http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2011/04/29/catholic-death-panels-coming-to-a-hospital-near-you/When you have a medical emergency, you want to get to the nearest hospital–fast. But if you’re a pregnant woman with a medical emergency, the nearest hospital may refuse to treat you if it’s Catholic-run. The medical personnel may have to let you die, because the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops–or as I’ve begun to think of them, the Catholic Death Panel–has ordered Catholic hospitals to deny women care they deem immoral.
snip
It’s hard to believe, but administrators, physicians and nurses who work in Catholic health-care facilities have abdicated responsibility for their female patients to the 258 men who make up the U.S. Conference of Bishops. That group has decided that pregnant women aren’t patients–they’re merely incubators.
And if you’re not Catholic, you’re still subject to the restrictions placed on those hospitals. You will not be able to have an abortion, even if your life is at risk. You can’t receive emergency contraception if you’ve been raped. There will be no treatment for an ectopic pregnancy or an incomplete miscarriage. Contraception and sterilization will be out of the question.
snip
Pitts is the author of the H.R. 358, the so-called “Protect Life Act,”* which refers not to the woman’s life, of course, but to fetal life. It’s an expansion of the “conscience clauses” that allow anti-choice doctors and nurses to refuse to provide abortion services. Pro-choice advocates are calling it the “Let Women Die” Act because it allows hospitals to refuse treatment to women who need emergency abortions to save their lives. The hospitals wouldn’t have to facilitate such women’s transfer to other hospitals, either.
*
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2011/02/04/protecting-life-bill-says-women**
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-shipp/post_1699_b_820776.html When There’s a Heartbeat: Miscarriage Management in Catholic-Owned Hospitals
http://escholarship.org/uc/item/8dm907hmAs Catholic-owned hospitals merge with or take over other facilities, they impose restrictionson reproductivehealth services, including abortion and contraceptive services. Our interviews with US obstetrician–gynecologists working in Catholic-owned hospitals revealed that they are also restricted in managing miscarriages.
Catholic-owned hospital ethics committees denied approval of uterine evacuation while fetal heart tones were still present, forcing physicians to delay care or transport miscarrying patients to non–Catholic-owned facilities.
Some physicians intentionally violated protocol because they felt patient safety was compromised. Although Catholic doctrine officially deems abortion permissible to preserve the life of the woman, Catholic-owned hospital ethics committees differ in their interpretation of how much health risk constitutes a threat to a woman’s life and therefore how much risk must be present before they approve the intervention
Ensure Religiously Affiliated Hospitals Provide Emergency Abortion Care
http://www.change.org/petitions/ensure-religiously-affiliated-hospitals-provide-emergency-abortion-carePETITIONING
Secretary of Health and Human Services(Kathleen Sebelius)
STARTED BY
American Civil Liberties Union
Sometimes, pregnancy complications can become life-threatening. And federal law says that when a person's life is at risk, emergency rooms at every single hospital in the country are required to provide treatment. That's why it's outrageous that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has told all Catholic hospitals to withhold emergency reproductive care from dying women.
A hospital's religious affiliation is no excuse for disregarding the rule of law or jeopardizing a patient's life. Please tell Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius to stop religiously affiliated hospitals from putting women's lives at risk.
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