{"id":1352,"date":"2013-02-14T13:40:50","date_gmt":"2013-02-14T19:40:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/incongruentelements\/?p=1352"},"modified":"2013-02-14T13:40:50","modified_gmt":"2013-02-14T19:40:50","slug":"emergency-abortions-regularly-denied-at-catholic-hospitals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/incongruentelements\/2013\/02\/14\/emergency-abortions-regularly-denied-at-catholic-hospitals\/","title":{"rendered":"Emergency abortions regularly denied at Catholic hospitals"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

Do you recall Savita Halappanavars,<\/a> the woman in Ireland who was denied an abortion and eventually died from that medical decision? According to Salon, this scenario plays out all too often in American hospitals.<\/p>\n

The death of Savita Halappanavar \u2014 the woman who died of sepsis in Ireland after being denied her request<\/a> for termination of a nonviable pregnancy \u2014 drew outrage and attention in the United States late last fall, but one crucial point was often missed. Even in America, where abortion is mostly legal, cases like Halappanavar\u2019s are a known reality in Catholic hospitals.<\/p>\n

Take one case detailed to medical sociologist Lori Freedman by the doctor involved. A woman 16 weeks pregnant with twins was diagnosed with a molar pregnancy, which can lead to cancer, and \u201cdidn\u2019t want to carry the pregnancy further.\u201d She went to the hospital with vaginal bleeding, but unluckily for her, it was a Catholic one. There, the ethics committee decided that a uterine evacuation was tantamount to abortion, because there was a slim chance one of the fetuses would survive.<\/p>\n

According to another doctor who witnessed the situation, \u201cThe clergy who made the decision Googled molar pregnancy.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s never comforting to know that the person entrusted with making your medical decisions needs to google the appropriate term to begin to understand your situation.<\/p>\n

And the situation goes deeper:<\/p>\n

The tension between religious beliefs and denial of medical care is currently playing out in the courtroom battles over the contraceptive coverage requirements<\/a> under Obamacare, and for years, in legislative battles over \u201cconscience clauses\u201d that allow medical providers to opt out of some procedures. But some doctors\u2019 consciences are being violated in the opposite fashion: Their recommendations for what is best for the women\u2019s health and life, and often the wishes of the women themselves, are being circumvented by ethics committees at ever-expanding Catholic hospitals.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe country sort of slept through the \u201990s, not realizing that Catholic healthcare massively expanded,\u201d Freedman told Salon. According to the Catholic Healthcare association, they treat one in six U.S. patients.\u00a0An NIH-funded national\u00a0survey<\/a>\u00a0found last year that 52 percent of OB-GYNs at Catholic hospitals have clashed with those committees over the proper course of care, including the treatment of ectopic pregnancy and the provision of birth control.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These cases are exceedingly complex:<\/p>\n

These often-complex cases aren\u2019t what people think about as abortion \u2014 they involve miscarriage management, or emergency treatment of nonviable pregnancies to avert the risk of infection. But in contrast to standard, secular medical ethics, which put the woman first, Catholic hospitals abide by the ethical directives handed down by the\u00a0United States Conference of Catholic Bishops\u00a0for use in medical care. And they generally\u00a0treat the fetus as a separate patient with equal standing. In emergency care, as in the case of Halappanavar, this can mean waiting until fetal death happens on its own, even if it puts the woman at greater risk of infection.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou let people get sicker when you have something to stop them getting sicker \u2014 that\u2019s antithetical to what we do in medicine,\u201d said Anne Davis, the consulting medical director of Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health and also associate professor of clinic obstetrics and gynecology at Columbia University Medical Center.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Often the patient has no where else to go.<\/p>\n

Davis described a case a colleague at a Catholic hospital had faced, with a patient miscarrying a fetus that was far from viability. \u201cShe was given antibiotic after antibiotic, but got sicker and sicker. A young doctor who had been recently trained said, \u2018I\u2019m not going to sit by and watch this.\u2019 She did the procedure in her hospital and then there was a tremendous amount of retaliation.\u201d In one committee hearing, \u201cThe exact words that they used, I believe, were \u2018We can\u2019t save all the mothers.\u2019 Well, we can\u2019t, the ones that are dying from things where we can\u2019t do anything. This wasn\u2019t someone we couldn\u2019t do anything with.\u201d<\/p>\n

She contrasted it with a patient with a placental abruption, whom she recently treated in her own hospital. At 22 weeks, she was relatively close to viability, though still nonviable. \u201cIt was a true obstetric emergency, with a tremendous amount of pain and bleeding, and it happened very quickly,\u201d Davis said. The patient was rapidly losing blood and it wasn\u2019t clotting, so a Caesarean section would have put her at serious risk. A dilation and extraction, a common abortion procedure Davis was practiced in, would require no incision.<\/p>\n

As in the case of Halappanavar, there was still a fetal heartbeat, but with everyone on board and no committee to consult, there was no delay. \u201cYou wait any longer and the person will have a cardiac arrest,\u201d Davis said. \u201cShe survived, and got a lot of blood infusions. She left with her uterus in place.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Treatments should be decided between the patient and their doctors. To put someone in charge who has to use the Internet to look up terms is criminal.<\/p>\n

Link<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Do you recall Savita Halappanavars, the woman in Ireland who was denied an abortion and eventually died from that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[22],"class_list":["post-1352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-news","tag-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/incongruentelements\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/incongruentelements\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/incongruentelements\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/incongruentelements\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/incongruentelements\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/incongruentelements\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/incongruentelements\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/incongruentelements\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/incongruentelements\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}