In Your Hour of Need
  by Groff Schroeder

People think of hospitals as places where kind, dedicated medical professionals do their best to help you - no matter what. It is hard to imagine that hospitals would tolerate discrimination of any kind, but many hospitals practice medically deleterious religious discrimination every day.

As a practical matter, even the faithful often disagree with the church on birth control. No matter what your personal belief system, if you are a patient in a Catholic hospital, medical and reproductive decisions made by you and your physician can be overruled by the church through standing prohibitions against certain medical procedures. It is not just abortion that the hospitals ban, but birth control, sterilization, sexually transmitted disease prevention, in-vitro fertilization and emergency contraception including contraception for rape survivors. Hospitals operated by other religious groups often have similar prohibitions against legal, medically effective procedures.

In 1916, long time activist and nurse Margaret Sanger opened a birth control clinic in New York City and distributed the pamphlet, "What Every Girl Should Know." It was a crime to teach women how to avoid pregnancy, and Sanger received thirty days in a workhouse. In 1928, Mrs. Sanger published the influential book, "Mothers in Bondage," a collection of letters from women trapped by endless pregnancies, deteriorating health and grinding poverty that stemmed from political obstacles to birth control.

In 1936, the Supreme Court struck down the Comstock Law that made it illegal to send birth control information through the mails, and the American Medical Association reversed itself to allow physicians to distribute birth control devices. Many hospitals in the United States then allowed physicians to provide birth control information, advice and devices. Even so, it took the 1965 Griswold vs. Connecticut Supreme Court Decision to stop states from prohibiting birth control for married couples. Birth control for unmarried people remained illegal until 1967.

Many religious hospitals still deny these services. Catholic hospitals serve some 70 million patients and gain full medical accreditation, even though they discriminate against non-Catholic patients by denying proven safe and effective medical services. In a growing number of communities, Catholic hospitals are the only source of medical care. Since a hospital's decision not to provide a service usually results in the patient's inability to obtain the service at all, this often creates a de facto ban on the service.

In June of 2001, the American Medical Association attempted to end these discriminatory practices, but bowed to religious pressure when the church threatened to terminate all prenatal and obstetric services in Catholic hospitals. The Catholic Health Association called attempts to force them to allow their hospital patients to exercise non-Catholic religious beliefs a "direct and blatant affront to religious freedom."

Patients also have a right to religious freedom. So whose religious freedom is paramount? Is it the professional providers of health care in a position of well-paid medical responsibility, or patients who pay for the services and often have no option to seek medical care elsewhere?

The fact that religious hospitals deny possibly lifesaving medical services based on their own religious preferences constitutes dangerous discrimination against patients-most of whom are women-who do not share these beliefs. Such hospitals should not receive full medical accreditation and should not be eligible for federal funds until these discriminatory religious limitations on medical practice end.

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