If you are not even willing to provide information about legal medical procedures because your hospital's owner thinks they are immoral — then you should get out of the business. Period. You are denying your patient the ability to make a free will choice about the morality of a procedure themselves, by simply failing to let them know what the medical options, what the medical standards are, which means you are acting in a paternalistic and and autocratic fashion that may fly great back at the cathedral, but has no place in a hospital.
Medical ethics demands informed consent … and if you aren't willing to inform someone of a possible life-saving procedure, then you are, to my mind, no better than someone who performs human experimentation without permission. And, frankly, they put people in jail for that.
Reshared post from +Les Jenkins
If you cannot provide proper medical care then shut down your fucking hospital and let someone else do it.
Pregnant Woman Suffers. You Won’t Believe Who’s to Blame.
When you show up at a hospital, in need of medical aid, you expect that you’re going to get the care that you need—that the doctors and nurses will figure out what’s wrong, explain to you the options for treating it, and give you the best medical care possible.
That’s what Tamesha Mean…
I hope the "you won't believe who's to blame" of the headline was a joke, because I was sure it would be a Catholic hospital before reading the article. (I have some funny-sad personal experiences with the former St. Anthony Central location in Denver.)
Yeah, +Melissa Gutierrez, it was sadly believable and expected.
In my area, we have many hospitals. I believe most people know that in situations like this, going to one in the Catholic Health System would not be a good idea. Once one understands that the RCC believes the three positions for women are:
1. Virgin Mother
2. Virgin Martyr
3. Mother Dying Nobly In Childbirth
one will choose a hospital wisely. Unfortunately, not all people are lucky enough to have choices, and with the RCC gobbling up hospitals right and left around the country, the choices become fewer and fewer. I have read that some hospitals have refused to merge with the RCC hospitals for just that reason.
@Ellie –
I think careful consideration would lead someone to not go to a hospital run by the Catholics if one wanted the full array of reproductive healthcare.
That said, in an emergency, that might not be the first thing considered. Or it might be in some areas the only hospital easily available. Or in cases where it’s not the “Our Lady of Perpetual Babies Hospital” it might not be immediately obvious that a hospital is now run by the Catholic Church.
And, for that matter, people might think that, well, yeah, if they need to terminate the pregnancy they might not do it themselves but at least I’ll be told about it and go elsewhere. Or they might think the Catholics aren’t going to offer discretionary abortions, but something that’s medically necessary if the diagnosis requires it would be okay. And that the doctor would not even, by hospital policy, mention the possibility even if medically called for would likely not be something most folks would imagine.
The RCC’s position on “pro life” is so convoluted, that it is deemed acceptable to remove a fallopian tube in the case of ectopic pregnancy, but not acceptable to abort the pregnancy. You see, abortion is bad, but if the surgeon removes the fallopian tube, he isn’t directly causing the death of the fetus, even though the fetus will definitely die.
So, it’s also removing the fertility of the woman? So what. If God wants her pregnant, she’ll get pregnant. Look at Sarah. Unless she has a sterilization operation. Then, for some reason, God becomes helpless.
The first paragraph is true, and here is a reference: http://www.ewtn.com/library/PROLIFE/INDIRECT.TXT
The second is my own observation, having once shared a hospital room with a woman who was recovering from her Not An Abortion Really, in a Catholic hospital.
Oh, I believe you, @Ellie. It’s the danger of a highly legalistic approach to morality intersecting with the Real World.