Worried about abortion laws? Catholic hospital mergers also seen as threat to women's health care
Rikha Sharma Rani
Dec 27, 2019
In 1995, Lois Uttley was working as a reproductive rights advocate in New York when the merger of two hospitals in Troy, a city near Albany, caught her off-guard.
One was secular, the other, Catholic. The secular hospital agreed to abide by rules written by Catholic bishops banning certain procedures deemed “immoral” by the church, like abortion, contraception, in-vitro fertilization and tubal ligation.