It is deplorable that the pope last weekend called physicians who help women have abortions “hitmen.” (It was also sexist, since many physicians are women!)
At an event in Belgium where he criticized proposals to extend the legal limit on abortion there, Pope Francis said, “Doctors who do this are — allow me the word —hitmen. And on this you cannot argue. You are killing a human life.”
His remarks are especially unconscionable given the history of violent attacks on abortion clinics, including 11 citizen executions of abortion physicians or staff in the United States alone. The pope’s reckless remarks have placed a target on the backs of any medical staff assisting in abortion care.
The Catholic Church claims to care about “human life” — at least all the way from conception to birth — but it certainly can’t claim to care about women’s health. To the pope, women are dispensable breeding machines. He even described women’s role as being “fertile” nurturers who complement men.
The threats to Americans of childbearing age by the Catholic Church’s global war against reproductive rights were brought home this week by a new lawsuit showing that pregnant women facing the need for emergency termination of pregnancies are no longer safe anywhere in the United States — so long as Catholic hospitals are allowed to turn them away. This includes women living in abortion rights strongholds, such as California.
To its great credit, California is suing a Catholic hospital for denying an emergency abortion to a woman miscarrying twins at 15 weeks of pregnancy. Anna Nusslock, a 36-year-old chiropractor living in Eureka, went to her nearest emergency room, Providence St. Joseph, after her water broke last February. She was bleeding, cramping and in severe pain, and was diagnosed with previable preterm premature rupture of membranes, a serious condition treated by termination of the pregnancy. She was told one fetus had no chance of survival and the other almost no chance, and that if her pregnancy was not terminated, she might develop infection, hemorrhage and endanger her ability to have future pregnancies. Yet, because fetal heart tones were detectable, the Catholic-affiliated hospital turned her away, saying it was prohibited from providing an abortion unless her life was at risk.
That it was life-threatening was obvious by the Providence doctor’s suggestion to airlift her by helicopter to San Francisco, but her insurance would not cover the $40,000 charge. She and her husband asked about driving to San Francisco, and the doctor warned her, “If you try to drive you will hemorrhage and die before you get to a place that can help you.” They then drove 20 minutes to a community hospital (scheduled for closure, by the way), with a bucket and towels passed on by the discharging nurse, “in case something happens in the car.”
By the time she and her husband arrived, she was hemorrhaging, had expelled one fetus and a blood clot described as the size of an apple. The community hospital immediately removed the second fetus and she was left to recover not only from blood loss, infection and the grief of losing wanted pregnancies, but a near-death experience at the uncaring hands of a Catholic hospital.
The lawsuit is important for many reasons, including that California Attorney General Rob Bonta is concerned over the uncertainty of the endangered federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA). The Supreme Court heard a case involving denial of emergency abortion services in Idaho this year, which was sent back to Idaho courts. Bonta is suing instead under California’s state law, which requires hospitals to provide care “necessary to relieve or eliminate the emergency medical condition.” He warns that with the current hostile court, “states are on their own and need to rely on our own laws.”
According to the Washington Post, Catholic systems, which follow doctrinal directives from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, control about one in seven U.S. hospital beds. Four of the nation’s 10 largest health systems are Catholic, which the Post says is a 50 percent increase over the past two decades. “In Alaska, Iowa, South Dakota, Washington and Wisconsin, 40 percent or more of hospital beds are in Catholic facilities,” reports the Post, due to aggressive hospital mergers and acquisitions. Wisconsin is the only state where Black women are more likely to deliver their babies in a Catholic institution than a non-Catholic one. And in 12 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties, the only hospitals are Catholic.
Propublica last week published a heartbreaking exposé about how at least two women in Georgia died after they couldn’t access legal abortions, including Amber Nicole Thurman, 28, mother of a 6-year-old, who needed a simple D&C. Doctors waited 20 hours to operate as her infection spread, her blood pressure faded and her organs failed. It reports that the first year after Roe v. Wade, studies found the rate of maternal deaths for women of color was reduced by 40 percent. Now, 22 states ban or severely restrict abortion rights, with dozens of documented cases of women carrying doomed pregnancies being turned away from ERs at risk of their health and lives. And in states with bans, these aren’t only Catholic hospitals, of course. But if EMTALA is not held up by our Supreme Court, even in pro-choice states, no pregnant women will be safe in a community served by a Catholic hospital.
And that’s truly taking a hit — on women’s lives.
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