Abortion chat with Catholic Hospital

So my daughter is pregnant. I've worried for a while about what the local hospital's policies were on abortion if a woman's health was threatened during pregnancy. So today I called. It was interesting. Basically, if she's dying they will do a D&C. He was adament about calling it a D&C, they don't do abortions at Catholic hospitals. The nearest hospital otherwise is 60 miles away.

It got me to thinking, isn't it peculiar that they WILL call a D&X a partial-birth abortion. Maybe we're going about this all wrong. Maybe when we talk to pro-life people we should skip the choice part and say no, I mean a D&C when the mother has complications, a life-threatening disease, needs cancer treatment, etc. Maybe we should turn it around on them and take abortion out of the picture the way this Administrator did today. I didn't let him get away with it by the way, I insisted we use the word abortion to describe procedures to protect a woman's reproductive health. That is part of the problem that I think we're forgetting in the abortion debate, it's a necessary procedure and it's a travesty that my daughter would have to travel 60 miles if she were to need a medically necessary procedure.

what does D&C mean?

Dilatation and Curettage

Before Roe poor women went to a back alley doctor for an abortion. These women frequently died or had very bad side effects such as infections. Women of means went to a clean hospital (sometimes even a catholic hospital) and had a "D & C". They rarely suffered death or serious side effects.

diagnoses. I assisted at many of them and they were called D&C.(dilation and curettage) After the dilation of the cervix, using a ascending, in it's width, probe like instrument, the utuerus was then scraped using various scraping instruments. I never saw any thing like a fetus, BTW and I many times was in charge of gathering up the results to sent to the lab. All that was ever there was a bunch of bloody tissue about the volume of a couple of tablespoons. I never saw an arm, or a leg or a head or a mouth of a talking fetus. I was naive at that time, and really thought there was some other problem. It then dawned on me, that many of these women, were young women. They could afford, no doubt, to be admitted to the hospital for this procedure. It was a very very rich community--at that time, one, if not the richest community in the nation.

The poor resorted to guilt laden choices in shame, involving med students or others who opened back alley abortion clinics to perform the same type of procedure. Naturally this was not a safe environment. Many women suffered such enormous penalty for this choice--some of them lost their lives.

Catholics are VERY diverse, and can even be paradoxically practical at times as you have demonstrated above.

Practical??? This is the stringent Catholic line. An abortion, er, D&C, if the mother is dying. That's it, that's all. That's Catholic doctrine. If any other medical situation comes up and a doctor recommends a, "D&C", women in my town would have to go 60 miles or more to be treated. It's an outrage.

Why would you go to a Catholic hospital and berate them for not sharing your values? The Catholic Church is very adamant about their views on abortion, and have always been. The Pope has stated that abortion is not legal, and Cathoic hospitals do not perform abortions. My aunt is a Sister of Charity and sits on the board of many Catholic Hospitals. For the love of God woman, there is a huge crucifix in the foyer of almost every Catholic hospital I have been in. What on earth would posses you to chastise them for not accepting your point of view so you don't have to drive 60 miles?

See, this is where I REALLY have a problem. We should NOT be telling religious organizations what they should believe or do, we should be making sure that those organizations DO NOT IMPOSE their will on the government.

Personally, as a Catholic, I think you were out of line.

but they do indeed get public funding'

snip
Like most hospitals, Catholic hospitals receive the bulk of their financing either from direct payments by patients and private insurance or through government transfers in the form of Medicare and Medicaid payments. Catholic hospitals are primarily financed by the public, not by the Catholic Church. According to Health Progress, the magazine of the Catholic Hospital Association, in 1990 65% of Catholic hospitals reported that they annually sought government and foundation funds or grants in order to provide health care services for the poor or the local community. When raising money for capital improvements, Catholic hospitals rely on tax-exempt bonds, another form of public funding. This means that public money is financing institutions that provide only the health care approved by religious authorities. This clearly raises issues about the separation of church and state. This is even more problematic in areas where Catholic hospitals are the only providers of health care.

Currently 76 Catholic hospitals in the country have been accorded "sole provider" status, meaning that they are the only hospitals within 35 road miles or 45 minutes drive of the communities in which they are located. A hospital with sole provider status receives higher reimbursement rates from Medicare than do other hospitals. Fifty-six of these hospitals are located in counties in which Catholics comprise less than 25% of the population. Despite the fact that they are the only easily accessible facilities in their communities and despite the fact that the majority of the patients they serve are not Catholic, Catholic hospitals still have the right by law to refuse to provide the range of health services listed above. This refusal to provide certain types of health care takes on an added significance in light of the growing trend toward hospital consolidation. When Catholic and non-Catholic hospitals merge or affiliate, what happens to reproductive health services previously offered by the non-Catholic hospital? The answer is clear: vital reproductive health services are reduced or eliminated.

Further, putting a woman's health at risk for the sake of a religious belief forced upon them when they are in dire need, and forced upon medical doctors who wish to practice in those hospitals, is immoral and directly against the practice of medicine according to the Hypocrattic Oath, which is clearly evident, probably does not mean a thing to them at all.

http://www.abortionaccess.org/AAP/publica_resources/fact_sheets/catholic.htm

Do no harm--apparently does not fall within their scope or understanding of the practice of medicine.