Doctors at an Oklahoma Hospital Were Just Told They Can’t Prescribe Birth Control Anymore

[theHandpuppet]

29. So do most hospitals, Catholic or not

What I would like to know is if any of the three hospitals you mention engage in these practices:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/04/26/why-catholic-hospitals-should-scare-you/
(excerpt)
It’s probably not surprising that the most egregious violations come up in areas related to reproductive health. Catholic hospitals, almost without exception, refuse to offer abortion, contraception (emergency or otherwise), vasectomies, tubal ligations, or reproductive-health services like in-vitro fertilization.

In serious medical cases where pregnancy threatens the woman’s life, doctors are required to either send a woman off-site for her abortion or attempt to save both lives, even when the woman’s chances could be clearly and dramatically improved by terminating the pregnancy. In the case of ectopic pregnancy, a potentially fatal condition where the embryo is stuck in the Fallopian tube, Catholic medical ethics only permit the removal of the entire blocked tube, decreasing the woman’s future fertility by half. Doctors could extract the embryo without harming the tube, but that would defy Catholic moral teaching by causing an abortion directly. Removing the whole tube preserves an illusion of moral acceptability at the patient’s expense.

These moral contortions are being forced on doctors and patients who are not necessarily Catholic, oftentimes living in areas where they may not have access to alternatives. Poor women, who are more likely to rely on hospitals and hospital outpatient programs to meet their reproductive health needs, are disproportionately affected. And in an environment where Catholic organizations buy or merge with existing service providers with stunning regularity, staff and patients may find their health-care environment transformed suddenly and unexpectedly, forcing them into difficult situations.

Slightly less well known are the Catholic strictures on end-of-life care. Church dogma requires medical staff to provide certain life-support measures, like feeding tubes and intravenous hydration, indefinitely, even when the patient has given end-of-life directives in advance. In those cases, Catholic institutions will ignore the individual’s wishes if they conflict with Church teaching… even if the individual in question is not a Catholic. Given that, it’s troubling that Catholic organizations also own 1,400 long-term care and assisted living services and facilities, where their patients’ needs are subordinated to a doctrine they may not accept or understand....