Lawsuit tests religious hospitals’ right to deny procedures

Cody Griffin Contributed byon August 26, 2015 at 10:08 am

In a letter sent to the nonprofit public corporation, Dignity Health, ACLU accused the hospital for discriminating Rachel Miller regarding her gender by not allowing her to go through a tubal ligation.







Miller’s doctor, Samuel Van Kirk requested a tubal ligation for her immediately after the Cesarean, but was denied in an April 10 letter from Sister Brenda O’Keeffe, vice president Mission Integration and Spiritual Care Services.

“While we’re grateful Mercy Medical has agreed to provide medical care in this instance for Ms. Miller, the reality remains that there is a clear conflict between the best interests of patients and the directives of the Catholic hospital system”, said ACLU of Northern California attorney Elizabeth Gill in a prepared statement. “With Catholic hospitals increasingly prevalent, including as the only option for some women, Rachel is just one of many women who risk being denied care, because Catholic bishops are telling medical professionals how to operate”.

No court ruling or other legal authority would require Mercy Medical Center to “violate the (Ethical and Religious Directives) and repudiate (the hospital’s) Catholic identity”, Grossman wrote. “Nor does it permit corporate entities to elevate their theological tenets over patient health”.

There are no other hospitals near Miller’s Redding home that have birthing and Ob/Gyn facilities that are not Catholic-affiliated.

In fact, Directive 70 published by the bishops says: “Catholic health care organizations are not permitted to engage in immediate material cooperation in actions that are intrinsically immoral, such as abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, and direct sterilization”. On Monday, the deadline the lawyers had set for a response, the ACLU said Mercy Medical Center had agreed to the surgery. Perhaps that is the reason why Mercy Medical Center (MMC) which is California’s largest private health care network reconsidered their refusal on allowing Rachel Miller to a sterilization surgery (tubal ligation) after her caesarean section which she expects anytime next month.

“This is a decision that I made with my family and my doctor and no one else should be involved in that process”, Miller said in the news release.

The hospital receives both state and federal funding.

The number of Catholic hospitals from United States that ban sterilization procedures are on the rise, according to a chart featured in ProPublica earlier this year.

Contraceptive sterilization is considered the nation’s second most common form of birth control.

Legal case tests religious hospitals’ right to deny procedures