ACLU Files Complaint against Trinity Health for Denying Women Reproductive

ACLU of Michigan attorney Brooke Tucker said in a statement announcing the lawsuit that they have raised their voice today to fight for pregnant women who are denied potentially life-saving care because doctors are forced to follow religious directives rather than best medical practices.

If a patient chooses to use a Catholic hospital they can expect that said hospital will not perform abortions under any circumstance.

While Trinity Health abides by the same ERDs as all other Catholic hospitals, the ACLU has chosen to sue them in particular after a public health educator reported a single hospital in the Trinity network denying abortion care to multiple women with severe pregnancy complications due to their adherence to the ERDs.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan is filing a lawsuit against a Catholic health-care provider for failing to provide women with pregnancy complications with emergency abortions.

The ACLU maintains that Trinity Health Corporations is in violation of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA).

Trinity Health rejected that argument.

Fortunately, it seems Trinity Health isn’t too anxious about the latest lawsuit. “The Ethical and Religious Directives are entirely consistent with high-quality health care…”

Barbieri has always been at the forefront of the battle against Catholic health care facilities’ refusal to offer emergency or elective abortions as well as other health care like end-of-life care. Art Caplan, the head of the division of medical ethics at New York University’s Langone Medical Center, said ACLU has merit in its argument because growing Catholic health systems are federally funded.

“Catholic hospitals have been well-positioned to take part in mergers”, she said, explaining that the majority of mergers happened after small, rural hospitals struggled to contend with quality standards mandated by the Affordable Care Act. Almost one of nine hospital beds in the country is in a Catholic facility.

The ACLU also threatened action last month against a Grand Blanc Catholic hospital for refusing a seriously ill woman’s request to be sterilized during her scheduled C-section next month.

That lawsuit was dismissed in June by a federal district court.

“The advocacy community has highlighted when waiting periods or gestational restrictions” are imposed, said Sara Hutchinson Ratcliffe, director of the domestic program with reproductive rights advocacy group Catholics for Choice. A federal court already dismissed a similar ACLU claim, and we will seek dismissal of this suit for the same reason.

However, when a similar case was brought against the USCCB in 2013 Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, president of the bishops’ conference, called the lawsuit “baseless”, saying their medical directives “urge respectful and compassionate care for both mothers and their children, both during and after pregnancy”.