Catholic hospital abortion bans deny care even after fetal death is certain

Evidence

Mindy Swank of Illinois was one of those who found that out the hard way. Married and thrilled to be expecting her second child, she was at home one day when her water broke prematurely at twenty weeks. Through testing, she learned that the fetus had no chance of survival. But Swank was being treated at a Catholic hospital. The doctors at the hospital would not perform an abortion while there was still a fetal heartbeat—even though continuing the pregnancy put her health and life at risk. Mindy suffered through two weeks of emotional anguish as she waited for her body to complete the miscarriage on its own. Then one morning she woke up bleeding. She and her husband hurried to a different nearby hospital to ask them to treat her, but that hospital, too, adhered to Catholic “directives” and refused to induce labor. Over the next five weeks, desperate to obtain the medical care she needed, Mindy returned to that hospital multiple times and was consistently turned away. Nobody told her that she could get the abortion she needed at a non-Catholic hospital, and she continued to struggle with the emotional and physical strain. Then, at twenty-seven weeks, she began to hemorrhage. The hospital finally induced labor, and the baby died shortly after delivery. — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers, 914

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Religious-liberty jurisprudence asymmetrically weighs believers’ burden against outsiders’ harm — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the…, 950; Catholic hospital contraception bans leave HIV patients on teratogenic drugs unprotected — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the…, 912