Why Was a Catholic Hospital Willing to Gamble With My Life?

Feb. 25, 2022
By Katherine Stewart

More than 20 states are poised to ban or severely restrict abortion if the Supreme Court decides to overturn or undermine Roe v. Wade this year. We know these laws and regulations will have a devastating effect on women’s rights and liberty, but many people do not realize how deeply they will reach into maternal medicine. You can’t take away the right to abortion without risking the health and lives of all women who become pregnant.

We can get a sense of why this is so by taking a look at the Catholic hospital systems. All Catholic health care facilities, including hospitals and clinics, and many affiliated providers are governed by the Ethical and Religious Directives, a numbered set of rules that apply Catholic doctrine to health care. These directives, which act as guidelines and impose limitations on the types of services and procedures these facilities are able to deliver, are codified by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/25/opinion/sunday/roe-dobbs-miscarriage-abortion.html

Faith and Access: The Conflict Inside Catholic Hospitals

Why should publicly funded hospitals get to limit access on religious grounds?

BY WENDY GLAUSER
Feb. 23, 2022 / MARCH-APRIL 2022 issue, Walrus Magazine

IN THE FALL OF 2020, Susan Camm was among a small group of employees touring a brand new seventeen-storey tower at St. Michael’s Hospital, in downtown Toronto. She liked the large single-patient rooms—a hallmark of modern hospital design—and the big windows that filled the space with sunshine. But something caught her eye: a brass crucifix on the wall. “I had an almost visceral reaction,” she recalls.

Camm, who was then a clinical manager at the hospital, had come across crucifixes at St. Michael’s before. But most had been taken down over the years. What shocked her is that the Christian symbols were in brand new rooms. This wasn’t a decision someone had made decades ago; it was one made in 2020. Later, when she had the chance to enter a patient room alone, she dragged a stool over to the crucifix, stood up, and tried to pull the figure off the wall. Unlike the ones in older rooms, it wasn’t simply hanging on a nail. She would have needed a chisel to pry it off.

Continued: https://thewalrus.ca/catholic-hospitals/

23.02.2022

Catholic Health Alliance of Canada

Catholic hospitals

Charter of Rights and Freedoms

conscientious objection

Covenant Health

Daphne Gilbert

Dustin Costescu

Dying with Dignity Canada

emergency contraception

Frederique Chabot

Hamilton Health Sciences

Hayley Mick

Health Ethics Guide

HIV treatment

Human Rights Commission

medical assistance-in-dying

Michelle Cohen

Ottawa Hospital Sexual Assault and Partner Abuse Care Program

post-abortion complications

Providence Health Care

Quiet Revolution

Romy Nitsch

Ryan Hoskins

Samir Shaheen-Hussain

sexual assault

St. Joseph’s Health Centre

St. Michael's Hospital

Salvadoran women tell of unjust treatment under abortion law

By Marcos Alemán, The Associated Press
Tue., Feb. 22, 2022

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — The four women all had sought medical help for obstetric emergencies, and each ended up in prison sentenced to 30 years on aggravated homicide convictions for allegedly terminating their pregnancies.

After spending a combined four decades behind bars in El Salvador, one of the four countries in the Western Hemisphere with total bans on abortions, they were recently released thanks to a campaign by human rights activists.

Continued: https://www.thepeterboroughexaminer.com/ts/news/world/americas/2022/02/22/salvadoran-women-tell-of-unjust-treatment-under-abortion-law.html

Colombia – ‘We were taught to see abortion as a one-way ticket to hell’

Salomé Gómez-Upegui describes what it is like for women growing up with a Catholic education and a traditional Colombian family

Sally Palomino
FEB 20, 2022

Colombian writer, Salomé Gómez-Upegui, 28, maintains that if she can be a feminist, anyone can. It was only a few years ago that she couldn’t stand feminists. She saw them as hysterical and best ignored. Now she teaches courses on feminism, and last year published her first book, Feminista por accidente (or, Feminist by Accident) which tells how she went from distrusting feminists to joining their ranks. She talks about her Catholic upbringing and life in a very conservative paisa family, the name given to natives of Medellín and its surroundings.

“School curtailed any possibility of being different,” she says. “From that moment onwards, we are under pressure to fit into a box of controllable, perfect women. There was only one way of being, and that was in the mold of the Virgin Mary. We were taught that being submissive and showing no personality or will was the right thing to do.” In Feminist by Accident, she describes how she broke down the barriers that separated her from feminism.

Continued: https://english.elpais.com/society/2022-02-20/we-were-taught-to-see-abortion-as-a-one-way-ticket-to-hell.html

20.02.2022

Feminista por accidente

UK/Scotland – It shouldn’t take a pandemic to drag abortion rules into the 21st Century

It shouldn’t take a pandemic to drag abortion
rules into the 21st Century

By Rebecca Baird
February 13 2022

If I’m ever going to be cancelled, I know exactly what it’ll be for.

I used to be ‘pro-life’. It gives me the creeps to admit it now, but that’s
what a Catholic miseducation will do to a girl.

Continued: https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/lifestyle/health-wellbeing/3004650/rebecca-baird-it-shouldnt-take-a-pandemic-to-drag-abortion-rules-into-the-21st-century/

The threat to Roe v. Wade is driving a religious movement for reproductive choice

Americans who see a religious case for abortion access try to shift the narrative

By Michelle Boorstein
Feb 5, 2022

When the Rev. Kaeley McEvoy began at Westmoreland Congregational in 2018 she faced a question: Should she tell her new congregation she’d recently had an abortion?

McEvoy was already a reproductive rights advocate, and to her the experience wasn’t in conflict with her faith. When the pastor and her then-boyfriend learned in 2016 that she was pregnant, the first place they went was to a cathedral, to pray — and to call doctors’ offices in search of one to do the abortion. Other visitors to the cathedral happened to try to enter the small chapel where McEvoy was on the phone, but her boyfriend turned them away, she remembers, saying “something holy is happening here.”

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/02/05/abortion-rights-jews-orthodox-catholic-prolife-prochoice/

Jewish women are leaders on abortion rights. But they can’t do it alone.

BARBARA DOBKIN
JANUARY 26, 2022

(JTA) — In 1966, I was a student at Boston University’s School of Social Work when I received a phone call from a college friend. She explained in hushed tones that she needed an abortion and thought I could help her.

At that time, I didn’t know anyone who had terminated a pregnancy; all I knew was that abortion was illegal. I quietly asked some classmates if they knew how to end a pregnancy safely. One of them had an answer.

Continued: https://www.jta.org/2022/01/26/opinion/jewish-women-are-leaders-on-abortion-rights-but-they-cant-do-it-alone

US Muslim advocates weigh in on abortion rights battle

Imminent threat to Roe v Wade raises concern from many religious communities across the US, including Muslim Americans.

By Dalia Hatuqa
Published On 26 Jan 2022

Forty-nine years ago, the US Supreme Court
issued a ruling that changed the lives of American women, formally legalising
the right to abortion across the United States.

Now, as Roe v Wade faces its most serious threat in decades, Muslim Americans,
like many others across the US, have been contemplating what overturning that
decision could mean for women’s reproductive rights and access to safe
abortions.

Continued: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/26/us-muslim-advocates-weigh-in-on-abortion-rights-battle

Namibia – Traditional leaders oppose abortion law reform

2022-01-24
ELIASER NDEYANALE at ONESI

TRADITIONAL and community leaders within the Uukolonkadhi Traditional Authority on Saturday spoke out against the amendment of Namibia's abortion law, saying this would reduce the country to the biblical Sodom and Gomorrah.

They were speaking at a public hearing by the parliamentary standing committee on gender equality, social development and family affairs with regard to reforming the Abortion and Sterilisation Act No. 2 of 1975.

Continued: https://www.namibian.com.na/109337/read/Traditional-leaders-oppose-abortion-law-reform

24.01.2022

News

Abortion and Sterilisation Act

Abortion and Sterilisation Act No. 2 of 1975

USA – 59% Of Women Seeking Abortions Are Mothers Facing High Poverty Risk

Teresa Ghilarducci, Senior Contributor
Dec 24, 2021

When I taught economics at the University of Notre Dame, I learned that banning
abortion in effect violates a keystone of Catholic social teaching that gives a
“preferential option to the poor” and vulnerable. In America, young mothers are
among the most vulnerable among us.

I was honored to teach at Notre Dame for 25 years. There I befriended
activists, many liberation theologians, and others who were “pro-life.” They
were deeply committed to the sanctity of life and often opposed the death
penalty for the same reasons they opposed abortion. A group of women faculty,
once we were tenured, advocated for our health insurance to cover Viagra and
invitro fertilization. Very pro-life.

Continued: https://www.forbes.com/sites/teresaghilarducci/2021/12/24/59-of-women-seeking-abortions-are-mothers-facing-high-poverty-risk/?sh=267cb248264f

24.12.2021