Bishops listen during an afternoon session at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Annual Spring Assembly in Atlanta, Georgia, June 13, 2012.

There is a set of medical directives written by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops that states “terminating a pregnancy is forbidden” in their controlled Catholic hospitals unless a mother is in “grave condition.” But that condition doesn’t seem to apply to some women who were treated by Mercy Health Partners (MHP) who almost died miscarrying. These were women who wanted to be pregnant and wanted to have a baby.

Molly Reddin with The Guardian has written an excellent and very extensive piece about this critical problem with Mercy Health Partners. Reddin starts with the story of one woman who was clearly miscarrying on her way to the hospital. When she arrived, the doctors refused to induce labor, even though they were advised by a specialist that the baby would die—and the mother might follow. The hospital never gave the woman other healthcare options or offered to get her to another hospital where labor could be induced. Instead, the doctors decided they would wait until the woman showed signs of sepsis, a life-threading response to infection. By forcing the delay, she became septic. They risked her life not to save a baby/fetus, that was already deemed unviable; they risked her life because of Catholic doctrine.

This above is one example filed in a report by a former Muskegon County health official in Michigan. In her report, Faith Groesbeck claims between August 2009 and December 2010 Mercy Health Partners forced five women to undergo dangerous miscarriages by giving them no other option.

All five women, the report says, had symptoms indicating that it would be safest for them to deliver immediately. But instead of informing the women of their options, the report says, or offering to transfer them to a different hospital, doctors – apparently out of deference to the Mercy Health Partners’ strict ban on abortion – unilaterally decided to subject the women to prolonged miscarriages Several of the women suffered infection, emotional trauma, and/or had to undergo unnecessary surgery.

One of the world’s most horrific examples of how Catholic doctrine and medicine can be deadly is that of Savita Halappanavar.

​In 2012, Halappanavar’s death in an Irish hospital became an international symbol for the perils of allowing religion to dictate medical care. Halappanavar was 17 weeks pregnant when she began to miscarry. Later investigations suggest that it should have been clear to doctors that she had an infection. The hospital, allegedly because of its abortion ban, refused to intervene, and Halappanavar quickly succumbed to septicemia.

In 2013 there were 381 hospitals in the Untied States under the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops directives—and the number is growing. That means approximately 10% of America’s hospitals follow these rules. The greatest danger arises when there are signs of infection. An OB-GYN who reviewed the case for the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, says most doctors would “absolutely urge” delivery to be induced.

In Groesbeck’s report, none of the women were more than 20 weeks pregnant and all five women showed signs of infection such as an elevated temperature/heart rate. But in each case, MHP staff withheld proper treatment and information from pregnant women experiencing emergency situations.

The report says the practices of MHP “not only risk life-threatening infection, infertility, and health problems, they subject women to unnecessary physical and psychological suffering.”

One woman who was forced to endure 18 hours of labor and became susceptible to infection filed a lawsuit, but the case was thrown out. ACLU attorneys have become involved and together they are appealing that decision.

Faith Groesbeck became aware of the problems with MHP through her job interviewing mothers who had lost very young children. She filed her report with Muskegon County after going through mounds of county data to identify gaps in care. In the end, Groesbeck’s report was minimized and Mercy Health Partners were cited for a small infraction. The case closed in 2014. Groesbeck was reassigned to a different unit for which she was not trained. The country blamed her reassignment on “budget cuts.” Groesbeck felt the move was political and she quit. She said:

“I talked to anyone who would listen to me,” Groesbeck said. “I felt a moral obligation to do something once the hospital said they weren’t going to do anything about it … There was no way I could not act on what I’d found.”

Once again due to archaic religious doctrine and dogma, the health and welfare of women are not only put on the back burner, they are put at high risk and this needs to stop.

To read the full and very extensive story about the Mercy Health Partners infractions to women, visit The Guardian.