Rebecca Chamorro was scheduled to deliver her third child via C-section and she made the decision with her husband to get her “tubes tied.” Three kids would be enough and she requested the procedure be done immediately after the C-section, which is standard practice. She was refused because it was a Catholic hospital:
But Ms. Chamorro’s hospital, Mercy Medical Center Redding, is a Catholic-affiliated facility that follows directives written by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which call vasectomies and tubal ligations “intrinsically evil.”
Mercy Medical Center is part of the corporation Dignity Health System, one of the fastest growing health care corporations in the country and the recipient of millions of dollars in federal and state funds each year. Those public dollars amount to a taxpayer subsidy for a hospital system that denies basic health care to the public.
Realistically, she was unable to get care elsewhere:
Because all of the surrounding hospitals with labor and delivery wards near Ms. Chamorro are also Catholic-affiliated, she would need to travel 70 or even 160 miles to get her tubal ligation at the same time as her C-section.
This is not a matter of inconvenience. This is simply not feasible. Ms. Chamorro would have to find a new obstetrician and make multiple, long trips to meet with that new physician, or she would have to move to one of those locations prior to delivery.
The ACLU is suing Dignity Health Systems (an ironic name) on behalf of Ms. Chamorro and others. This week, they got heavy reinforcements when the 41,000 member California Medical Association asked to join the suit:
The 41,000-member California Medical Association said Wednesday that it wants to intervene in a lawsuit claiming Dignity Health’s policy violates state laws against sex discrimination and the corporate practice of medicine.
By prohibiting doctors from performing the operations for reasons unrelated to health care, and without consulting a hospital’s medical staff, “Dignity Health knowingly is subjecting female patients to substandard care in direct contravention of their physicians’ sound medical judgment,” the association’s lawyers said in papers to be filed in San Francisco Superior Court. They said the medical association’s doctors work in all of the chain’s California hospitals.
Hooray for standing up for women! Thank you to the ACLU and the California Medical Association!