(Again, this is not to be mistaken for legal advice, just the musing of a lawyer, blahblahblah. Yes, I’m as sick of writing that as you are of reading it, but I really don’t want to get sued because somebody thought they could follow the very simplified legal ramblings on my blog as though it was advice from their lawyer 🙂
Now it’s time for another installment of Ranting Amie. This week’s edition – doctors committing malpractice because actually being a good doctor is against their religion.
If you follow legal news, you probably know the case this post is about, Means V. United States Conference Of Catholic Bishops Et Al, in which Means was 18 weeks along when her water broke and she went to the hospital.
Not only did the fetus have pretty much no chance of surviving after the water broke, so it wouldn’t even be a “real” abortion anyway, the doctors there didn’t even tell her that continuing the pregnancy was a serious risk to her health. They also didn’t tell her that they weren’t allowed to do abortions there or that she should go somewhere else because even saying that much was against their “Directives.”
So she went home with some pain meds and had to go back the next day due to bleeding and painful contractions. Again, hospital sent her home without telling her about her condition and available treatment options. She went back that night, in pain and with signs of an infection. Before they could kick her to the curb again, she started to deliver, and (of course) the 18 week old fetus didn’t make it.
So now she’s suing, but not the hospital and doctors for malpractice (because in case you didn’t know, not telling a patient what is actually wrong with them when you know and not telling them big, obvious treatment options is pretty much you not doing your damn job), she’s suing the US Conference of Catholic Bishops because they’re the ones who came up with the Directives.
All I can say is “ABOUT DAMN TIME!”
This bullshit has been going on since Roe v. Wade. The woman goes into the hospital with something wrong with the fetus, the best treatment not only to keep her out of agonizing pain but also to prevent serious risk to her life is to terminate the pregnancy and not only will the hospital not do it, they WON’T EVEN TELL HER THAT’S MEDICALLY ADVISABLE, AN OPTION OR TO GO TO ANOTHER HOSPITAL BECAUSE THEY CAN’T HELP HER THERE!
To quote a medical show that is apparently more medically accurate than the Catholic Church, Seriously!
There have been cases where woman had ectopic pregnancies and instead of giving them drugs to remove the fetus, the hospital told them their only option was to take out the tube itself. (Yeah, because that doesn’t kill the fetus just as much.) Rape victims are refused emergency contraception as a matter of course. In a case in AZ, a woman had severe bleeding and infection, any secular hospital would have performed an abortion right away to save the woman’s life, but it was a Catholic hospital so instead they made her go to a different hospital after 3 days (at least they did that much instead of lying to her) and it’s a miracle (pun intended) she lived.
You don’t want to provide standard medical care, fine, don’t. But 1. Stop claiming to be a full service hospital and taking government funds as such; 2. Tell the women you can’t help them and to go to a secular hospital; 3. Prepare to lose the cassocks off your lying backsides in paying off the law suits you sure as hell brought on yourselves by your willful refusal to treat women with the standard of care due in those situations.
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