PUTNAM, Connecticut – Even as many Republican-ruled states are pushing for a complete ban on abortion, there is a converging rise in some Democrat-led states in fear that reproductive health options are shrinking due to the expansion of the Catholic hospital network.
These include states such as Oregon, Washington, California, New York, and Connecticut where abortion will remain legal despite a recent US Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe against Wade.
Concerns in these heavenly states relate to services such as contraception, sterilization, and some emergency pregnancy procedures. These services are widely available in secular hospitals but generally prohibited, along with abortion, in Catholic facilities under the ethical and religious directives established by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Different views on these services can clash as the Catholic hospital system seeks to take over or merge into a non-sectarian hospital, as is currently the case in Northeast Connecticut. Officials evaluate the offer of the Catholic organization Covenant Health to merge with Day Kimball Healthcare, an independent, financially troubled hospital and healthcare system based in Putnam city.
“We need to ensure that every new owner can provide the full range of care – including reproductive health care, family planning, gender confirmation and end-of-life care,” said Democrat Connecticut Attorney General William Tong.
Lois Utley, a specialist in hospital merger tracking, said her Community Catalyst organization has identified more than 20 municipalities in blue or purple states where the only acute care hospitals are Catholic.
“We’re definitely going backwards in terms of comprehensive reproductive health,” Utley said. “Catholic systems are taking over many doctor’s offices, urgent care centers, and outpatient centers, and patients seeking contraception will not be able to obtain it if their doctor is now part of that system.”
There are 654 Catholic hospitals in the United States, including 299 with maternity services, according to the Catholic Health Association. CHA says more than one in seven US hospital patients is cared for by a Catholic facility.
CHA chairwoman Sister Mary Haddad said Catholic hospitals provide a wide range of prenatal, maternity and postnatal services, assisting around 500,000 births each year.
“This commitment is rooted in our respect for life, from conception to natural death,” Haddad said in an email. “As a result, Catholic hospitals do not offer scheduled abortions.”
The protocols are different in the event of tragic emergencies, where the mother “suffers from an urgent, life-threatening condition during her pregnancy,” Haddad said. “Catholic clinicians provide all medically indicated treatment, even if it poses a risk to the unborn child.”
This approach is now reflected in several states that enact bans that only allow abortions to save the mother’s life. There is a concern that doctors subject to such bans – whether under state law or under the Catholic directive – may endanger the health of a pregnant woman by stopping treatment when she begins to show the ill effects of pregnancy problems.
In California, Democratic Senator Scott Wiener is one of those who carefully monitors the spread of Catholic health care providers who run 52 hospitals in his state.
Hospitals provide “excellent care for many people, including low-income communities,” Wiener said. But they “completely deny people access to reproductive health care as well as gender-affirming care (for transgender people).”
“It is the bishop, not professional standards, that dictates who can get what care,” Wiener said. “This is terrible.”
Charles Camosy, professor of humanities at Creighton University School of Medicine, says critics of the merger underestimate the major benefits of the Catholic healthcare expansion.
“These mergers take place because Catholic institutions are willing to tackle the really hard places where others have failed to make money,” he said. “We should be focusing on what these institutions are doing in a positive way – entering the gap where virtually no one else wants to go, especially in rural areas.”
This argument resonates mainly in northeastern Connecticut, where Day Kimball serves an aging population of approximately 125,000.
Kyle Kramer, CEO of Day Kimball, said the 104-bed hospital has been looking for a financial partner for more than seven years and will soon face “very serious problems” if it has to act on its own.
Referring to the proposed merger, he said: “Change is always difficult.”
However, he said Day Kimball providers would remain committed to comprehensive healthcare if the merger continued, in an effort to ensure patients are informed of all options when it comes to issues such as contraception, miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies.
Regarding abortions, Kramer said Day Kimball never performed them solely for the purpose of terminating a pregnancy, and would continue that policy if he collaborated with the Covenant.
Despite assurances, some residents fear that the only hospital in the region will become the property of Catholics. Some opponents of the merger protested outside the hospital last Monday.
“The public is saying that if you don’t take the Covenant, you won’t have a hospital at all,” said Elizabeth Canning of Pomfret, Connecticut. “Which is, of course, scary. So people say, “Okay, okay, we’ll take them. … This is better than nothing. ‘”
“I have had wonderful care here. That’s not my objection, continued Canning. “I don’t want any religion involved in my healthcare.”
Sue Grant Nash, a retired social worker at Day Kimball Hospice in Putnam, described herself as a religious person, but said she did not believe that people’s values should be imposed on others.
“The very important articles of faith that Catholics can have, and I fully respect, should not affect the quality of health care available to society,” she said.
There have been similar changes in other states.
—In Washington, Democratic Senator Emily Randall plans to re-enact a bill that would empower the attorney general to block hospital mergers and acquisitions if they threaten “the continued existence of affordable, affordable healthcare, including reproductive health care.” Governor Jay Inslee says he supports such a solution.
The state has passed a law that prohibits state religious hospitals from prohibiting healthcare providers from providing medically necessary care to expedite miscarriages or end unprofitable pregnancies, such as ectopic pregnancies. Under the new law, patients can sue a hospital if they have been denied such care, and healthcare providers can also sue if they are punished for providing such care.
– In Oregon, the state has a new law to prohibit religious hospitals from acquiring or merging with another health care provider if it would restrict access to abortion and other reproductive services. The law, which entered into force on 1 March, requires the state’s consent to mergers and acquisitions of large health care units.
Thirty percent of the emergency beds in the state are controlled by systems that restrict access to these services, according to Katie Shriver of the Service Employees International Union, who testified in support of the bill last year.
The law also allows for the consideration of end-of-life options that hospitals want to establish or expand in Oregon, which in 1994 became the first state to legalize medical assistance for dying.
In Newport Beach, California, the Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian parted ways with the large Catholic healthcare system earlier this year. Separation from Providence Health & amp; The services, which run 52 hospitals in seven states, came after years of legal struggle.
In a 2020 lawsuit, Hoag said it was a “imprisoned branch” of Providence, located more than 1,000 miles away in Washington state. Hoag was founded as a Presbyterian institution in 1952.
In 2013, Hoag joined St. Joseph Health, a local network of Catholic hospitals, seeking to expand access to healthcare in his area. In 2016, Providence Health absorbed St. Józef together with Hoag.
Hoag’s doctors questioned Providence’s drive to standardize treatment decisions in all hospitals, and also opposed restrictions on reproductive care. In 2014, the then Attorney General Kamala Harris approved affiliation to health systems on the condition that Hoag would not be bound by Catholic health directives.
Hoag’s lawsuit stated that “Presbyterian beliefs, values, and policies were violated due to restrictions within the larger Catholic system.”
In New York City, two Democratic legislators proposed a bill this year that would require the state’s department of health to publish a list of health services not available at every general hospital so that patients can be better informed.
Lawmakers said legislation that failed was needed to address “health care deserts” where hospitals were closed or merged with religiously affiliated entities, and reproductive care and other health services were lost.
The New York Civil Liberties Union, which raised concerns about the Catholic affiliation of the Schenectady and Lockport hospitals, said some New York City patients had difficulty obtaining miscarriage and birth control services from Catholic suppliers.
Crary volunteered from New York. Associated Press of reporter Rachel La Corte in Olympia, Washington; Andrew Selsky in Salem, Oregon; Adam Beam in Sacramento, California; and Deepa Bharath of Los Angeles.
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