While most of the "religious freedom" noises the last year or two have been about individuals and mom-and-pop stores wanting to deny service to sinners gay people, up at the large organization level it's been religious-owned (or -imaged) companies fighting the previous culture war around reproductive issues.
One story that has flown under the radar for many has been the significant degree to which US hospitals have been taken over by religiously-affiliated organizations, the Catholic Church most prominently: almost half of the largest hospital systems are Catholic "sponsored," translating to 1 in 9 hospital beds being in a Catholic hospital.
This, in turn, has led to a variety of cases, some of them tragic, where church doctrine has trumped medical needs. And while folk in the big cities may have a variety of options to shop between for hospitals[1], in more rural and smaller cities, there may be only one or two hospitals in easy reach, and both may be bound by Church limitations on sterilization, abortion, and birth control.
And this, in turn, has led to a California law suit by the ACLU, now joined in by the 41K-member California Medical Association, against the fifth largest hospital system in the nation, Dignity Health.
'The ACLU lawsuit stems from the case of a Dignity Health patient who was denied a tubal ligation. The patient’s physician agreed to perform the procedure during her cesarean section, but the hospital refused the doctor’s request, citing religious directives written by Catholic bishops that classify sterilization as “intrinsically evil.” The plaintiffs argue that forcing doctors to deny basic health care on the basis of religious objections creates a conflict between the medical well-being of patients and the directives of the Catholic hospital system. They also contend that withholding medical care for reasons unrelated to medicine is illegal in California.'
I will be interested to see where this goes.
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[1] Though those options may be illusory, if your physician only has admitting privileges in a few hospitals, or if your insurance is restricted in where it covers treatment, or if you cannot easily tell in advance (without grilling hospital staff) what religious-based limitations your care will be bound by.
41,000 Doctors to Join Lawsuit Against Catholic Hospital Over Denial of Care – Rewire
Religious directives, written by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, forbid doctors at Catholic facilities from providing birth control and performing common reproductive health procedures.
Also, there is the woman Satanist suing for her right for abortion rights in Missouri I think, I'll have to look it up later.
I've been horrified over the last few years reading about the Catholic Church takeover of public hospitals. I'm glad there's some push back.
Hospital operation is a long Christian tradition, dating back to the period when there was just the Catholic Church. Provision of medical care strikes me as a major manifestation of Christian charity (e.g., https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+25:31-46).
What's upsetting to me with this current resurgence of Catholic hospital acquisition is where legal medical services are abruptly withheld upon a change of ownership, and where the US College of Bishops decides to override the conscience of both patients and doctors with their own doctrine, regardless of the health implications.
The USCCB says tubal ligations are evil. But, if a woman has an ectopic pregnancy, the removal of the entire Fallopian tube is peachy, because that avoids a direct abortion. They will just ignore the fact that they’ve cut the woman’s chance of fertility by at least half. IMO, the government and the people must take action to avoid the complete takeover of hospitals by the USCCB.