This study didn’t get a lot of play, but I think it’s important for people to know:
More than one-third of obstetrician-gynecologists at religiously-affiliated hospitals say they’ve had a conflict with their institution about patient care policies based on religious tenets — including over half of ob-gyns at Catholic hospitals, according to a new survey.
The researchers didn’t ask doctors exactly what those conflicts were about, but the lead author said in her experience disagreements typically come up over sterilization procedures for men, the use of contraception and the treatment of miscarriages.
“My advice to women is really to ask questions before you pick what hospital you’re going to go to for your reproductive health care and your pregnancy-related care,” said Dr. Debra Stulberg, from the University of Chicago.
For the current report, Stulberg and her colleagues surveyed more than 1,100 ob-gyns across the United States about their experiences at their respective hospitals and practices.
One in five of the doctors practiced at a religiously-affiliated institution. And of those, 37 percent reported some history of conflict regarding patient-care policies based in religion.
At Catholic hospitals in particular, 52 percent of ob-gyns had experienced conflict over those policies, Stulberg’s team reported in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
“There’s really a striking difference between people who practice in Catholic hospitals and people who practice in hospitals of all other religious denominations,” Stulberg told Reuters Health. “Some of these conflicts seem to be unique to Catholic hospitals.”
That’s likely because Catholic health care institutions have the most specific restrictions on patient care and cover the widest breadth of reproductive services with their policies, noted Freedman — such as not giving out birth control.
Few ob-gyns at religious or non-religious hospitals said they were limited in treating ectopic pregnancy — when an embryo starts developing outside the uterus and can’t survive.
How ectopic pregnancies should be treated has been a matter of debate among Catholic ethicists, according to the report.
“I was happy to see that it seems like most hospitals do not interfere with physician judgment in that situation,” Stulberg said.
Researchers said it’s important for religious bodies and institutions to clarify policies so there isn’t confusion among their doctors about what is and isn’t allowed — and for women themselves to know, going in, if there are any ways in which their care could be limited based on those policies.“Recently the Catholic bishops have been talking about this as if it’s a primarily religious freedom issue,” Stulberg said. “Sometimes what gets lost is it’s also an access-to-care issue for women and also that women have the right to have the care they receive match their own values… And if they’re getting their treatment in a hospital that has strict policies, the hospital’s values may trump theirs.”
Amen, sister.
Brachiator
Looks like the Catholic Church, and some other religious institutions, want to get into a fight.
It’s simple, to me. Practitioners of unproven “alternative medical practices” are getting kicked to the curb.
Any hospital or or other medical institution that does not provide the full range of medical care, based on the most accurate, current medical science, should not be licensed to operate anywhere in the country.
cathyx
In other words, if you are a woman and you have a reproductive health issue, go somewhere else.
feebog
Really? Whats the debate here? My wife had an ectopic pregnancy. Damn near killed her. The fetus won’t survive, and if not aborted, the mother will die as well. Sanctity of life my ass.
gogol's wife
I was just at a medical facility waiting to pick somebody up after a colonoscopy, and they had Fox News blaring in the waiting room, with some cardinal or other (I think Egan) complaining about the infringement of his religious freedom. My husband had to restrain me or I might have gotten arrested for screaming bloody murder.
God, I am sick of this.
gaz
@feebog: Cosigned. I have a good friend who suffered the same thing, and it nearly killed her as well.
As a related aside, I wonder how the Catholic ethicists feel about administering rape kits to minors.
Villago Delenda Est
When my long time family doctor’s partnership was approached by the local Catholic hospital about a buy-out/merger, they rejected it specifically because such a merger would not be in the best interest of the health of their female patients, due to religious doctrinal interference with the doctor-patient relationship.
People who look the other way at child rape have no ethics to speak of.
cathyx
How is the Catholic church determining your medical treatment any different than the Followers of Christ church who don’t believe in getting medical treatment for health issues?
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator:
These assholes need to be made to understand, by bashing upside the head with a clue by four if necessary, that their religious freedom ENDS where my body begins.
David Koch
PPP: Black Metrosexual Abe Lincoln leads Bain 50-42 in Pennsylvania. Including 56-36 gender gap.
Kay
@Brachiator:
I was curious about that, in the litigation we read about yesterday, where they are suing the Obama Administration.
Did the bishops shift focus from those large businesses that are health care entities to those large businesses that are universities deliberately, because they were losing the political fight on health care? Are they off health care, now? It’s just interesting.
TMLutas
Excellent use of bait and switch. In that last paragraph, the switch happens at the word “it’s”.
The bishops are currently objecting to being forced to pay for options they view as objectionable and which traditional conscience policy has allowed variation on. That *is* a religious freedom issue. A woman’s access to any particular procedure is only affected if she’s working for a Catholic affiliated institution and there aren’t a lot of women who reasonably don’t understand ahead of time. Overwhelmingly they signed on to the restrictions eyes wide open.
The study isn’t about that at all.
Mark S.
What also gets lost is why do doctors agree to work under these conditions. Don’t their ethical obligations to their patients trump the Church’s ZYGOTE=FULL-FLEDGED HUMAN idiotic philosophy? If enough doctors boycotted Catholic hospitals, the Church would either have to back down or get out of the hospital business.
JoyfulA
A Catholic friend was shocked when he couldn’t get a vasectomy at the nearby Catholic hospital. He’s learning.
Comrade Dread
This entire nonsense is the best argument I’ve heard for nationalizing health care across the board.
That there would even be a debate about what to do with ectopic pregnancies is appalling.
Kay
@TMLutas:
Wrong. This is actually a very skewed view of US health care. It’s the view of a person who has all sorts of options in health care. That isn’t true in large parts of the country.
You can read more about access and merger issues with Catholic health care providers here. It isn’t going away, and in fact will grow as an issue as Catholic providers merge with secular providers.
cathyx
If she’s having reproductive health issues, then she’s clearly not a good candidate for breeding. That’s all the bishops are saying.
Kay
@TMLutas:
Because you can drive to three or four providers where you live shouldn’t lead to your assuming that’s true of everyone in the country. It’s a big country. Very diverse. Health care access isn’t at all evenly distributed.
Peregrinus
@Comrade Dread:
I agree with this whole-heartedly. I have long thought one of the best ways to shut the bishops up would be to remove their economic power.
SatanicPanic
@Comrade Dread: Once you’ve accepted that women can be impregnated by ghosts and that protecting children from molesters isn’t all that important, you can pretty much debate anything from any angle you want.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
i wonder what it would be like to be a catholic bishop and believe for a week that god loves you mostest.
cathyx
You do have to give the Bishops credit. They are trying to hang onto their patriarchal power with everything they’ve got.
Wormtown
At this point, past my child-bearing years. But, I thought people always realized that ob-gyn at any Catholic-affiliated (or influenced in heavily populated areas) institution was going to be comrpomised. Fortunately for me, it was only inconvenient (didn’t cover BC/pharmacies didn’t carry BC/Dr. addressed me as Mrs. when I went for BC even though I wasn’t married). It pissed me off, but I never did anything about it. In part, because if you did raise a stink they would just think you were a slut.
I had friends who just went to planned parenthood and paid out of pocket for everything, even though they had insurance rather than deal with it.
I went to a Catholic college and had several friends who were premed (and became dr.’s). They used to say never go to an OB/GYN who had graduated from a Catholic medical school or done their training at a Catholic hospital.
Brachiator
@Kay:
This fight was always coming. Some Catholic institutions, and some conservatives, are opposed to health care reform specifically because it might mandate care which does not conform to their religious principles. And it’s not just abortion. The Church objects to a range of medical procedures, from vasectomy to in vitro fertilization.
Previously, conservatives were content to block abortion by objecting to the federal government paying for services sought by poor women. But now, they have upped the ante, using the bogus religious freedom argument to attempt to block any citizen from seeking certain medical treatment.
And they have upped the ante further by seeking to dictate medical procedures, forcing doctors and caregivers to lie or to make statements that are either false or not supported by medical science. This is a very dangerous overstepping of the bounds.
The arrogance of some political and religious figures here is amazing. They are desperate, and clearly trying to advance a specific and particular interpretation of religious principles under the cover of religious freedom.
Ruckus
@gogol’s wife:
I have to restrain myself from screaming at conservative cocksuckers all the time.
It’s getting harder and harder every day.
Comrade Dread
@SatanicPanic: I’m a protestant myself, so believing in a virgin birth as a unique miracle isn’t all that much of a stretch once you’ve arrived at a place where you believe in God.
But being a husband and a father, I have a real problem with anyone who would tell my wife or daughter (when she’s older), Sorry, but we’re morally opposed to treating the ectopic pregnancy (or complicated pregnancy) that is going to kill you; or sorry, you were horribly raped, but we can’t give you the morning after pill because we’re convinced that it would somehow lead to abortion; or yeah, it sure does stink that you can’t afford another kid, guess you and your husband will just have to never be intimate again until after menopause hits and even then it’s kind of dicey since sex is really only supposed to be for procreation.
So, nationalize it all. Let’s cut the insurance companies, bishops, every 3rd party out of the health care business. Just have the doc and the patient.
Jay C
@cathyx:
Easy to say, but not always so simple in real life: where the problem of there not being a non-Catholic* health provider within, say, a 100-mile radius is a very real one for a large percentage of people in this country. “Elsewhere” is not a simple or easy concept….
*to be more precise, a health-care facility (regardless of religious affiliation) which will provide ALL the services any particular woman might need.
@Kay:
Really: where do you (or the government) draw the line as to the quantification of “affiliation”? Direct ownership? Majority ownership? Minority ownership – to what percentage?
Is it really outside the realm of possibility for an institution with, say, a 5% or 10% stake held by a Catholic, or “Catholic-affiliated” provider to be pushed to deny services based on Catholic doctrine, regardless of other circumstances?
Villago Delenda Est
@cathyx:
They are now attempting to use the power of the state itself to keep their parochial power.
They will fail. The backlash will make them wish they had never been born.
Ruckus
@TMLutas:
You really need to get out more.
Or do you think the Inquisition was a day at the beach, with party hats and favors?
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@Brachiator:
The RCC essentially came out as an openly theofascist outfit a couple of months ago, so no surprises there.
What interests me more is the coordinated attack that took place. 40+ lawsuits, all at once? Seriously?
Who made this decision? Where was it made? And where is all the money paying for all these simultaneous lawsuits coming from, given that the RCC was supposed to be so broke that it couldn’t afford to pay off legal judgements and has had to sell off church properties left and right?
It’s great living in the 24/7 news cycle. But we seem to have less real journalism than ever before.
Just sayin’
FlipYrWhig
@cathyx: Invert that and you get a pretty solid argument for why there ought to be public, secular health facilities all across the nation. Of course then there’d be a fight about why public money should go to verboten procedures. The problem with nationalizing it is that then a government composed of doofuses and cretins would get involved in setting policies, and, say what you will about corporations, at least they swear by the almighty dollar rather than the Almighty.
quannlace
One of the bishops said that they’re spefically being targeted. Right. Being treated like every other health institution in the country somehow equals you being singled out.
This attempt at victimhood/martyrdom is getting ridiculous.
I really think the American bishops are slowly losing their minds, like most conservatives in this country.
Jebediah
@Villago Delenda Est:
From your lips to FSM’s noodles…
jibeaux
19th Amendment Hammer of Gender Gap Justice, coming to a town near you in November, tell your girlfriends. It’s not a solution, but it’s a start.
bemused
@quannlace:
They sound just as whiny as wall street CEO’s, hedge fund managers and asshole one percenters. Too big for their britches.
Chris
@Comrade Dread:
Amen.
When was the last time anything was nationalized in this country, anyway? In the current climate, I’d be shocked if the nationalization of anything didn’t result in a spate of militia “lone wolf” attacks. It’d be a great idea, though.
cathyx
@Villago Delenda Est: You said parochial and I said patriarchal. Both are correct though.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@TMLutas:
I was against the Iraq war from Day One, but was sadly outnumbered and outvoted. And so, like everyone, else I was forced to pay for it.
Can I get my tax payments from 2002-2008 back?
No? Then feel free to explain to me why the bishops’ fee-fees are more important than mine.
Brachiator
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor:
Rachel Maddow recently had a great segment that noted the dramatic increase in anti-abortion legislation in Virginia and other states.
Oh, yeah, it’s a co-ordinated campaign. It’s almost as though after health care reform was passed, someone or some group sat down and noted, “we have to come up with a systematic way to fight abortion and contraception.”
What is interesting is that none of this stuff gets much traction (yet) in other advanced nations with national health care. But the US seems to be very ripe for this attack from the religious right.
George Tierney of Greenville, South Carolina
@David Koch:
8 point lead in this long time swing state is pretty good.
So Mittens is losing the critical swing states of Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire, Virginia, Nevada, Ohio, and now Pennsylvania by 7 to 12 pts.
Only North Carolina and Florida are close, and even then, the President leads.
aimai
One problem is lack of choice for women in large swathes of the country. The other problem is lack of honesty on the part of the Catholic Hospitals about the risks of practicing faith based pregnancy care. A whole lot of shit can go wrong in a pregnancy but very few people plan their living arrangements and insurance around the possibility that they are going to need an abortion instead of their longed for baby, that they are going to have an ectopic pregnancy, that they are going to have an anencephalic fetus, that they are going to lose their job and not be able to afford another mouth to feed, that they are going to be dumped by their husband and be homeless, that they are in a violent relationship and can’t protect themselves, that they are going to have a miscarriage and be denied a D and C to remove the dead fetus, that they may decide they want a tubal ligation after a C section.
I’ve been lucky and had two healthy, successful, pregnancies. I asked my first doctor if, if I needed it, she would perform an abortion and she said no. But I really didn’t have a choice. There weren’t that many Ob/gyn’s around on my insurance. I had to cross my fingers and hope that if I ended up needing better care/a therapeutic abortion, the fact that I’m upper class would enable me to get one without too much struggle. She was very surprised to hear me ask about it up front. In her mind the world was divided into “good mommies” who “want their babies” and “bad women” who “want abortions.” The obvious fact that “good people” can need abortions seemed to be outside her comfort zone. It was certainly outside the practice of her suburban hospital.
aimai
Kay
@FlipYrWhig:
Except community health centers get left completely alone, and there are a lot of them.
I hesitate to even bring it up, actually, because I’m afraid someone will go after them.
Just forget it :)
jibeaux
@George Tierney of Greenville, South Carolina: You sound…..different, somehow….
aimai
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor:
I also don’t understand in what sense “The Bishops” are paying for anything. Are they on the policies? Are they in the plan? Because then all the Sandra Flukes of the Catholic University system are actually paying for the Bishop’s viagra and condoms (it came out in the Boston Papers covering the sex abuse scandal that it was considered culturally normative for the Priest’s housekeeper to discover a condom in the Priest’s bed. She was told, supposedly, that it was to protect him against the shame and mess of involuntary nocturnal emissions.)
Chris
@Brachiator:
Most other advanced nations have already been through this kind of culture war, with the theocons losing, so my guess is they know better than to even try.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@Brachiator:
Citizens United + Calvinism is a powerful brew, apparently. Wouldn’t bother me so much if I weren’t being forced to drink it against my will.
That said, maybe Maddow will get to the bottom of this at some point. She did excellent work both before and after the 2010 mid-terms explaining just how much of the cash going to the GOP was essentially foreign money, filtered through the US Chamber of Commerce.
I want to know who’s calling the shots on this. I want to know their funding sources, both institutional and private. And, more than anything, I want to know who’s fucking with my country’s electoral politics, and to what end.
Chris
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor:
Whoa. Foreign money? Are we talking, like, Murdoch and stuff, or actually foreign governments? In the event it’s the latter case, that doesn’t sound very patriotic…
rikyrah
of course women are lost in the equation.
IowaOldLady
My brother is an ob-gyn in a small town where the only hospital was recently acquired by a Catholic health network. The nearest other hospital is 50 miles away. In the winter, that’s a serious drive through mountains of snow. There is no choice there for most women.
Brachiator
OT, but related. Part of the war against women is universal, for example the problem of sex trafficking.
An amazing, and sad, online report on sex trafficking from the BBC
Trafficked: Sex slaves seduced and sold
Every year thousands of women are forced into prostitution and traded from Mexico to the United States. The BBC investigates the sex trafficking business, which makes some men very wealthy at the expense of vulnerable young women.
Warning: Viewers may find some of the video content disturbing.
ETA: related to attempts to prevent women from controlling their own reproductive rights is the issue of controlling women for sexual purposes.
Older_Wiser
So, the church is suing the govt by diocese and we’re not supposed to think this is all being directed by Pope Ratfuck, just as the Vatican wanted people to think the child molestation cases were simply a few priests gone astray? Come on, people. Those were men, and they were protected by moving them around. Someone gave that order.
Women have not come a long way if they still cling to authoritarian organizations of any kind, whether it’s churches or Wall St or Madison Ave. We don’t want to be second class men–we want to be first class women and human beings who think and act for themselves, and if you want that, you have to stop thinking and acting like those who enslave you.
jrg
Wow. The beanie brigade wants to get between a woman and her doctor in the case of ectopic pregnancy? I wonder if they want to extend that to women who work for Catholic institutions.
Every time I think those motherfuckers couldn’t be more contemptible, they find a way to surprise me.
gwangung
Ectopic pregnancies are part of allowed variation????
Their own doctors aren’t agreeing with them….
Peregrinus
@Older_Wiser:
I’m surprised when I meet anyone, Catholic or otherwise, who thinks Papa Ratzi’s not the one pulling the strings. You cannot be inquisitor general of the Church for decades and not come away with a few strange habits.
slag
@IowaOldLady:
But what is such a sacrifice when it comes to Religious Freedom? Just because certain people choose the base their definition of Religious Freedom on denial of freedom for others doesn’t mean that their choice should itself be denied, should it? Or do you deny people the right to choose to deny people the right to choose? Hypocrite!
trollhattan
Driving through NE California yesterday one of the few stations I could get was a Catholic radio (who knew there was such a thing). A call-in guest was honcho at some Catholic university decrying the, “Worst infringement of our first amendment rights, perhaps ever!”
Didn’t find out until I reached the NPR zone about the mega lawsuit by the Really Big Group of universities against the Kenyan Administration for all that power-grabbing they’re commiting. I’ll wager they’re REALLY sad Santorum dropped out.
In the meantime, Jesus wept.
SatanicPanic
@Comrade Dread: You’re right, I was setting up a false equivalence there between faith related (virgin birth) and things that are supposed to you’re supposed to be able to arrive at using reason (child molesting is bad).
Older_Wiser
@Peregrinus: We used to have a saying back in the day that if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament. Sad to say, it still seems to be true.
Maybe I’m not too old to go for a science prize.
Chris
@trollhattan:
I guess he’s too young to remember the Know-Nothings, the Bowery Boys or the Ku Klux Klan. Man, you know you’ve got it made when the “worst infringement on our first amendment rights!” you can conceive of is being forced to make your hospitals deliver health care.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@Chris:
Because of the (non-)disclosure laws, we can’t know for sure… the privacy of multinational corps is sacrosanct, don’t ya know. But USCoC has admitted to accepting foreign money, and claimed that this money was kept ‘separate’ somehow from their main funds.
Maddow, Olbermann, and a few leftie sites were on this, but it got no traction in MSM. Probably because the NYT and WaPo got ahead of the story, to quash it.
cckids
@Villago Delenda Est:
This. When I heard Cardinal Dolan the other day talk about insurance for birth control being against their “moral conscience” I wanted so badly to kick him. Does. Not. Exist.
cmorenc
@cathyx:
1) The “Followers of Christ” church is undertaking to run vanishingly few to no hospitals anywhere, the Catholic Church has long undertaken to run many hospitals across the entire country.
2) “Followers of Christ” are exerting their freedom to determine their own individual formal medical care (or lack thereof), the Catholic Church is exerting its power to limit what care is available to individuals regardless of their own wishes.
3) BTW: Courts have consistently held that adults who are followers of religions (such as “Followers of Christ”) which have theological beliefs against much or all of formal medical treatment CANNOT exert that right to endanger children in serious need of medical treatment.
catclub
@cathyx: One group owns hospitals.
George Tierney of Greenville, South Carolina
@trollhattan: these “universities” never had a problem covering birth control when bush was president, ….. now…. it’s an issue.
what a coincidence.
I saw this in New York, twenty years ago. The church was constantly bashing Mario Cuomo for being a pro-choice catholic. Yet they gave Giuliani and Pataki a pass even though they too were pro choice catholics.
They only pipe up when they can use these issues to bash a Democrat.
Rita R.
@Mark S.:
Exactly! These doctors aren’t fulfilling their ethical obligations to their patients if they’re acquiescing to Church-imposed restrictions on what they can and can’t do and say. I confess to being ignorant on this — but are board-certified doctors allowed to censor themselves this way and keep legitimate and standard knowledge and treatment from their patients?
Peregrinus
@Older_Wiser:
Florynce Kennedy, I think. One of my favorites (and my grandfather’s – the man is sometimes to my left). I’ve been wanting to put that on my board as “quote of the day” for a while, but I’d probably get fired as I teach in Catholic school.
(Mind you, I let students debate this stuff in my classroom all the time. I’ve been waiting to chime in with this particular quote for a while.)
catclub
@Chris: “Whoa. Foreign money? Are we talking, like, Murdoch and stuff, or actually foreign governments? In the event it’s the latter case, that doesn’t sound very patriotic…”
Who knows? That was the whole point of zero disclosure of donors for the super-Pacs. It could all be Saudi and Russian. or Iranian.
I think someone was calling Justice Kennedy a naive idiot on just this issue. One reason he gave for his ruling on CU was that — ‘Well of course there will be disclosure of donors when they write the rules, so unlimited corporate money is no problem.’ (paraphrase)
Chris
@George Tierney of Greenville, South Carolina:
Tribalism. The RCC has decided that the Democrats are the party of secular godlessness, that they are therefore at war with it and that their first mission in politics is to contain and roll back us dangerous members of the Other Tribe. Again, similar culture wars happened all over Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
kay
@cmorenc:
They really can. Endanger children. If it’s extreme, life or death, and there’s an extremely brave prosecutor they might bring ‘ medical neglect’ but it’s an absolute bear of an issue and no one wants to deal with it. We’re all afraid of the controversy.
IMO, religion gets an awful lot of deference in this country.
DFH no.6
As a former altar boy from way back when nuns still ran all the Catholic schools, I say, FUCK the fucking Catholic Church.
And fascist troll TMLutas is full of shit, but then, of course…
The Bobs
@Older_Wiser: Read about the trial going on in Philadelphia right now. It’s disgusting. The Archbishop lied to the grand jury to cover up a criminal conspiracy. Since he is dead, the guy he ordered to destroy the evidence is on trial.
So much moral authority.
Randy P
@David Koch: Excellent. So I don’t need to be embarrassed by my state. Just my gender, which still leans fairly strongly pro-Etch-a-Sketch.
Older_Wiser
@Peregrinus: Yes, it was Flo Kennedy, as a matter of fact, who also filed a suit in 1972 against the Catholic Church for income tax evasion. : )
NCSteve
For the Catholic Church, imposing its values on others by every means available, up to and including pressuring governments to enact church law as secular law, is the mission, not a problem.
I mean, I don’t think I’m even being inflammatory here. They don’t claim otherwise. Been that way for about sixteen hundred years.
The only thing new about the way they’re behaving in America is that they’ve gone from being grateful that, unlike most countries where Catholicism wasn’t the state religion, they’re not subject to persecution in America to being absolutely outraged that they aren’t being allowed to exercise their traditional urge to force everyone in the country to behave like good Catholics.
Increasingly, the Bishops seem to be just working themselves up into a state of hysterical fury that they don’t have the kind of sway over America that they had in, say, Ireland or Quebec in the 1920s.
merrinc
Speaking of religious hypocrites, there was an awesome article in HuffPo today. I don’t usually partake of Arianna’s folly but this line alone makes it worth sharing:
Source: A Message to Girls About the Religious Men Who Fear You
Barry
@TMLutas: “Excellent use of bait and switch. In that last paragraph, the switch happens at the word “it’s”.
The bishops are currently objecting to being forced to pay for options they view as objectionable and which traditional conscience policy has allowed variation on. That is a religious freedom issue. A woman’s access to any particular procedure is only affected if she’s working for a Catholic affiliated institution and there aren’t a lot of women who reasonably don’t understand ahead of time. Overwhelmingly they signed on to the restrictions eyes wide open.
The study isn’t about that at all.”
Lie. A women’s access is affected if she’s going to a Catholic affiliated institution, which (a) can be determined by her insurance and (b) isn’t something she’d know about, due to hospital/practice buyouts and mergers.
As for religious freedom:
1) Religious beliefs do not get you exemptions from commonly applicable laws; that’s be case law for well over a century.
2) There were 20-odd states with these rules; the bishops
didn’t do squat until it came time to help Romney.
3) I didn’t notice any religious exemptions when it was Bush & Co. spending in the odd trillion on whatever they wanted. Sauce for the goose.
4) The bishops were OK with child molestation; they can suck it on this.
5) Those who carry water for them can suck it on this.
Barry
(6) – you’re a Chicwh*re. Nothing that you say is trustworthy.
Peregrinus
@Older_Wiser:
Tee-hee. You know, it’s about time someone repeated that stunt.
The one think TMLutas (sp?) got right upthread is that while Humanae Vitae declared the Church’s absolute opposition to contraception, and while the bishops are certainly free to interpret that as allowing them to make pronouncements about bodies that aren’t theirs, there is still a provision for individuals who choose to use contraception or have an abortion. While some mitigating circumstances (such as polycystic ovary syndrome) were brought up by the experts whom Paul VI consulted on Humanae Vitae, others grew as priests heard confession from women who didn’t know what to think about their own contraceptive use or past abortions vis-à-vis Church policy.
Unfortunately, when I was taking initiation classes for confirmation a few months ago, I was also told that I was lucky to be in a diocese where the bishop believed that instead of viewing it as a roadblock. There was a strong implication that that was because he’d been appointed before Ratzinger became Prefect of the CDF.
I guess what I’m saying is this: I’m Catholic, but I’m elated that the Church is getting the pushback it deserves on this issue. SNAP and Flo Kennedy are two excellent examples of people the Church needs more than it needs the current crop of scarlet wearers.
James E Powell
@Barry:
1) Religious beliefs do not get you exemptions from commonly applicable laws; that’s be case law for well over a century.
As usual, the framing war was lost before the first shot was fired. This isn’t about the law imposing a religious belief on others, it’s about a religious group imposing its beliefs on others.
2) There were 20-odd states with these rules; the bishops didn’t do squat until it came time to help Romney.
If this can be demonstrated, and I am assuming it can, why isn’t it Question No. 1 whenever one of these objecting parties appears in public?
JCT
@Kay: Not to mention the fact that if you are taken to a hospital in an emergency you don’t often have a choice of where you go.
We routinely advise patients with cardiac disease to assess the availability of cardiac cath labs that have interventional services in their local hospital when they consider moving.
Pathetic that women need to do the same now it seems…
Barry
@DFH no.6: “And fascist troll TMLutas is full of shit, but then, of course…”
Look at TMLutas’ address: http://chicagoboyz.net/
It’s a hive of Pinochetian – well – fascists.
Peregrinus
@Barry:
You’re entirely on point with that takedown, but I have to ask: whiskey-tango-foxtrot is a “Chicwh*re?”
Peregrinus
@Barry:
I will never forget the day some asshole sitting next to me in quizbowl said “Oh, I love Pinochet,” and thinking “You know, even if he weren’t twice my musculature, punching him in the face would only prove his point.”
Edit: That was embarrassing. I was not the fascist in the above hypothetical altercation.
gaz
@TMLutas: In case you haven’t noticed, this is an adult forum, which means of course, that you are hopelessly outclassed. Go back to your chicagoboyz playpen and where you can spout glib nonsense and backslap each other, you fucking nova monkey. Run along now, the adults are having a discussion.
Barry
@Peregrinus: Stick an ‘o’ in.
DFH no.6
@James E Powell:
Objective and easily-discovered fact: there are 28 states that require insurance companies to cover contraception.
Over half the people in America live in those states.
Some (like New York, California, and North Carolina) have identical religious employer exemptions as the new federal ruling.
Some others (like Colorado, Wisconsin, and Georgia) have no exemptions at all.
I learned this almost immediately when the ruling (and subsequent controversy) came down in, I think, February.
I scream it at the TV every time I see the topic covered, and it is seldom brought up (other than by, say, Rachel Maddow).
So I’m with you 100% that it should be the first goddamn question each and every time any of these assholes opposed to it is interviewed. With the immediate followup question of “And exactly why are you just now making a big deal out of this, but didn’t when these states mandated the same damn thing?”
But most of the media, and the majority of the selected TV “liberal spokespersons”, don’t do that.
Wonder why that would be? Can’t imagine, really…
slag
@kay:
And yet, no matter how much it gets, it never seems to get enough. As is the case with all conservative entitlement programs.
Kathy in St. Louis
@TMLutas: It doesn’t seem to be widely reported, but the Catholic Church and its organizations had been providing contraception coverage in 28 states for several years. The deal that they had worked out with the insurance companies so that they were not the immediate providers of the coverage, but sort of a one degree of separation provider was working out just fine. This is absolutely not about religious freedom in any sense. This is about the Republican party calling in a marker for all the states where the republican legislatures have closed down access to abortions. Nothing else. The GOP is where the bishops would be voting if they were just the guy on the street. The only people who have been named bishops in the U.S.in the past 20 years are rock hard conservatives in their mindset. Justin Rigali, late of Philly, was one of the main architects of the vetting process which got these guys their spots. It would be surprising if any of their “yes” men were flaming liberals… They are the left arm of the GOP. The Chamber of Commerce is the right arm. Totally interchangeable, in my book.
gaz
@Kathy in St. Louis: Pearls before swine. You waste your composition on a manchild.
Kathy in St. Louis
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor: Well said. I’ve been pissed since I had to pay taxes to cover the Vietnam war, for Christ sake. I wasn’t too happy about napalm. Not real keen on enriching Haliburton during the Iraq war.
These guys want the health care bill to have so many exceptions that it will be toothless. That was what Roy Blunt was trying to do with his amendment to the ACA. It’s about destroying a chance for uninsured people to finally get the health care they need, brought to you by he GOP and the RCC. They have become one in the same and have the same mission. Jesus must be very proud of his bishops today.
gelfling545
@feebog: A Catholic hospital turned my daughter away when she was experiencing a miscarriage 3 years ago because it “might” have been an ectopic pregnancy & they would not do anything in that case. Of course no ectopic pregnancy is viable and sure, could kill her, but they still “couldn’t interfere.
gelfling545
@JCT: Catholic hospitals will not always respect health care proxy decisions or end of life planning either. A couple of lawyers I know had to arrange for terminally ill patients to be removed from Catholic hospitals to non-religious ones to get their clients decisions abided by.
rm
@feebog:
Indeed, my wife too. Came within an hour of dying. If the hospital had put some roadblock in the doctor’s way when he called us in for emergency surgery, she would have bled to death. Pro-life!
Another Halocene Human
@James E Powell:
I think that’s hyperbole as there was much butthurt in some states when these laws were passed.
The real change is that activist Bishop Timothy Dolan just got a new funny cap from il Papa and now has the power of the RCC behind him to go full wingnut. Dolan believes in the separation of church and state insomuch as he believes money should be separated from the public kitty and deposited in his bank account without any of those pesky “rules” and “oversight”.
Another Halocene Human
@gelfling545: @rm: One time would be too many and yet in the last ten years I’ve heard so many variations on the same story. Bishop dictats at Catholic hospitals == women in mortal danger.
Sooner or later a woman will die, and it won’t be a poor, undereducated woman with a family who is absent or can’t do much for her. Instead it’ll be someone whose loved ones have the time, motivation, and funds to sue the pants off them, get national press, and raise an enormous stink.
Oh, and the RCC lied. Over 15 years ago in our HS CCD class (boy, that was a dorky experience) a priest swore up and down they would never tell a woman not to get an abortion when her life was in danger.
LIARS LIARS STOLES ON FIRE