Never mind that Catholic hospitals are more committed to serving the poor than other healthcare institutions. Liberals in Washington are opposing Catholic healthcare because it doesn’t include abortion, suicide, and support for homosexual lifestyles. These things, for the liberal, trump care for the poor.
Catholic hospital leaders said that changes in the medical and economic landscape could threaten service to millions of Americans in rural and suburban areas who might have no choices at all if their local hospital closed or shrank, and that Catholic partners — driven by a mission to serve the underserved — are uniquely fitted to help. The issue is not availability of abortion or consult to the dying, they say, which will still be available in secular institutions not that far away, but access to care at all.
“The Catholic health system is in many of the communities we’re in because other health care providers have not wanted to serve those communities and have not had a commitment to serve every human being,” said Peter Adler, a senior vice president at PeaceHealth, a Catholic hospital system based in the Pacific Northwest that is one of the bidders for the three hospitals in northwest Washington.
But critics said that Catholic hospitals do not, in fact, serve every human being because they deny certain reproductive services or end-of-life care that could help a dying patient end his or her suffering.
The “critic” they quote to convince you that Catholic healthcare must be stopped is a “Catholic lesbian” which is kind of like quoting Martin Luther, the German monk who led the 16th century protestant revolt in Germany, to ask his thoughts on Catholicism.
“It’s a collision course,” said Suzanne Holland, a science and values professor in the department of religion at the University of Puget Sound, referring to the potential of constriction in health care options from economic change, and at the same time restricted choice on moral grounds at hospitals operated through a lens of religious doctrine.
Professor Holland, a Catholic and a lesbian, said she already tried to avoid going to a Catholic hospital near her because she was concerned that administrators there would not recognize the rights of her civil union partner.
For the liberal, it’s more important (or, at least, just as important) that homosexuality be deemed sacred than for a child in poverty to get treatment for an illness like influenza, or for an injury like a broken femur from falling out of a tree. If homosexuality, abortion and suicide are not deemed to be sacred by a hospital, then that hospital must not be allowed to expand, according to Washington liberals.
