Catholic Health Care: A Rare Success Story.

I write a lot about the discrimination in Catholic hospitals, enforced by the Church's Ethical and Religious Directives that prevent women, gays, and elders from receiving certain health care services.

Here's a little success story that came my way today from a friend out West:

Bishop Robert Vasa of Baker announced that the church will no longer officially sponsor St. Charles of Bend. The hospital serves about a quarter of a million people in central Oregon. To be considered Catholic it had to adhere to a list of guidelines. Bishop Vasa says the hospital was openly breaking guideline number 53 by providing a form of sterilization called tubal ligation. Several hundred women underwent the procedure each year.

Vasa: "The issue of sterilization because it was so prominent and prevalent at the hospital was one that they deemed they could not alter and I deemed I could not accept."

A spokesperson for the hospital says St. Charles is the only hospital serving Bend and the surrounding rural community. So board members felt they needed to provide the procedure. St. Charles did not receive any funding through the Catholic church, but Catholic Mass will no longer take place at the hospital. The cross on top of the building will remain.

Got that? A Catholic bishop told a "Catholic" hospital where to go because it continued to perform tubal ligations.

This is a success story for two reasons: 1. Women in that area, where St. Charles is a sole provider of health care services, can still access the medically-sound, legal tubal ligation procedure; and 2. What does the hospital lose? Nothing! The Catholic church provides no funding.

But my follow-up to that second point is more measured: If the Catholic church offers hospitals under it's control no benefits, why would hospitals remain affiliated with the church? Reputation in a community? Tradition? Faith?

This is the larger, more important question we should be having with regard to patients' rights and Catholic health care. If you've got an answer, let me know.

Martin Amis and the Silver Tsunami.

British author Martin Amis is taking it from all sides for suggesting that there should be euthanasia booths on street corners for the impending "silver tsunami" of feeble seniors. The Guardian article is here.

George Pitcher at the Telegraph rightly Amis the slightest shadow of his father and says he may cause damage to the aid in dying movement.

From the tcot-ers at Common American Journal - comes fear that the elites are working to engineer population numbers.

From Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, paternalizing Schadenberg once again fails to see more nuance in the discussion than simple "culture of death" hatred for the elderly.

He suspects Amis may be kidding, trying to promote his latest book, or simply represents all the rest of the blood-thirsty in society who can't wait to knock off our "useless and disrespected" elders.

Egads! At least Amis-the-younger showed how little a sense of humor or proportion both the Antis and the Pros tend to have: the former just 'cause it's their demeanor and they have an entire population to scare with hyperbole; and the latter cause they can't afford the damage a wrongly-placed or too-bold-faced joke or fact will do them.

If Amis is the great commentator on modern culture he has been hailed as, at least with this issue he earns his keep. His simple comments, some absurd, some colorful, some realistic, about aid in dying, euthanasia, assisted suicide - call it what you will - cut through the pastel-colored, soft-voiced, hallmark-esque culture that surrounds the aid in dying discussion.

We're all going to die, he says. Some of us would like the rather practical choice of how to do so rather than be hooked up and strung out for one segment of the populations' gooey adoration and fawning. Give patients choice. Uh, that is what personal rights are all about after all.

And he expectedly draws the "end times," "elder abuse," claims that opponents leverage to reduce seniors to incapable children, fearful for their lives, and unable to make their own medical decisions.

Pro-life groups have done it with women for - ok, forever. Take that "silver tsunami." Your turn.

(Which brings me to the point I'm always making: get the elder's rights folks and the women's rights folks together to fight not only the horrors of pastel leaflets! but the religious efforts to impose doctrinal medicine on patients, ah, could be liberating. Makes sense. Can't be worse than what either group is getting so far on its own.)

Rogue OB/GYNs.

At HuffPo Bioethicist Jacob Appel summarizes the Florida case of a pregnant woman who was held in confinement against her wishes - by her doctor:

The facts as reported are strikingly straightforward. Burton, a married mother of two toddlers, contacted her obstetrician in March 2009–during her twenty-fifth week of pregnancy–when she became concerned that she might be going into premature labor. The obstetrician advised her to report to Tallahassee Memorial Hospital. While at the hospital, it became apparent that Burton was not going into labor. However, Dr. Bures-Forsthoefel recommended up to fifteen weeks of bed rest for her patient. When Burton explained that she had two children at home and a job, and that full bed rest was not a viable option for her, Bures-Forsthoefel ordered her confined to a hospital room to protect the health of her fetus. The hospital and Bures-Forsthoefel then obtained an order from the Circuit Court of Leon County that mandated Burton remain in bed for the duration of her pregnancy (eg. up to fifteen weeks) and to undergo “all medical treatments” that her physicians believed were in the fetal interest. Burton was denied any opportunity to obtain a second opinion at another hospital. She was effectively held prisoner in her room for three days, at which point an emergency C-section revealed a dead fetus.

Is this where we are in the US? Women are seen as dangers to their unborn fetuses? Their individual rights can be denied if they are pregnant and a rogue doctor decides to place the rights of the fetus above those of the mother? Informed consent is meaningless? A woman's medical decisions are not hers to make but the public's and the medical professions?

At first this story is shocking. And yet, the attitude that women are unable to make sound decisions about their own fertility is old as can be. Witness the lines outside reproductive care clinics where "pro-life" activists have planted themselves to shame women, to treat them as non-persons without rights to their own bodies. Note the laws in this country that paternalize women by requiring they look at ultrasounds of a fetus before having an abortion - as if they are unaware of the workings of their own body, treated as ignorants who must be told their responsibilities, shamed by a segment of culture that works to reduce women to one sole purpose, child-bearing.

Note the laws that discriminate against women by allowing pharmacists to deny them contraception - because the pharmacist deems their own judgement above that of the woman. Count the hospitals in the US where the Catholic Church decides when a woman will be pregnant, how many children she will have, and how. From Hyde to Church to Coats to Weldon to the Bush provider refusal laws, women, particularly the poor and minority, are continually subject to the sanctions of the self-righteous - those who think they know what is best for her. Doctors, medical schools, medical professions are all taught that their decisions - based on their "conscience" are more important than those of the woman whose body is in question.

In the article, Appel note the damage to the medical profession by these rogue actors who assert their religious beliefs on women. And he recommends to all women that they have a serious talk with their OB/GYN about his or her beliefs early in their relationship:

Pregnant women and those planning pregnancies should also take away a lesson from the Samantha Burton tragedy. Ask your obstetrician directly: Is there any circumstance under which you will refuse to let me make my own medical decisions or will prevent me from leaving the hospital? That is a question no woman should ever have to ask her doctor. Unfortunately, as long as rogue OBGYNs continue to impose their values upon unsuspecting patients, it is a prudent question to ask.

We should all thank Burton for having the strength of her convictions and rights to stand up to doctors and judges who find themselves superior enough to assert their will on another's rights.

The Medical Right.

A fantastic article about the medical right, by Kathryn Tucker (wicked smart legal counsel for Compassion & Choices, end of life rights group) at the Journal of Legal Medicine. While her work is on religious imposition on patients' rights at the end of life, her logic and rationale apply directly to women's reproductive rights - indeed to all patients' rights. A quick clip: Medical Right organizations are delving ever more deeply into activism, policy promotion, and politics. They are expanding the range of issues they work on, forming new organizations, and consciously taking front and center roles in media and legal debates. The RCRC Report points out that the Medical Right has created a virtual “shadow medical establishment.” [FN8] Unlike *498 professional societies that represent physicians and other health care providers, medical schools, and teaching hospitals, most of the Medical Right groups are relat- ively unknown because they act outside of the normal channels of medical policy and practice. Evidence of the shadow medical establishment can be found in legislatures, the courts, and obscure profes- sional societies and journals. The goal is to establish an alternative body of medical fact to validate beliefs of the Christian Right and thereby advance its political agenda. Want proof that she strikes a cord? Here's Wesley J. Smith, everyones favorite "pro-life" patriot and Discovery Institute fellow, going wacko over Tucker's article, conscience clauses, informed consent and referrals. I know I've been banging the Establishment drum pretty hard lately but it is the drum that the Religious Right, the Medical Right - and if I may, the Legal Right - fear the most.

Implications of Citizens United Ruling for Roe.

A scary report from Politico that asks whether the current Supreme Court, so ready to throw decades-old precedent out the window for corporations, will toss Roe v Wade next:

The Supreme Court’s ruling Thursday overturning a ban on corporate political spending that had been in place for more than a century has left abortion-rights supporters jittery that the justices could be similarly prepared to upend the landmark Roe v. Wade decision the court handed down 37 years ago this week.

“Yesterday’s Roberts court decision, which exhibited a stunning disregard for settled law of decades’ standing, is terrifying to those of us who care deeply about the Constitutional protections the court put in place for women’s access to abortion,” said Nancy Northup of the Center for Reproductive Rights. “We are deeply concerned….Yesterday’s decision shows the court will reach out to take an opportunity to wholesale reverse a precedent the hard right has never liked.”

“It is worrisome beyond the direct impact of yesterday’s ruling on election law,” said, Jessica Arons, the director of the Women’s Health and Rights Program at the Center for American Progress. “It’s certainly cause for concern.”

The court’s 5-4 ruling in the Citizens United case Thursday declared unconstitutional a law which has been in place since 1907 barring corporations from involvement in federal elections. Just six years ago, the Supreme Court called the longstanding ban “firmly embedded in our law.” Now, it’s gone.

RIP Ruth Proskauer-Smith.

She co-founded NARAL. She worked tirelessly for end of life rights. She lived 102 years.

From Compassion & Choices president Barbara Coombs Lee:

Ruth Proskauer Smith, a friend and an activist for individual autonomy, died last night, closing her life in the manner she had wished for, planned for and devoted her life to securing as her right.

When I met Ruth in 1996, she was already an icon in the movement for freedom of choice at the end-of-life. She had a long list of accomplishments behind her. But she was not happy. At that time, only Oregon had succeeded in affirmatively legalizing aid in dying, and its Death With Dignity law languished in legal limbo. Ruth was determined to make a difference and joined the work of Compassion & Choices, serving as a dedicated ambassador of end-of-life choice.

Among the things I treasure from my 15-year friendship with Ruth is having had the opportunity to see her growing pleasure with advances we’ve achieved in end-of-life choice. Together Ruth and I witnessed the triumph of justice over repeated legal challenges to Oregon’s law, the passage and implementation of Death With Dignity in Washington, the passage in California of the Terminally Ill Patients’ Right to Know End-of-Life Options Act and a ruling by the Montana Supreme Court to recognize and affirm physician aid in dying.

Ruth was a generous, fierce and dedicated supporter of our movement, as she was forreproductive choice.

From HuffPo:

Ruth Proskauer Smith, a founding hero of the reproductive rights movement, died last night at 102 years of age.

As we celebrate today the anniversary of Roe v. Wade - an historic decision of which Ruth was part - we mourn the loss of this remarkable woman.

Ruth Proskauer Smith's history on behalf of reproductive freedom spans back to the 1940's, when she began advocating to give women access to birth control. In 1969, she co-founded NARAL with the goal of litigating against state abortion prohibitions, a life mission that led us directly to the steps of the United States Supreme Court and Roe v. Wade. For her work in reproductive rights, NARAL Pro-Choice New York honored her with a Lifetime Achievement Award at our 2009 Champions of Choice Luncheon.

While she lived to see the legalization of abortion and took pride in her role in ensuring safe healthcare, she also recognized the unrealized promise of full access and the challenges that remain.

We honor Ruth as a founder and are reminded of all the young women activists today who will be the next leaders of our movement. On this 37th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we send out thanks to the women who came before and all those who will come after.