Over dinner the other night, our guests and Ms. D were discussing whether it is desirable for religious denominations to be involved in the health care business. They observed that a number of hospitals were being purchased by religious denominations, most prominently the Catholic church, and that they then refused to perform abortions, even when the health of the mother was at risk. (Of the couple we had over for dinner, the woman was pregnant, and has a health condition that renders her pregnancy high risk. She is a pharmacist. So she gave the impression of having had a reason to learn about this, and having done so intelligently. All of the parties to the conversation are atheists who attend a UU church.) They said this was especially a problem in rural areas, where the only hospital for miles might have such restrictions. They also suspected that this was part of an intentional plan by the religions involved to effectively reduce the availability of abortion.
Anyone else aware of this, or were my dining companions mistaken? If this is occurring, what, if anything, can or should be done?
If the mother’s life is in danger, yes. Then it is medically nessasary. Otherwise, no. Abortions should legal, but no one should be required to perform one on demand.
That being said, I don’t think even a cash cow like the Catholic Church could afford to buy up all the hospitals. And aren’t most abortions performed in a doctor’s office rather than a hospital? I’m pretty sure Planned Parenthood isn’t for sale. I think your dining companions were a little paranoid.
I don’t think anyone should be required to perform an abortion. Of course, I also don’t think that anyone who wants to should have to worry about a lone crackpot taking them out, either.
And as far as Catholic hospitals being the only game in town? Well, I’m coming at this from a pretty urban perspective, but are there really that many rural areas where this has happened? Because I’ve not heard of it happening.
And, Izzy, the OP was about abortion. Where does a skin graft come into play?
I’m questioning whether a distinction can be made between forcing anyone to perform one operation, as opposed to another. I think few people would require every hospital to perform every type of operation, so I am questioning why single out abortion as the one type of operation that every hospital must perform?
Izzy, I’m not aware of recent S.Ct. decisions, legislation, and presidential orders concerning skin grafts. I’d really prefer that this discussion not veer off in the direction you seem to be nudging it, but that certainly is beyond my control. If you really want to pursue this, would you be so kind as to start a new thread? I think there may be enough in the OP to foster a decent factual and philospohical debate without diffusing the focus too much.
The discussion took place in the far W. burbs of Chi. The pregnant woman participating said that should she need an emergency abortion, the local hospital associated with her health care provider would not provide it. For it to be covered by her insurer, she would have to go to downtown Chi, or Elmhurst, a N. suburb. In case of an emergency, the travel time might me significant.
Yes, spooje, it is possible the other 3 people were exaggerating. I will do some research into this. Sorry I did not do it before posting. The situation was described where in rural areas a single hospital may be the exclusive provider for a rather wide area. And if that provider declines abortions in any case, that effectively cuts off at least some of the women in that area from access to abortion.
The number of OB/Gyn who are actually trained in abortion procedures is steadily declining (I don’t know why, maybe that’s a subject for a different thread.) If a hospital has no one on their staff who is trained, or who hasn’t done one since medical school, should they be compelled to provide abortions? What about the liability of having an untrained or barely trained practitioner. And would you be willing to trust your health and reproductive organs to someone who wasn’t experienced?
Except that no one has said that every hospital must perform abortions. If they really have a problem with doing so, then they shouldn’t have to do so. Also, abortion is, for better or for worse, a charged issue that hospitals may feel a little goosier about performing than a skin graft. I would imagine that if there were a hospital whose governing board belonged to a religion that forbade skin grafts, then they wouldn’t perform them.
I did not mean to hijack your thread. I don’t see how the issue of forcing hospitals to provide abortions can be discussed without discussing the general principle of forcing hospitals to provide any procedure. But I guess if you and others don’t feel that it is relevent to your discussion, let it die. Sorry.
(GLWasteful: Maybe I’m missing something, but the title of this thread is “Should hospitals be required to perform abortions”. So I’m not sure what you mean. Are you stressing the word “every” in your reply? Should some hospitals be required to perform them? Which ones?)
kunilou, I wonder whether med schools affiliated with religious universities offer such training? If not, this may contribute to the trend you observe.
It strikes me that provision of health care is somewhat different than providing many other services which, when it comes down to it, aren’t necessarily life or death matters. Should someone choose to go into that business, either as a doctor or hopsital owner, should they expect some restrictions on their choice to decide what to offer or not?
Abortion, in many forms, is a legal procedure. But, it is of little practical value for courts/governments to say women have a right to the procedure, if the providers refuse to perform it.
So, Izzy, I’m not sure I would have a problem with saying every hospital should be required to perform abortions. Skin grafts, for the sake of this debate, I couldn’t care less about.
And, before someone jumps in with an “inappropriate and excessive government interference” argument, allow me to suggest that the provision of health care enjoys some measure of governmental regulation already, which anyone entering that field should be aware of.
Izzy, my 4th par in my prior post should be directed at GL. Sorry.
Also, your theme may well be interesting and relevant, I just feared that appearing so early on here, it might become the focus of the debate. It is not unheard of for these debates to get a little far afield, and I didn’t want to get quickly bored with a debate I initiated.
In any event, you read the OP correctly. For sake of this discussion, I propose that all hospitals should be required to provide abortions, at least in some circumstances. To me, this involves many issues.
-to what extent do hospitals refuse to perform what types of abortions?
-what barriers does this impose upon whom?
-why is this occurring, if it is?
-what, if anything, should be done about it?
I’m sure there are many more.
We could touch all other kinds of things, like should health care providers pay for birth control, but keeping the OP in mind might keep the discussion focussed.
I’m going to touch on this because I do feel it has relevance to the discussion at hand. Why abortions? Because they are life saving/ life changing procedures. A hoospital should be required to perform any operation (that they are technically able to) that can save someone’s life. If a hospital refused to offer blood transfusions, I’m pretty sure that a case wold be brought against them. If a hospital refuses to perform an elective procedure that can easily be outsourced to another hospital, it should not. i.e. Nose jobs.
Hospitals should not be required to perform any given procedure that may be deemed elective. They should be required to perform any necessary procedures within their skillset to save a life (I say ‘skillset’ because not every hospital may have a brain surgeon should one be required). If the hospital does not possess the necessary skills then they need to do their best to stabilize the patient and arrange for transfer to a hospital that can help by the fastest means available.
Catholics are buying hospitals. I worked for awhile at Ingalls Hospital in Harvey and it was bought by a Catholic entity that prohibited abortions being carried out at Ingalls (which the hospital used to provide). Unfortuantely Harvey, IL, is a poor area and tends to have a higher demand for abortions than you might find at (say) Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Evanston. The woman in Harvey must now travel to obtain access to an abortion provider. While not impossible it does place a burden on those women that they didn’t have before.
I’m of two minds because I think a hospital needs to support the community it is located in while conversely it’s a business that on the whole shouldn’t be ‘forced’ to perform non-critical procedures. Just to expand the concept imagine a hospital in San Francisco that is bought by a Catholic (or other extremely religious entity) that refused to treat AIDS patients (short of critical care when the AIDS patient is rushed there on his or her death bed).
Dinsdale: I think, though, that to force all hospitals to provide abortions would trample on an awful lot of religious toes. Particularly with the number of hospitals that are Catholic. Again, I’m coming at this from an urban viewpoint, so I don’t know how often someone in the hinterlands desires an abortion only to discover that the only hospital around refuses to do so.
I also, to my chagrin, don’t know if a Catholic hospital would refuse to perform an abortion if the mothers life was in jeopardy. Has this happened? If so, where?
I do not see any reason why a hospital should be forced to do abortions or any other procedures for that matter. You open a hospital and you decide what kind of services you will provide.
And if I want a precedure you do not perform I can go find it elsewhere. Isn’t that what freedom is about?
What if you go to a hospital, expecting an emergency room, where they can operate on that heart attack to save your life, and oops, they don’t do that. You have to drive 6 hours to the next hospital to do that.
Requiring someone to perform an abortion is morally exactly the same as prohibiting them from doing so.
“A woman’s right to choose” is meaningless if the government forces either choice on her. If people aren’t free to choose whether or not to have or to perform abortions, what is the point of pretending there is a right to choose?
Same argument applies to government funding for abortions. If I am taxed to pay for abortions, I have been deprived of my right to make this “personal” decision.
That’s crap. Requiring someone to provide a service is not the same as requiring someone to use a service. Requiring people to provide brith-control is not the same as requiring people to use it. You have a choice whether or not you want to have a baby. maternity wards do not have a choice on wheter or not to provide care for your baby. Plus, it is not requiring an indivdual to perform abortions. It’s requiring institutions to hire indivduals to perform abortions. Again, you should be able to see the difference in that.
As someone who considers himself to have an activist’s intensity on the issue, I don’t care if hospitals do or don’t perform abortions. What I care about is that abortions be legal, available, and affordable. If hospitals aren’t performing them, then we have to do whatever needs to be done to fill the gap. If it looks most efficient to deny all government funding, or even certification, to hospitals that don’t provide abortion services, then I’ll all for doing that; if it looks more efficient to encourage the spread of dedicated abortion-services providers, I’m in favor of that instead.
Okay, Dinsdale, I’ve given you enough time to debate this without me. Now…
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*Originally posted by oldscratch *
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So I take it that you are only referring to life and death situations. Unless you mean to hedge with this “life changing” language. However, there are many procedures other than abortion that are life changing and are not performed everywhere.
BTW, Johns Hopkins University Hospital stopped performing sex-change operations (certainly a life changing procedure if there ever was one). The reason was, I believe, discomfort with the psycological import of the procedure. Should they be forced to continue performing this?
Obviously they can’t leave the baby to die. But they have the discretion to make decisions about what kind of care they will offer the baby. If a hospital announces that they do not believe in pacifiers, that’s their right.
Not much of a difference there, IMHO. These institutions are founded and led by people, and the reason these people found and lead these institutions is because of their value system which tells them to do so. One aspect of this value system is to make people healthier. Another is to not abort babies. If you acknowledge, as you surely do, that institutions and corporations have a responsibility for their actions, than thay have to have the right to control these actions as well.