Damned Catholics

[Fake Messiah]

When it comes to contraception education, Catholic colleges are stuck in the dark ages, so the knowledge must be taught in secret.

A student 'womb service' works covertly to deliver contraception at a Catholic college

In line with church teachings that discourage premarital sex and birth control, many Catholic colleges restrict access to contraceptives on campus. To get around that, a student group runs a covert contraceptive delivery network called “the womb service.”

Maya Roman, an economics student at DePaul, grew up learning about reproductive health from her mother, a nurse. When she arrived on campus, she realized many of her peers had relatively limited sexual health knowledge. Meanwhile, she said she noticed DePaul’s sexual and reproductive health resources were lacking.

“It was seeing a need in the community and trying my best to address it right away,” she said.

Now, the group she leads receives about 15 to 25 orders each week for contraception and hosts sex education seminars.

“These schools disproportionately don’t provide contraception access, so students are stepping up to fill those gaps so that other students aren’t being prevented from controlling their own reproductive destiny and reproductive freedom,” said Maddy Niziolek, development specialist at Catholics for Choice, which helps students organize against Catholic universities’ restrictions on contraception access.

At Loyola University, another Catholic institution in Chicago, Students for Reproductive Justice delivers condoms, lubricant, pregnancy tests and emergency contraception directly to students. They receive as many as 20 orders in a single night. The group also hosts Free Condom Friday, where members pass out condoms at bus stops just off campus.

The group applied for registered student organization status in 2016 but was denied, said Alyssa Suarez Tineo, a junior studying women and gender studies and an organizer for SRJ Loyola.

At the University of Notre Dame, the student group Irish 4 Reproductive Health formed in 2017 to file a lawsuit challenging the university’s decision to deny birth control coverage to students and employees. The group today distributes contraception off campus.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/stu...rcna234621

Then there's also the dark age going on in the Catholic hospitals.

Emergency abortion denials by Catholic hospitals put woman in danger, lawsuit claims

A California woman is suing Dignity Health, alleging two hospitals denied her emergency abortion services due to their Catholic directives, violating state law and putting her life in danger.

During two separate pregnancies, Rachel Harrison’s water broke at just 17 weeks — a condition that can cause deadly complications. An abortion is typically the course of action recommended by doctors, but on both occasions staff members at Dignity Health hospitals refused to act because they detected a fetal heartbeat, the lawsuit alleges.

The second time it happened, Harrison experienced life-threatening sepsis and had to travel to a hospital outside her insurance network to receive a blood transfusion, the complaint states.

Harrison, 30, and her partner Marcell Johnson filed a lawsuit against Dignity Health in San Francisco Superior Court on Friday. The claim, first reported by Courthouse News Service, alleges that subsidiaries Mercy San Juan Medical Center and Mercy General Hospital refused to provide her emergency abortion care for religious reasons.

“While publicly touting their hospitals’ qualifications as reliable emergency services centers, Dignity Health prioritized its own religious directives over the best interests of Rachel’s health and well-being,” the lawsuit alleges.

On Sept. 13, 2024, according to Harrison‘s lawsuit, she experienced a condition called previable preterm premature rupture of the membranes, or previable PPROM, when her water broke at just 17 weeks of pregnancy.

This condition is fatal for the fetus and dangerous for the mother.

“Rachel was told that because of the hospital’s Catholic affiliation, there was nothing more the hospital could do for her,” the complaint states. “Confused and distressed, Rachel was discharged and left to complete a high-risk miscarriage of a fetus ‘the size of an avocado’ — as she was told by the physician’s assistant — at home, on her own, and without medical supervision.”

Last December, Harrison was thrilled to learn that she was pregnant again, but then “her worst nightmare” repeated itself. At 17 weeks pregnant, she once again experienced previable PPROM, the complaint states.

In a repeat of her past experience, staff members told her they could not provide the care she sought due to the fetal heartbeat. She was able to access care at another hospital, her complaint says, but experienced sepsis and heavy blood loss in the process.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story...on-lawsuit

And it will only get worse.

Growing Market Power Among Catholic Hospitals Restrains Access to Reproductive Health Care

As more hospitals merge or acquire smaller providers, patients are left with fewer choices and are charged higher prices as they experience greater difficulty accessing health services and, potentially, diminished quality of care. An overlooked but significant part of this trend has been the growing market power of Catholic health care providers. From 2001 to 2020, Catholic provider growth rate was 28.5 percent. During that same period, the number of non-Catholic hospitals declined by nearly 14 percent.

Catholic hospitals are constrained in ways that most other providers are not. Catholic hospitals are governed by the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, guidelines established by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that restrict the types of care that can be provided in their facilities or by their providers, especially care related to family planning and sexual and reproductive health. This includes contraception, abortion, gender-affirming care, and fertility treatments. For example, the directives state that institutions “may not promote or condone contraceptive practices” and that “abortion … is never permitted.” These directives can be at odds with accepted medical standards according to physicians and other medical practitioners.

As Catholic health systems, like other hospital systems, have seen their market power grow, more and more women are encountering barriers to obtaining the care they seek.

These restrictions are followed even in states where abortion rights are protected through state law or constitutional amendments. This has serious implications for women’s health against the backdrop of an increasingly hostile and fragmented reproductive rights landscape.

https://www.americanprogress.org/article...alth-care/