ACLU gets Catholic hospital to sterlize a woman

ACLU gets Catholic hospital to sterlize a woman August 28, 2015

The ACLU threatened to sue a Catholic hospital for refusing to perform a sterilization procedure requested by a woman.  So it gave in, violating Catholic teachings.

I suspect the hospital could have won that legal battle.  But now not only lawsuits but the threat of lawsuits–with their huge financial toll even in a winning case–have become cudgels to extort compliance with ACLU demands.  I know of small towns that have removed religious imagery from their logos for similar threats.

Honest question:  Doesn’t the American Civil Liberties Union consider religion to be a civil liberty?

From ACLU Accuse Catholic hospital for discriminating and threatens to sue over sterilization case | The Market Business:

The threat of a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has compelled a Catholic hospital in California to sterilize a woman, despite the fact that performing such a procedure contravenes its Catholic teachings.

Mercy Medical Center in San Francisco is a Catholic hospital, operated as a subsidiary of Dignity Health, California’s largest private health care provider. Rachel Miller, a woman scheduled to give birth by C-section in late September, wanted her doctor to perform a tubal ligation following the birth, which would render her infertile going forward.

But hospital staff initially refused her request, citing the hospital’s Catholic religious directives. The Catholic Church teaches that sterilization and other forms of birth control are sinful, as they deliberately sabotage the procreative aspect of human sexuality and thus violate natural law. Mercy’s policies reflect Catholic teaching in other ways, as its doctors do not perform abortions and do not cooperate with in vitro fertilization, as both also contravene Catholic doctrine.

Miller, who says without Mercy’s cooperation she would have to travel 160 miles to receive the procedure, went to the ACLU for help. Last week the ACLU sent a letter to Mercy threatening a lawsuit, arguing that by denying Miller’s tubal ligation they were engaging in sex discrimination by refusing to provide “pregnancy-related care.”

The ACLU claims that, even though Mercy’s sterilization ban applies to both men and women, the ban on tubal ligations constitutes “sex discrimination,” on the grounds that the sterilization was “pregnancy-related care” (a tubal ligation is safer when done immediately after a birth rather than later). The letter also argued that by having religious directives that banned certain procedures, Mercy hospital was illegally engaging in “the corporate practice of medicine.”

This week, Mercy gave in to the lawsuit threat, saying Miller will be able to receive her ligation.

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