Even as numerous Republican-governed states push for sweeping bans on abortion, there is a coinciding surge of concern in some Democratic-led states that options for reproductive health care are dwindling due to expansion of Catholic hospital networks.
These are states such as Oregon, Washington, California, New York and Connecticut, where abortion will remain legal despite the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.
Lois Utley, a specialist in tracking hospital mergers, said her organization, Community Catalyst, has identified more than 20 municipalities in blue or purple states where the only acute care hospitals are Catholic. "This commitment is rooted in our reverence for life, from conception to natural death," Haddad said via email. "As a result, Catholic hospitals do not offer elective abortions."
The hospitals provide "superb care to a lot of people, including low-income communities," Wiener said. But they "absolutely deny people access to reproductive health care as well as gender-affirming care ." That argument has resonance in mostly rural northeast Connecticut, where Day Kimball serves an aging population of about 125,000.
"The public is being told if you don't take Covenant, you won't have a hospital at all," said Elizabeth Canning of Pomfret, Connecticut. "Which is, of course, frightening. So people go, 'Okay, well, we'll take them. ... It's better than nothing."' The state has already passed a bill that bars the state's religious hospitals from prohibiting health care providers from providing medically necessary care to hasten miscarriages or end nonviable pregnancies, like ectopic pregnancies. Under the new law, patients can sue a hospital if they are denied such care, and providers can also sue if they are disciplined for providing such care.
--In Newport Beach, California, Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian divorced itself from a large Catholic health system earlier this year. The separation from Providence Health & Services, which runs 52 hospitals across seven states, came after a years-long legal battle.
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