Hospital Helps Pregnant Woman After Sue Threat

God works in mysterious ways. Apparently so mysterious that some doctors are having trouble deciphering them. You know something is wrong if your doctor is turning down proper treatment because the Lord deemed it evil. Luckily, people invented a legal procedure called suing for unpleasant situations like these. And it seems like suing does get people to work against “God’s will”.

It might have come to your attention that a Catholic hospital had to rethink their decisions after having been threatened by a soon to be mother and the ACLU. And this is why more attention needs to be given to Catholic hospitals: theological interpretation can give way to mistreatment and even suppression of rights, whereas something like this should never even happen.

Mercy Medical Center, which is owned Dignity Health, San Francisco, is California’s largest health care network. California’s largest health network actively refused to offer Rachel Miller post-birth sterilization. Why? Because of the hospital’s Ethical and Religious Directives which forbid reproductive health care procedures because God said they were “evil”.

The hospital declared that it would not apply these procedures back in April, denying tubal litigation after the caesarean section. Rachel did not stand down, so she asked the ACLU for their assistance to combat this irrational decision. And the partnership was a success.

The ACLU forwarded a letter to Dignity Health in which they accused them of sex discrimination and mentioned that the hospital is not able to distinguish in between theological understanding and a patient’s welfare. As a response, Mercy Medical Center overturned their decision and Rachel is going to receive the services that she needs.

While the situation ended as it should have, this is only the beginning of a revision of the Catholic hospital system. Elizabeth Gill, a senior attorney of ACLU, has already mentioned that the institution is happy with the hospital’s overturn, but she also pointed out a problem that has been on many people’s minds for a very long time now.

Gill specifically stated that “there is a clear conflict between the best interests of patients and the directives of the Catholic hospital system”. And she is right threatening to sue a hospital, in America out of all places, for not giving the proper care that is a generally accepted standard is not acceptable. Clearly Ms. Miller was not the only soon to be mother who had to go through this situation and we need to prevent any other event like this one form ever occurring.

Photo Credits flickr.com