of the legal complaint.

    The policies at issue are called Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services. They prohibit pre-viability pregnancy termination and informing patients that deliberate termination is a medical option.

    Even in the case of a pre-viability miscarriage, when the fetus is doomed no matter what. The stinking “Directives” still say the woman has to wait, even if it kills her. It did kill Savita Halappanavar, and it has killed others whose families didn’t make a stink.

    On Tuesday, June 30, U.S. District Judge Robert Holmes Bell dismissed the lawsuit without a hearing on the evidence. He based his opinion on written briefs submitted by both sides.

    Bell cited two basic reasons for the dismissal:

    • Michigan federal courts have no jurisdiction over the bishops’ conference for policy directives issued by the Washington, D.C.-based organization.
    • It’s improper for courts to interfere in religious doctrinal decisions, which Bell concluded was behind the anti-abortion policy directives. Considering the Muskegon woman’s negligence claim would “impermissibly intrude upon ecclesiastical matters,” the judge wrote in his opinion.

    So churches can run hospitals and they can order the staff to deny life-saving treatment and there’s nothing we can do about it.

    Bell noted that Means still had recourse in the courts to sue doctors or hospitals for medical malpractice if she received inadequate medical care – but not, the judge concluded, to sue a religious organization or officials for their religious doctrine.

    But suing the hospitals one at a time is useless – it’s the policy and the orders that have to be stopped.

    “It is not up to the Court to mandate the larger structural and policy reform to  Catholic hospitals that Plaintiff seeks; that issue is left to the Church and its tribunals,” Bell wrote.

    So the Catholic church can go right ahead and keep telling doctors to kill women in their hospitals.

    According to the lawsuit, Means was 18 weeks pregnant – a little more than four months — in 2010 when her water broke. She made three visits to a Mercy emergency room within a couple of days with pain and other symptoms and was not informed that pregnancy termination was an option. On the third visit, with an infection-induced fever and while about to be discharged again, she delivered a baby who died within three hours.

    The ACLU lawsuit contended that Catholic doctrine incorporated in the bishops’ policy  directives prevented Means from getting appropriate care. The ACLU claims her care was negligent because the policy prevents staff from telling her “that terminating her pregnancy was an option and the safest course for her condition.”

    According to the ACLU, Means was in “excruciating pain,” continuing her pregnancy posed “significant risks to her health,” and she suffered “extreme distress” and an infection that can cause infertility.

    After Means filed her lawsuit, the bishop conference’s president denied that the conference’s church-based doctrines amount to negligence.

    According to that statement, the Catholic Ethical and Religious Directives prohibit abortion but allow operations, treatments and medications for a pregnant woman to treat a “proportionately serious pathological condition,” even if doing so causes the unintentional death of the child.

    Termination is the treatment for a miscarriage with PRM – premature rupture of the membrane. That’s the treatment, and the bishops prohibit it – so the president’s statement is lying bullshit.

    Congress should do something about this, but it won’t. The Feds should do something about it, but they won’t. They’re either scared of religion or in thrall to it, or maybe both.

    Oh well, it’s only women.

  • 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.

  • When the bishops say No

    The good news is, the ACLU succeeded in convincing a Catholic hospital to provide a standard of care procedure despite its religious objections. The bad news is, it took the ACLU to get a Catholic hospital to provide a standard of care procedure despite its religious objections. All hospitals should be providing standard of care, and religion should have nothing to do with it. Hospitals are for medical treatment and care; they are not for religious observances. The function and purpose of hospitals is to provide treatment and care; it’s not to force patients to obey dogmatic harmful religious taboos. The religious beliefs or unbeliefs of the patients are none of the hospital’s business.

    Under the threat of a potential lawsuit, a Catholic-affiliated hospital in California’s largest hospital network made an unexpected move. It approved a previously denied doctor’s request to perform a post-partum tubal ligation, also known as “getting your tubes tied.”

    The approval from Mercy Medical Center was received yesterday, just days after we sent a letter on behalf of client Rachel Miller, charging that the hospital had unlawfully denied her reproductive health care.

    They denied her the care on what grounds?

    Rachel and her husband have one small child in their family and are eagerly expecting the arrival of their second baby next month. They have always known that their family would be complete with two children, so at the recommendation of her doctor, Rachel decided that she would like to get her tubes tied — a safe, standard and highly effective form of contraception — after she gives birth to their second child in late September. Her doctor fully supports this plan, as performing the procedure at the time of a C-section is the standard of care.

    However, the hospital where Rachel is scheduled for delivery is part of a Catholic hospital system, and operates under binding “ethical and religious directives” issued by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Applying these directives, which refer to sterilization for the purpose of contraception as “intrinsically evil,” the hospital denied Rachel’s doctor’s request to perform this common procedure.

    Those grounds. Those grounds are grounds that should have no purchase in any health care system. None. Bishops should have nothing whatever to do with the running of any health care system. It’s not their job, it’s none of their business, they have no relevant competence. No hospital anywhere should be bound by any “ethical and religious directives” issued by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. That should be right out. All hospitals should be required, with strict monitoring and enforcement if necessary (and it is very necessary), to provide standard of care no matter what the fucking Catholic bishops say.

    After we sent a letter late last week threatening to file a lawsuit if the hospital didn’t allow Rachel’s doctor to perform the tubal ligation, the hospital agreed to grant an exception and Rachel’s doctor is now scheduled to perform the procedure when she gets her C-section.

    While this is certainly a win for Rachel, there remains a clear conflict between the best interests of patients and the directives of the Catholic hospital system. All women should be able to make the medical decisions that are best for them, in consultation with their doctors. And religious institutions that provide services to the general public should not be allowed to claim religion as an excuse to discriminate or deny important health care.

    That is correct. This needs to stop. Most people aren’t even aware of it – often the first they hear of it is when they are refused a procedure the way Rachel Miller was. This needs to be on everyone’s radar, and it needs to stop.

    Catholic hospitals are increasingly ubiquitous in both California and across the United States, and they are often the only health care option for women, including in life-threatening emergencies. For instance, Rachel’s hospital is part of the Dignity Health hospital system, the fifth largest healthcare system in the country and the largest hospital provider in California, with 29 hospitals across the state. Because all of the surrounding hospitals with labor and delivery wards are also Catholic, Rachel would have needed to travel over 160 miles to get her tubal ligation covered by her insurance at the same time as her C-section.

    And this isn’t some accident, either – Catholic systems are gobbling up all the hospitals so that they can force their loathsome dogma on unwilling patients.

    Rachel’s story is not unique. To learn more about other women impacted by the Ethical and Religious Directives:

    Tell everyone you know.

  • I never can keep my temper when reading a bishop

    The bishops are still demanding more and more and yet more theocracy. They think the US should simply be run by the Vatican, period; nothing less will do. They hate anything that’s not total enslavement by the imaginary god and its loathsome minions.

    Despite the recent Hobby Lobby court victory, Bishop James D. Conley of Lincoln, Neb. stressed the need for Catholics to continue to evangelize and fight against the prevailing culture of secularism.

    “The victory is not unqualified and the fight for our religious liberty is not complete. Churches, hospitals, and universities are still threatened by the HHS contraceptive mandate,” Bishop Conley said in his July 11 archdiocesan column.

    The lying dog. They have their “religious liberty”; their religious liberty does not imply a right to impose their anti-liberty anti-women authoritarian fascist dogma on the whole population. That’s nothing to do with liberty, it’s tyranny and oppression.

    In his column, Bishop Conley said the repercussions of the Hobby Lobby decision have indeed established that “believers have a place in the public square – that all of us should be free to conduct our business without compromising our basic moral beliefs.”

    However, the Supreme Court decision also relayed the overwhelming assertions of secularists, “whose loyalties lie more closely with unfettered sexual libertinism than with respect for fundamental rights of conscience, of religion, or of personal dignity,” the bishop said.

    Disgusting pig. He’s a high-up in a church with a long and festering history of allowing its priests to rape children, and of shielding them from the law, and he has the fucking gall to accuse all of us of “unfettered sexual libertinism” – because contraception! It’s raping children that’s wrong, you piece of shit, not having adult sex with contraception.

    Although the fight for religious freedom in litigation is important, Bishop Conley suggested that the root issue is secularism.

    “Religious liberty will be threatened in our nation as long as secularism is the prevailing cultural leitmotif.”

    “The Hobby Lobby decision has exposed the secular tendency towards atheocracy – the systematic hostility and marginalization of religious believers who engage in American public life, a kind of practical atheism established as the norm.”

    He’s such a liar. Religion gets massive deference in American public life. Massive. Bishop James D. Conley of Lincoln, Nebraska is a damn iying liar.

  • The lies bishops tell

    The president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, archbishop Joseph Kurtz, issued a statement on the ACLU lawsuit on Friday. It’s the predictable pack of lies from the episcopal sack of shit. Yes that’s harsh language but the sack of shit is lying in defense of his vile organization’s insistence on forcing women to die of miscarriages in all hospitals that his vile theocratic organization controls. Think about that. This man of god, this priest at the pinnacle of the catholic organizational tree, is issuing official lies to defend the church’s policy of forcing hospitals to stand by while women die of miscarriages in the miserable way Savita Hallappanavar did.

    It is important to note at the outset that the death of any unborn child is tragic, and we feel deeply for any mother who suffers such pain and loss.

    No it isn’t. Nobody cares what you think is tragic, or how deeply or shallowly you feel. Nobody wants your distractions; the issue isn’t the death of the fetus, the issue is the life of the mother.

    We cannot speak to the facts of the specific situation described in the complaint, which can be addressed only by those directly involved. The suit instead claims that our document titled “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services” (ERDs) encourages or requires substandard treatment of pregnant women because it does not approve the direct killing of their unborn children.

    Because it forbids abortion under any circumstances, even if the fetus will die anyway, even if the woman will die without the abortion.

    This claim is baseless. The ERDs urge respectful and compassionate care for both mothers and their children, both during and after pregnancy. Regarding abortion, the ERDs restate the universal and consistent teaching of the Catholic Church on defending the life of the unborn child—a defense that, as Pope Francis recently reminded us, “is closely linked to the defense of each and every other human right” (Evangelii Gaudium, no. 213). This same commitment to the life of each human individual has motivated Catholics to establish the nation’s largest network of nonprofit health care ministries. These ministries provide high-quality care to women and children, including those who lack health coverage and financial resources. The Church’s rejection of abortion also mirrors the Hippocratic Oath that gave rise to the very idea of medicine as a profession, a calling with its own life-affirming moral code.

    Not when the pregnancy is killing the woman it doesn’t.

    The Church holds that all human life, both before and after birth, has inherent dignity, and that health care providers have the corresponding duty to respect the dignity of all their patients. This lawsuit argues that it is legally “negligent” for the Catholic bishops to proclaim this core teaching of our faith. Thus, the suit urges the government to punish that proclamation with civil liability, a clear violation of the First Amendment.

    The bishops do more than just proclaiming core “teachings” of their “faith” – they do their best to enforce their “teachings” on all catholic hospitals, and many hospitals obey.

    A robust Catholic presence in health care helps build a society where medical providers show a fierce devotion to the life and health of each patient, including those most marginalized and in need. It witnesses against a utilitarian calculus about the relative value of different human lives. And it provides a haven for pregnant women and their unborn children regardless of their financial resources. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops will continue to defend these principles in season and out, and we will defend ourselves against this misguided lawsuit.

    No it doesn’t. Tamesha Means didn’t find any “haven” at that hospital that sent her home twice when she was miscarrying, and was about to send her home a third time when she was lucky enough to deliver her fetus while the paperwork was in progress.

    The archbishop is a lying sack of shit.

     

  • The only hospital in Muskegon County

    Let’s take a look at Tamesha Means v United States Conference of Catholic Bishops [pdf].

    Plaintiff Tamesha Means brings this negligence action against the United States Conference for Catholic Bishops and others for promulgating and implementing directives that cause pregnant women who are suffering from a miscarriage to be denied appropriate medical care, including information about their condition and treatment options. These mandates, known as the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services (“Directives”), do not merely set forth the opinions of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (“USCCB”) on certain health care issues. Rather, the Directives require Catholic hospitals to abide by their terms, even when doing so places a woman’s health or life at risk.

    There you go. That’s the first three sentences and it sums up all we need to know right there – a much too obscure and little-noticed fact about health care in these here United States – the fact that the conference of Catholic bishops orders Catholic hospitals to refuse to perform even life-saving abortions. If you tell people this they don’t believe you. They may even call you a liar. And yet it’s true.

    This urgently needs to be fixed. The federal government needs to tell the USCCB that it may not interfere with medical care, period. The feds need to tell Catholic hospitals that they have to do whatever is best for the patient, in consultation with the patient, period. No bishops.

    Here’s an interesting detail:

    Defendant Stanley Urban is a resident and citizen of the State of Pennsylvania. Urban is the Chair of Catholic Health Ministries, an unincorporated foreign entity that is the religious sponsor of MHP.

    MHP is Mercy Health Partners, which is the hospital that gave Tamesha Means such terrible faith-based treatment. Why do we even have “religious sponsors” for hospitals? Why aren’t hospitals secular as a matter of course? They should be welcome to have all sorts of religious services available for people who want them, of course, because hospitals are obviously top of the list of places where religious people are going to want religious company and help. But that should be strictly separate from medical treatment. It’s deranged that it’s not.

    Another important detail:

    MHP is the only hospital in Muskegon County, Michigan.

    A Catholic monopoly on hospital care in a whole county.

    17. Plaintiff’s ultrasound report indicates Plaintiff had an amniotic fluid index of only 3.4 and a condition called oligohydramnios, which refers to a decreased volume of amniotic fluid due to the premature rupture of membranes.

    18. MHP also diagnosed Plaintiff with preterm premature rupture of membrane, a condition in which a woman’s amniotic sac ruptures with a gestation less than 37 weeks.

    19. MHP informed Plaintiff that the fetus was not yet viable.

    20. MHP did not inform Plaintiff that in most cases, an amniotic fluid index of 3.4 at 18 weeks of pregnancy, in the context of premature rupture of membranes, means that the fetus will either not be born alive or will be born alive and die very shortly thereafter.

    21. MHP did not inform Plaintiff about the serious risks to her health if she attempted to continue the pregnancy.

    It’s medical malpractice, at the behest of Catholic bishops. At the only hospital in Muskegon County, Michigan.

    We live in a fucking theocracy here.

  • This kind of infection kills women

    Dr Jen Gunter says the doctors at that Catholic hospital in Michigan should be sued along with the bishops.

    This case happened at Mercy Health Partners,, a Catholic hospital in Muskegon, Mich. What makes it even worse is that Ms. Means is one of four women to suffer the same negligent care with ruptured membranes before viability at Mercy Health Partners who were denied adequate care. The cases were apparently discovered by a federally funded infant and fetal mortality project.

    …

    While there is a lot of press over this legal tactic, we must not lose sight of a crucial fact. If the events as reported are supported by the medical record Ms. Means was the victim of medical malpractice.

    It is standard to care to offer termination at 18 weeks with grossly ruptured membranes. This is because the risk of infection is 30-40% just walking in the door with ruptured membranes at 18 weeks (meaning 30-40% of the time membranes ruptured because of an infection). If an infection isn’t there initially, it almost always develops. This is because once the membranes ruptured there is no barrier preventing the vaginal bacteria from ascending into the uterus. Regardless of gestational age. Regardless of viability. This kind of infections kills women. One needs to look no further than the Savita tragedy for a terrible reminder. And so, because the risks are very great, it is standard of care to include the discussion of termination at 18 weeks with ruptured membranes.

    This kind of infection kills women. Let’s not stand idly by and let Catholic bishops order hospitals to let infections kill women. Let’s not stand idly by and let hospitals obey the orders of bishops instead of providing the standard of care. Let’s not just loll around watching reality tv while Catholic hospitals let religious dogma trump medical knowledge.

  • ACLU Sues Bishops on Behalf of Pregnant Woman Denied Care at Catholic Hospital

    The ACLU has a press release on its lawsuit against the bishops, so I can just publish the whole thing here for your enlightenment and discussion.

    ACLU Sues Bishops on Behalf of Pregnant Woman Denied Care at Catholic Hospital

    Suit Claims Religious Directives Put Women’s Health at Risk

    December 2, 2013

    CONTACT: 212-549-2666; media@aclu.org

    NEW YORK and DETROIT— The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Michigan have filed a lawsuit on behalf of a pregnant woman who miscarried and was denied appropriate medical treatment because the only hospital in her county is required to abide by religious directives. The directives, written by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, prohibited that hospital from complying with the applicable standard of care in this case.

    Tamesha Means rushed to Mercy Health Partners in Muskegon, Michigan, when her water broke after only 18 weeks of pregnancy. Based on the bishops’ religious directives, the hospital sent her home twice even though Means was in excruciating pain; there was virtually no chance that her pregnancy could survive, and continuing the pregnancy posed significant risks to her health.

    Because of its Catholic affiliation and binding directives, the hospital told Means that there was nothing it could do and did not tell Means that terminating her pregnancy was an option and the safest course for her condition. When Means returned to the hospital a third time in extreme distress and with an infection, the hospital, once again prepared to send her home. While staff prepared her discharge paperwork, she began to deliver. Only then did the hospital begin tending to Means’ miscarriage.

    “They never offered me any options,” said Means. “They didn’t tell me what was happening to my body. Whatever was going on with me, they discussed it amongst themselves. I was just left to wonder, what’s going to happen to me?”

    Catholic-sponsored hospitals are required to adhere to the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services. The directives prohibit a pre-viability pregnancy termination, even when there is little or no chance that the fetus will survive, and the life or health of a pregnant woman is at risk. They also direct health care providers not to inform patients about alternatives inconsistent with those directives, even when those alternatives are the best option for the patient’s health. The lawsuit charges that, because of the directives, the USCCB is ultimately responsible for the unnecessary trauma and harm that Means and other pregnant women in similar situations have experienced at Catholic-sponsored hospitals.

    “The best interests of the patient must always come first and this fundamental ethic is central to the medical profession,” said Kary Moss, executive director of the ACLU of Michigan. “In this case, a young woman in a crisis situation was put at risk because religious directives were allowed to interfere with her medical care. Patients should not be forced to suffer because of a hospital’s religious affiliation.”

    Because she received neither the information nor the care appropriate for her condition, Means was unable to direct her course of treatment and suffered unnecessarily. Her story is not unique. Research, including that of Lori R. Freedman, PhD, and Debra B. Stulberg, MD, recounts other stories of patients being denied information and appropriate care at hospitals bound by the bishops’ directives.

    “A pregnant woman who goes to the hospital seeking medical care has the right to expect that the hospital’s first priority will be to provide her appropriate care,” said Louise Melling, deputy legal director of the ACLU. “Medical decisions should not be hamstrung by religious directives.”

    Tamesha Means v. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

  • Finally – WOMAN SUES US CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS

    Yesssssssssss. It’s about fucking time.

    USA Today: Woman sues over Catholic hospitals’ abortion rule

    DETROIT — A Michigan woman is taking on the nation’s Catholic hospitals in federal court, alleging they are forcing pregnant women in crisis into having painful miscarriages rather than terminate the pregnancy — and not giving them any options.

    The Muskegon woman, who developed an infection and miscarried 18 weeks into her pregnancy, sued the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on Monday, alleging the group’s anti-abortion directive denies proper medical care to women like herself.

    In her case, the lawsuit said, the directive contributed to a painful miscarriage and offered her no options.

    In other words, a potential Savita Halappanavar, with the difference being that she survived. It’s good that she survived, but no thanks to the USCCB for that.

    The case involves Tamesha Means, who was rushed to Mercy Health Partners in Muskegon in December 2010 when her water broke after 18 weeks of pregnancy. The hospital sent her home twice, even though she was in “excruciating pain;” there was virtually no chance that her pregnancy could survive, and continuing the pregnancy posed a significant risk to the mother’s health, she alleged in the lawsuit.

    Exactly like Savita Halappanavar – except that University Hospital Galway didn’t send Halappanavar home; it kept her there to die while the staff watched.

    But because of its Catholic affiliation and directives, the hospital told Means that there was nothing it could do, and it did not tell her that abortion was an option, she alleged in the lawsuit. When Means returned to the hospital a third time in extreme distress and with an infection, the hospital still tried to send her home, but Means began to deliver while staff prepared her discharge paperwork.

    At that point, the hospital tended to her miscarriage.

    That should be a prosecutable crime. Not just a lawsuit; a crime.

    You know, I reported on this situation in my talk at Empowering Women Through Secularism in Dublin last summer. I’ve seen comments from [cough] hostile observers saying I just made it up. No I didn’t. The USCCB is real; the ERD is real; Catholic hospitals and healthcare networks are real; the fact that many Catholic hospitals obey the ERD instead of secular law is real. I didn’t make any of it up.

    Officials at Mercy Health Partners declined comment. So did the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which deferred to its 43-page Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services.

    Under the directives: “Abortion … is never permitted. Every procedure whose sole immediate effect is the termination of pregnancy before viability is an abortion.” The directives also defend the practice of denying patient requests for certain medical procedures, stating it “does not offend the rights of individual conscience by refusing to provide or permit medical procedures that are judged morally wrong by the teaching authority of the Church.”

    The ACLU of Michigan, which filed a lawsuit on behalf of Means, disagrees, arguing Catholic hospitals are putting their beliefs before the health and welfare of its patients. In Means’ case, the ACLU argued, the directives prohibited the hospital from complying with the applicable standard of care. Consequently, it argues, the bishop’s conference is ultimately responsible for the unnecessary trauma and harm that Means and other pregnant women in similar situations have experienced at Catholic-sponsored hospitals.

    Again – yessssssss. This is so overdue. This is a case to watch.

     

  • No VAW Act for you

    The US Conference of Catholic Bishops covers itself with glory again by finding stupid pettifogging reactionary reasons to refuse (officially, publicly, in a statemently) to support the Violence Against Women Act. Anything to be conspicuous, eh guys?

    The chairmen of four committees and one subcommittee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) issued a joint statement to voice their concerns on the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013, passed recently by the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. These concerns, as the bishops state, prevented the USCCB from supporting this version of the act.

    Aw. Concerned, are you? Poor things. Tell us all about it.

    “All persons must be protected from violence, but codifying the classifications ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity’ as contained in in S. 47 is problematic,” they wrote. “These two classifications are unnecessary to establish the just protections due to all persons. They undermine the meaning and importance of sexual difference. They are unjustly exploited for purposes of marriage redefinition, and marriage is the only institution that unites a man and a woman with each other and with any children born from their union.”

    Oh get over it. Meanings change, importance changes, definitions change, institutions change. Get over it. A woman and a man can still marry, still unite, still have children. You don’t need to issue statements and draw attention to yourselves just because other kinds of couples can also do that. You don’t need to police sexual difference, either. You’re not in charge of everything. Just get over it.

    The bishops also expressed their concerns about the exclusion of conscience protections from the bill as passed, which would protect the conscience rights of faith-based service providers that assist victims of human trafficking.

    Meaning, the “conscience rights” of theocratic pests who want to stop people using contraception and abortion. They want a protected right to interfere with the rights of other people.

     

  • Shut up and obey

    In writing that post I turned up this item from The Catholic Phoenix a couple of years ago. It’s special.

    Denys Powlett-Jones is commenting on the leaking of the bishop’s infamous letter to Catholic Healthcare West by the Arizona Republic.

    It is also no surprise that it is C(INO)HW who has decided to fight this one out in the media, and not the Bishop. Phoenix Catholics already know that our shepherd is not in the business of publicly correcting the dissent, disobedience, and scandal that are as much a part of the Church in Phoenix as they were of the Church of Corinth in St Paul’s day. Our Man in the Mitre is a vigilant shepherd, but he always works quietly and personally with tough cases, as a good pastor should; when nasty stuff in Olmsted’s diocese goes public, it’s always the wayward sheep that are doing the bleating.

    C(INO)HW – geddit? Catholic in name only. Haw! That’s a good one. And note the dissent and “disobedience” deserve scorn, and the dissenters are bleating sheep. Catholicism in action!

    Catholic Phoenix readers should really read the Bishop’s letter in its entirety. The circumstances that have necessitated its writing are lamentable—namely, the hospital’s performance of an induced abortion as a “life-saving” measure back in late 2009, a hospital nun’s approval of the procedure and her automatic excommunication, and the hospital’s continued public insistence that life-saving abortions are consistent with Catholic doctrine. But the bishop’s letter is a powerful and heartening portrait of a shepherd preparing to use his crosier not to try to pull the wayward in, but to push dissimulating wolves out of the fold.

    Note the scare-quotes on “life-saving.” Note the cold contempt for the notion that life-saving abortions are consistent with Catholic doctrine. Note the blood-chilling implication that the hospital really really should have let that woman die rather than performing an abortion. Note that Denys Powlett-Jones will never die in that particular way.

    In the letter, Bishop Olmsted takes on C(INO)HW’s claim in a previous letter that “many knowledgeable moral theologians have investigated this case…(it) is a very complex matter on which the best minds disagree.”  (Note to dissident Catholics: this kind of thing makes you look really silly. “On the one hand, we have the Catechism and the Magisterium; on the other, we have someone with a degree from Georgetown whom we are paying, and she says something else. What’s a Catholic supposed to believe?”)

    Note to Denys Powlett-Jones: this kind of thing makes you look really fascist.

     

     

     

     

  • But it’s not just Ireland

    Ann Marie Hourihane has an interesting piece in the Irish Times on how awkward it is for her to be in the US right now, because of all the shocked questions about how that hospital could have let Savita Halappanavar die rather than perform an abortion to complete the miscarriage that was already happening.

    Perhaps America is tired of Ireland’s excuses. The sad bewilderment among liberals here, when they heard the news of Savita Halappanavar’s death in a Galway hospital in October, is worse than any aggression. The thing is, Americans just can’t understand why surgical treatment for a miscarriage can be withheld from a woman on the grounds that the foetal heart is still beating, when medical staff have already agreed that the pregnancy has no chance of survival, as is claimed to have happened in this case. This is proving rather difficult to explain.

    But it can happen here too.

    Clearly very few Americans know this. That really needs to change.

    It is surprising how much Americans know about Irish abortion law, or the lack of it. “The mother’s life has priority, right?” they ask. Since Wednesday there has been no clear answer to that question. Is it, “We would like to think so”? Is it, “Well, it depends on where you are in Ireland, and also where in Ireland the pregnant woman is at the time”? Or is it “Er, we’d prefer not to think about that, if you don’t mind. Now bung us a couple of call centres, and leave us in peace”?

    But that’s true here too. The ERD says no, the mother’s life does not have priority no matter what. The US Council of Catholic Bishops says no, definitely not, and it tried to force St Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix to sign a written statement agreeing to that. The hospital refused. Not all hospitals refuse! And there is apparently no oversight, no enforcement, no one making sure that all hospitals give the mother’s life priority.

    Americans really need to know this.

  • Part 3 of the Legion of Death’s “Directives”

    The instructions.

    Prenatal diagnosis is not permitted when undertaken with the intention of aborting an unborn child with a serious defect.

    No matter what the defect. No matter how unable the parents are to deal with an infant born to suffer and then die. No matter how much futile suffering is in store for the infant.

    Those evil bastards.

    52. Catholic health institutions may not promote or condone contraceptive practices but should provide, for married couples and the medical staff who counsel them, instruction both about the Church’s teaching on responsible parenthood and in methods of natural family planning.

    53. Direct sterilization of either men or women, whether permanent or temporary, is not permitted in a Catholic health care institution. Procedures that induce sterility are permitted when their direct effect is the cure or alleviation of a present and serious pathology and a simpler treatment is not available.

    Then get out of the field.

    I’ll skip the rest for now, because it’s separate from the “when in doubt, refuse the woman treatment” issue.

    This situation is an absolute nightmare. Because of the free exercise clause of the Constitution, the US government is very leery of messing with churches, even with churches that are simultaneously running a huge chunk of the health care sector and refusing to provide certain kinds of care on dogmatic authoritarian reactionary religious grounds that should have no place in a health care system. That means that the US government allows churches to run health care systems but refuses (or at least neglects) to monitor them properly.

    Catholic bishops are in charge of a big fraction of the US health care system.

    That needs to change.

     

     

     

  • The ERD part 2

    The US Catholic bishops’ orders to Catholic health care providers.

    Page 20 still.

    28. Each person or the person’s surrogate should have access to medical and moral information and counseling so as to be able to form his or her conscience. The free and informed health care decision of the person or the person’s surrogate is to be followed so long as it does not contradict Catholic principles.

    Doesn’t that sound familiar. From the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam:

    ARTICLE 16:
    Everyone shall have the right to enjoy the fruits of his scientific, literary, artistic or technical production and the right to protect the moral and material interests stemming therefrom, provided that such production is not contrary to the principles of Shari’ah.

    …

    ARTICLE 22:
    (a) Everyone shall have the right to express his opinion freely in such manner as would not be contrary to the principles of the Shari’ah.

    (b) Everyone shall have the right to advocate what is right, and propagate what is good, and warn against what is wrong and evil according to the norms of Islamic Shari’ah

    (c) Information is a vital necessity to society. It may not be exploited or misused in such a way as may violate sanctities and the dignity of Prophets, undermine moral and ethical values or disintegrate, corrupt or harm society or weaken its faith.

    …

    ARTICLE 24:
    All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic Shari’ah.

    ARTICLE 25:
    The Islamic Shari’ah is the only source of reference for the explanation or clarification of any of the articles of this Declaration.

    You can haz all the rights to all the things so long as it does not contradict Catholic principles/in such manner as would not be contrary to the principles of the Shari’ah. You can haz all the rights to all the things we say you can have, and no others.

    Back to the bishops. Page 21.

    36. Compassionate and understanding care should be given to a person who is the victim of sexual assault. Health care providers should cooperate with law enforcement officials and offer the person psychological and spiritual support as well as accurate medical information. A female who has been raped should be able to defend herself against a potential conception from the sexual assault. If, after appropriate testing, there is no evidence that conception has occurred already, she may be treated with medications that would prevent ovulation, sperm capacitation, or fertilization. It is not permissible, however, to initiate or to recommend treatments that have as their purpose or direct effect the removal, destruction, or interference with the implantation of a fertilized ovum.

    Fuck you, bishops.

    Page 22.

    37. An ethics committee or some alternate form of ethical consultation should be available to assist by advising on particular ethical situations, by offering educational opportunities, and by reviewing and recommending policies. To these ends, there should be appropriate standards for medical ethical consultation within a particular diocese that will respect the diocesan bishop’s pastoral responsibility as well as assist members of ethics committees to be familiar with Catholic medical ethics and, in particular, these Directives.

    In other words, all ethics must be Catholic “ethics” – i.e. church dogma.

    Page 24.

    For legitimate reasons of responsible parenthood, married couples may limit the number of their children by natural means. The Church cannot approve contraceptive interventions that “either in anticipation of the marital act, or in its accomplishment or in the development of its natural consequences, have the purpose, whether as an end or a means, to render procreation impossible.” Such interventions violate “the inseparable connection, willed by God . . . between the two meanings of the conjugal act: the unitive and procreative meaning.”

    Absolutely none of your business. Butt out.

    Page 25.

    41. Homologous artificial fertilization (that is, any technique used to achieve conception using the gametes of the two spouses joined in marriage) is prohibited when it separates procreation from the marital act in its unitive significance (e.g., any technique used to achieve extracorporeal conception).

    Oh ffs. Get over yourselves. “Ew no conception in a petri dish, ew.”

    Page 26. Here we go.

    45. Abortion (that is, the directly intended termination of pregnancy before viability or the directly intended destruction of a viable fetus) is never permitted. Every procedure whose sole immediate effect is the termination of pregnancy before viability is an abortion, which, in its moral context, includes the interval between conception and implantation of the embryo. Catholic health care institutions are not to provide abortion services, even based upon the principle of material cooperation. In this context, Catholic health care institutions need to be concerned about the danger of scandal in any association with abortion providers.

    Then get out of the field. It’s legal. If you don’t want to do it, get out of the health care field. You shouldn’t be in it in the first place. We don’t need Catholic health care any more than we need Catholic accounting or agriculture or engineering or transportation. Your field is godbothering. Stick to that.

    Listen up, any of you planning to have bad miscarriages that fail to complete.

    47. Operations, treatments, and medications that have as their direct purpose the cure of a proportionately serious pathological condition of a pregnant woman are permitted when they cannot be safely postponed until the unborn child is viable, even if they will result in the death of the unborn child.

    48. In case of extrauterine pregnancy, no intervention is morally licit which constitutes a direct abortion.

    49. For a proportionate reason, labor may be induced after the fetus is viable.

    Look at that. Look at 48 – they’re saying just leave ectopic pregnancies alone, so that the tube will burst and the woman will probably die of an infection. And 49 is Savita’s death sentence.

    Fuck you all. Fuck you hideous evil monsters.

     

  • Start at the beginning

    Now. Let’s be thorough about this. I need to understand the Ethical and Religious Directives – commonly and folksily called ERD – and just exactly how they function, and why. I need to know if and how and why anyone relevant (like, hospital administrations, and medical practitioners) considers them binding. I also need to know what they say.

    So let’s take a look.

    Page 4.

    The Directives have been refined through an extensive process of consultation with bishops, theologians, sponsors, administrators, physicians, and other health care providers.

    That’s ridiculous, and dangerous. Bishops and theologians have nothing relevant to say.

    But of course the whole thing comes from bishops. The wretched thing is on the USCCB website. It’s theirs. It’s Orders From the Bishops. Bishops are telling medical professionals what to do, as medical professionals. This is a fucking outrage.

    Still page 4.

    …the Directives will be reviewed periodically by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (formerly the National Conference of Catholic Bishops), in the light of authoritative church teaching, in order to address new insights from theological and medical research or new requirements of public policy.

    Authoritative church teaching, theological and medical research – bad, bad, bad.

    Page 13.

    9. Employees of a Catholic health care institution must respect and uphold the religious mission of the institution and adhere to these Directives. They should maintain professional standards and promote the institution’s commitment to human dignity and the common good.

    What is the status of that? Is it a condition of employment? Can the bishops fire medical practitioners who fail to adhere to these Directives? Can they force hospitals to fire medical practitioners who fail to adhere to these Directives? That was at issue with the nun who agreed to the abortion at St Joseph’s hospital in Phoenix, certainly.

    Page 19 – it starts to get sinister.

    When the health care professional and the patient use institutional Catholic health care, they also accept its public commitment to the Church’s understanding of and witness to the dignity of the human person. The Church’s moral teaching on health care nurtures a truly interpersonal professional-patient relationship. This professional-patient relationship is never separated, then, from the Catholic identity of the health care institution. The faith that inspires Catholic health care guides medical decisions in ways that fully respect the dignity of the person and the relationship with the health care professional.

    That first sentence is very sinister. Some people – lots of people – are forced to “use institutional Catholic health care” because it’s all that’s available to them. Nobody should be forced to accept anyone’s commitment to any church’s understanding of anything as a condition of getting medical treatment. Nobody. Ever. Medical care should be secular.

    Page 19 still.

    24. In compliance with federal law, a Catholic health care institution will make available to patients information about their rights, under the laws of their state, to make an advance directive for their medical treatment. The institution, however, will not honor an advance directive that is contrary to Catholic teaching. If the advance directive conflicts with Catholic teaching, an explanation should be provided as to why the directive cannot be honored.

    Well fuck you.

    Page 20.

    26. The free and informed consent of the person or the person’s surrogate is required for medical treatments and procedures, except in an emergency situation when consent cannot be obtained and there is no indication that the patient would refuse consent to the treatment.

    Now they’re lying, because Catholic hospitals routinely don’t tell patients that they are not getting standard of care treatment for reasons of theology. They don’t require informed consent at all.

    That will be part one. To be continued.

     

  • Hospital administrators interfered

    More detail, from the full report by the National Women’s Law Center.

    the Study revealed four serious lapses in care resulting from religious restrictions:

    • Doctors performed medically unnecessary tests, resulting in delays in care and additional medical complications for patients. These tests were done solely to address hospital administrators’ concerns that the treatment complied with religious doctrine.
    • Doctors transferred patients with pregnancy complications because their hospitals’ religious affiliation prohibited them from promptly providing the medically-indicated standard of care.
    • Hospital administrators interfered with doctors’ ability to promptly provide patients with the standard of care.
    • Hospital administrators interfered with doctors’ ability to provide patients with relevant information about their treatment options.

    The religious administration of these hospitals is over-ruling the technical decision process of doctors, and endangering and sometimes killing women by doing so.

    Why, exactly, is this being allowed?

    One illustrative horror story:

    Yvonne Shelton, a nurse employed in the labor and delivery unit at a nonsectarian hospital in New Jersey, refused to assist in two cases of women experiencing serious pregnancy complications: an emergency hysterectomy of a woman who was eighteen weeks pregnant and experiencing a life threatening condition, and another patient, also with an pregnancy that was not viable, who needed to have labor induced in order to save her life.83 Based on her religious beliefs, Shelton refused to assist in any procedure that terminated fetal life. She considered such procedures to be unacceptable abortions, even though nothing could be done to save the pregnancies and the procedures were necessary to save the women’s lives.

    The hospital offered Shelton a transfer to another unit where she would avoid such conflicts, but she refused to make the change. After being fired, Shelton sued the hospital, claiming religious discrimination in violation of Title VII, the federal law prohibiting employment discrimination on the basis of religion. The court ruled in favor of the hospital. It found that the hospital’s transfer solution had been a reasonable accommodation, and that its overriding responsibility was to protect a patient seeking emergency care.

    Note that. Shelton not only refused to assist, she refused to do a different job. She wanted to insist on staying in the very job she refused to do, so that she could prevent women from getting needed medical care. She wanted to make women like that die.

    With respect to Catholic-affiliated hospitals, they are governed by the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, which provide guidance on a range of reproductive health services including surgical sterilization, family planning, infertility treatment and abortion.

    They are “governed by” Catholic religious directives. Hospitals are governed by Catholic religious directives.

    Medical care is a technical subject. It’s not religious doctrine. Religious directives should play no role in the governance of any hospitals.

    We don’t let Catholic religious directives govern engineering firms, do we. No we don’t. We don’t want papal edicts deciding on the safety of airplanes or bridges or tall buildings. Why do we allow Catholic religious directives to govern hospitals? Is it because it’s only women who are killed by this disgusting policy?

    Most individuals and even many health providers presume that the Directives’ prohibition on the provision of a range of abortion services applies only to nonemergency pregnancy terminations of otherwise viable pregnancies. But the Study is consistent with anecdotal accounts that provide strong evidence that some hospitals and health care providers have interpreted the Directives to prohibit prompt, medically-indicated treatment of miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy, placing women’s lives and health at additional and unnecessary risk.10

    As did University Hospital Galway.

    Miscarriage, or pregnancy loss before twenty weeks gestation, occurs in ten to twenty percent of all diagnosed pregnancies.11 The standard of care depends on the condition which caused the miscarriage as well as the particular circumstances of the patient. One factor is whether the patient is stable, or unstable. An unstable patient is one who is “within reasonable medical certainty” likely to experience a “material deterioration” of her condition during a transfer to another hospital.12 Signs that a patient is unstable include heavy bleeding, severe pain, and a rising temperature — an indication of the onset of an infection.13 If it is determined that nothing can be done that would allow the woman to continue her pregnancy, the established standard of care for unstable patients who are miscarrying is an immediate surgical uterine evacuation.14 In the case of such a patient, immediate uterine evacuation reduces the patient’s risk of complications, including blood loss, hemorrhage, infection, and the loss of future fertility.15 A delay in treatment may subject a woman to unnecessary blood transfusions, risk of infection, hysterectomy or even death.16 (Emphasis added.)

    As happened at University Hospital Galway.

    I’m now wondering if anybody has any actual figures on this. It seems pretty clear that many of these deaths won’t be reported in the way Savita Halappanavar’s was – they won’t be reported as malpractice at the behest of religious doctrine. But perhaps some have been?

    At any rate – it’s a fucking outrage, it has to be stopped, attention has to be paid.

     

     

  • It’s not just Ireland

    I’ve been re-reading the National Women’s Law Center report on religious restrictions at hospitals that put women’s lives at risk, from January 2011. It’s about what happened to Savita Halappanavar last month and what happens to a significant (but unknown) number of women because of religious bullshit surrounding the termination of pregnancy. It’s about hospitals substituting religious bullshit for technical medical understanding and experience.

    The summary is Women’s Health and Lives at Risk Due to Religious Restrictions at Hospitals, New Center Study Shows.

    What it tells us.

    The Center’s report, Below the Radar: Ibis Study Shows that Health Care Providers’ Religious Refusals Can Endanger Pregnant Women’s Lives and Health, demonstrates that certain hospitals, because of their religious beliefs, deny emergency care, the standard of care and adequate information to make treatment decisions to patients experiencing miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies. The study and report focused on cases where no medical intervention was possible that would allow the patient to continue her pregnancy and where delaying treatment would endanger the woman’s health or even life.

    Exactly what happened to Savita Halappanavar, you see. University Hospital Galway denied her the standard of care, because of religious obstruction. She died.

    “Most women assume that when they go to a hospital they will be offered the best medical treatment options for their diagnosis,” said NWLC Co-President Marcia D. Greenberger. “But this report paints a chilling picture of women with ectopic pregnancies or suffering miscarriages who are not offered the full spectrum of medically appropriate treatment options because they have gone to a hospital whose religious affiliation conflicts with the provision of those options.”

    And they won’t be told that, so they don’t report it. If they die, their relatives don’t report it.

    The reports highlight stark cases where doctors noted a discrepancy between the medically-accepted standard of care for miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy and the treatment provided by hospitals due to their religious affiliation.  For example, while the standard of care for certain ectopic pregnancies requires patients to receive the medication methotrexate, doctors in the study reported that their hospitals forbade the use of the drug.

    A fetus can’t survive an ectopic pregnancy. Methotrexate dissolves the fetus. The godbotherers forbid it – they want the woman to keep on having the fetus stuck in her fallopian tube until the tube bursts.

    One doctor in the study reported several instances of potentially fatal tubal ruptures in patients with ectopic pregnancies at her Catholic-affiliated hospital.  She said that her hospital subjected patients with ectopic pregnancies to unnecessary delays in treatment, despite patients’ exhibiting serious symptoms indicating that a tubal rupture was possible.  These patients, therefore, were denied emergency care to which they were legally entitled.

    Which puts their lives at risk, as well as their future ability to reproduce.

    And here is the situation in that hospital in Galway. Emphasis added.

    In some of the miscarriage cases described in the Ibis Study, the standard of care also required immediate treatment. Yet doctors practicing at Catholic-affiliated hospitals were forced to delay treatment while performing medically unnecessary tests.  Even though these miscarriages were inevitable, and no medical treatment was available to save the fetus, some patients were transferred because doctors were required to wait until there was no longer a fetal heartbeat to provide the needed medical care. This delay subjected these patients to further risks of hemorrhage and infection and could have violated their right to receive emergency medical treatment under federal law.

    This isn’t priest-ridden Ireland we’re talking about, this is the US of A. This is priest-ridden healthcare in the US of A.

    Some doctors at religiously affiliated hospitals are speaking out. Dr. Robert B. Holder, an ob-gyn at Sierra Vista Regional Health Center, a Catholic–affiliated hospital in Sierra Vista, Arizona told the Center: “A couple came into the ER after the wife had miscarried one of her twins at home. When I determined that the remaining twin was in a hopeless situation, this couple faced a tragic, heart-wrenching decision. After helping them make the medically appropriate decision to complete the miscarriage, I contacted the hospital’s administration to seek permission to perform a uterine evacuation. I wasn’t granted permission and I was told to inform this already traumatized couple that their decision was seen as “unethical” per the Directives.

    “I was ashamed and angered when I transferred this patient by ambulance to a secular hospital in Tucson, 80 miles away to get proper care,” he added.  “This patient was successfully treated in the end, but ultimately she didn’t receive the treatment she was entitled to in her local community hospital.”

    That’s disgusting. It’s all disgusting.

  • The bishops prattle of humility

    The US Catholic bishops are chastened by their failure to impose their religious views on the electorate last week, and Cardinal Timothy Dolan lectured them yesterday on what to do about it.

    To think harder and realize that they should pay more attention to human well-being as opposed to pretended goddy mandates?

    Don’t be silly.

    After sweeping setbacks to the hierarchy’s agenda on Election Day, New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan on Monday (Nov. 12) told U.S. Catholic bishops that they must now examine their own failings, confess their sins and reform themselves if they hope to impact the wider culture.

    “That’s the way we become channels of a truly effective transformation of the world, through our own witness of a repentant heart,” Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, told the 250 bishops gathered here for their annual meeting.

    Repentant for being bossy authoritarian theocratic bullies who abuse the illegitimate power of the pulpit to try to force people to do things that are not good for them?

    Don’t be silly.

    On Monday, various speakers reiterated that they were not about to change their beliefs or policy positions, but they indicated they have to rethink their strategy. Dolan’s approach in his presidential address was to repeatedly stress the theme of humility and the need for bishops to go to confession to renew themselves spiritually so that they can then preach their message more effectively.

    They need to pretend to be more humble so that they can force people to do what they pretend God commands. There’s nothing humble about that.