Religious liberty is under pronounced assault in the field of healthcare.
The plan by those wanting medicine to reflect strictly secular values–which in this area tend toward the utilitarian–is to legally force religious medical facilities to operate in their religion’s name only by forcing them to perform procedures violative of the institution’s faith dogma. (Sterilization, contraception now, for example. Abortion, perhaps euthanasia, later.)
Attempting to further this agenda, the ACLU sued a Catholic hospital in California for sex discrimination after administrators refused the request of a woman to be sterilized during a cesarean section. From the AP story:
A California Catholic hospital is not engaging in sex discrimination by denying a woman’s request for the sterilization procedure known as tubal ligation, a San Francisco judge said in a tentative ruling.
Superior Court Judge Ernest Goldsmith said in his decision Wednesday that Rebecca Chamorro could get the procedure at another hospital, and that Mercy Medical Center’s policy against sterilization on religious ground also applies to men.
Health care provider Dignity Health, which operates Mercy Medical and 38 other hospitals in California, Nevada and Arizona, says the tubal ligation sought by Chamorro is not medically necessary and would violate the hospital’s right to freedom of religion.
The ACLU, is dedicated to destroying faith-based health care, and has threatened and brought other such cases. I have no doubt there will be an appeal.
California Catholic Hospital Not Forced to Sterilize