The Problems with Catholic Hospitals

Hemant Mehta (http://www.friendlyatheist.com, http://www.patreon.com/Hemant , https://www.facebook.com/friendlyatheist)


http://www.mergerwatch.org/

http://news.atheists.org/2015/09/29/a...

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendly...

Additional discussion and reader comments here -- 
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2015/10/18/the-problems-with-catholic-hospitals/
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If you're a woman who's giving birth and you're having a C-section, you might decide that you're also done having kids and you'd like to have your tubes tied so there are no unplanned pregnancies in the future. 

The doctor is already performing surgery, they've already cut you open, so performing a tubal ligation actually lets you kill two birds with one stone. 

It's a safe procedure. Medical professionals even say that if you want your tubes tied, doing it during a C-section is a good idea because the doctor's already in there and you won't have to have another surgery. Between 25-30% of married adult women in the U.S. have the procedure done. Not a big deal.

But let's add a twist to this. (Get it?)

What if you're at a Catholic hospital? Doctors there will perform a C-section, no problem, but they will not perform a tubal ligation. Why? Because they're getting their directives, not from medical professionals but from Catholic bishops. 

Basically, anything that functions as contraception is forbidden in the Catholic faith. And this rule applies even if future pregnancies would put the woman's life in jeopardy.

You all know the Church opposes birth control. But Catholic hospitals also won't perform vasectomies on men. 

And if a woman's life is in danger because she's having an ectopic pregnancy and the fetus is stuck in a fallopian tube, Catholic hospitals won't allow the woman to take a drug that would abort the child to save her life. 

Instead, they'll remove her whole fallopian tube, reducing her ability to get pregnant in the future, even though it's medically unnecessary. Because that's what Jesus would do.

In other cases, if a woman's been raped, Catholic hospitals won't give her emergency contraception. They won't help a woman trying to get pregnant using a sperm donor, either, because that's outside the confines of marriage. 

Catholic hospitals are more interested in adhering to arbitrary religious rules than providing quality health care. 

This is a big deal. Because Catholic hospitals are everywhere. And in many states, they're taking over local health care. A report from the ACLU said 1 in 9 hospital beds are now run by a Catholic health care system. 

They also get billions of dollars in taxpayer money from the government every year to keep this charade going. 

And it also affects poor people disproportionately because they're the ones who can't always afford traditional check-ups, so they go to the hospital when things are really bad and they need care immediately. For their sake, let's hope it's not a reproductive issue.

So why talk about this now? Two reasons:

1) The ACLU recently sued a Catholic health care provider in San Francisco because a woman was denied a tubal ligation during a C-section.

2) American Atheists has proposed legislation that would require all hospitals to be up front about what procedures they won't do because of the provider's religious beliefs.

https://youtu.be/IiozTki2K1o