The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
alleges that Catholic hospitals across the U.S. are “withholding emergency
care” and denying “essential health services.”
They also inflict harm on “transgender and gender-non-conforming
patients” when seeking reproductive healthcare.
In a new report, “Health Care Denied,” the ALCU
calls for no federal dollars for Catholic healthcare institutions, as well as
investigations into their practices. With
a subtitle of “Patients and Physicians Speak Out About Catholic Hospitals and
the Threat to Women’s Health and Lives,” the stated goal of the report “is to
shine a light on the harm and discrimination occurring at hospitals across this
country.” Produced in partnership with MergerWatch, a group founded by a
“reproductive health” group that combats religious medical care and receives
funding from Planned Parenthood in New York, the document decries how the U.S.
Bishops’ 2009 Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care
Services shapes Catholic healthcare. The
Directives spell out the Church’s moral teaching for institutionally based
Catholic healthcare services in the U.S., and in keeping with Church teaching prohibiting
such things as contraception, sterilization and abortion … which the ACLU deems
“appropriate care.”
This latest strike by the ACLU follows a series
of legal challenges directed over several years at the U.S. Catholic Church,
with the ACLU either suing Catholic hospitals, the U.S. Bishops or the federal
government, or otherwise advocating in opposition of Catholic morals.
The new ACLU document calls a number of the Bishops’
positions relative to the Directives “myths,” and lists instances of women
refused “emergency abortions” and tubal ligations after pregnancy at Catholic
hospitals, taking issue with the U.S. Bishops’ contention in the Directives
that direct abortion is never morally permissible no matter the reason. It laments that 1-in-6 U.S. hospital beds is
in a Catholic hospital, along with other statistics on the prevalence of
Catholic healthcare in the U.S., and alleges that because of this patients are
victims of discrimination who are robbed of healthcare choices. “The power of the public purse should be
leveraged to ensure that facilities no longer withhold essential health care
from patients,” the report states. “We cannot stay silent and
let hospitals use their religious identity to discriminate against, and harm,
women,” it concludes, calling on the federal government through its Centers for
Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to issue a statement that denying
emergency “reproductive health care” violates federal law, and also investigate
Catholic hospitals for violations of the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor
Act (EMTALA).
Catholic leaders decried the initiative but were
not surprised. “The ACLU has long waged
war on Catholics over the issue of abortion,” the Catholic League’s Bill
Donohue said in a statement. “Now it has
joined with Planned Parenthood to author a report that sounds the alarms over
the “news” that one in six hospitals in the nation is Catholic-run.” Donohue continued, “The ACLU has repeatedly
sued Catholic hospitals for allegedly violating the civil liberties of women,
and it has repeatedly lost in the courts.
As proof, it cites the Church’s opposition to contraception,
sterilization and abortion, and various directives issued by the bishops to
Catholic hospitals. It continues to lose
because the First Amendment guarantees religious liberty, a fundamental
expression of which is the right of Catholic entities to maintain institutional
autonomy.”
“Let us be perfectly clear,” Human Life International’s
Director of Research and Training Brian Clowes told LifeSiteNews. “Both the
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and MergerWatch
have one objective in mind: To force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions
and sterilizations as a blanket policy.”
“They are both extremist pro-abortion organizations,” he said, “and
their concern for women’s health is only a cover.”
Clowes pointed out how the latest ACLU report
employs the classic liberal tactic of heavily stressing the “hard cases,”
something the ACLU used in its successful bid to help legalize abortion on
demand in the U.S. The report’s examples
of “emergencies” contain details that are deliberately vague or which are
completely irrelevant, he said, in one example, where a woman suffering
preeclampsia is refused sterilization by a Catholic hospital. “The report conveniently omits the fact that
sterilization does not cure or ameliorate preeclampsia even slightly,” said
Clowes. “The solution to this perceived
problem is to educate doctors and medical staff at Catholic hospitals in the
details of the Bishops’ Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health
Care Services,” he stated, “not to force them to act against their consciences
and against their faith, which the ACLU and MergerWatch
seem to have no problem attempting to do.”
Rev. Dr.
Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.
Chaplain
(Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army
Pastor,
Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel
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