Issue link: http://cp.revolio.com/i/30780
St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix: no longer a Catholic institution Even if a doctor at a Catholic hospital has no personal com- punction about performing a procedure such as tubal ligation, she or he—along with the nearly 770,000 other employees at the nation’s Catholic hospitals—must bow to the directives. a lifesaving abortion. The woman chose to have doctors ter- minate the pregnancy. But when the bishop overseeing the Phoenix diocese heard about this, he declared that St. Joseph’s could no longer be a Catholic institution unless it agreed to follow Catholic “moral teachings.” The Bishop forbade Catholic Mass in the hospital’s chapel and excommunicated Sister Margaret McBride—the only nun on the ethics committee. Officials at St. Joseph’s defended McBride and the ethics committee’s action, and medical ethicists agreed. But since the local bishop’s crackdown, the hospital has told Ms. and other publications that McBride refuses to grant inter- views, and it will not give out her contact information. Women’s groups, for their part, have been anything but silent, raising their voices in anger and protesting loudly outside the hospital and the headquarters of the local Catholic diocese. The Phoenix story drew national outrage, but lesser- known cases of religious doctrine affecting medical care are rampant. In Oregon, a bishop threw out a medical- center director from his diocese for refusing to stop ster- ilizing patients. In Arizona, a couple raced to a Catholic hospital ER after the wife miscarried one of a pair of fetus- es, only to be sent to a secular facility after doctors deter- www.msmagazine.com mined that the twin fetus was still alive—though not viable. And in New York, doctors at a Catholic institution neglected to terminate an ectopic preg- nancy (in which the fertilized egg begins to develop outside the uterus) even though the embryo could not possibly survive and the patient faced a potentially fatal rupture of her fallopian tube. These treatment denials can be expensive as well as dan- gerous. Consider the case of Jessica Graham of Sierra Vista, Ariz.—a pregnant mother of one who planned to get her tubes tied after a C-section because a kidney condition makes it difficult for her to have more children. But the Catholic-run hospital at which her ob-gyn operated would only allow the child’s delivery, not Graham’s sterilization. So, she says, “I gave birth, had my doctor stitch me up, then had a doctor at a secular hospital open me up again and tie my tubes. Because of Catholic policies, I endured two operations and my insurer paid about $9,000 extra.” Even if a doctor at a Catholic hospital has no personal compunction about performing a procedure such as tubal ligation, she or he—along with the nearly 770,000 other employees at the nation’s Catholic hospitals—must bow to the directives. And recent news indicates that Catholic- employed doctors may soon be squeezed even more. Later this year, the Catholic hierarchy in Rome—headed by archconservative Pope Benedict XVI—is slated to pub- lish a new set of medical guidelines that could be even less humane than the current ones. And the Catholic Health SPRING 2011 | 33 SERWAA ADU-TUTU