StarPhoenix attacks concept of religious hospitals.

Saskatoon -- The news that the Catholic hospital in Humboldt, SK decided to ban tubal ligations--although this was later reversed--prompted the Saskatoon StarPhoenix to fulminate against the very existence of religious hospitals.

The situation "is a reminder of just how seriously negligent the provincial government has been to not only allow the continuance of a parallel hospital system to exist, but to use taxes to fund it," said the StarPhoenix in a December 27, 2006 editorial.

"The root of the ailment ... is allowing a publicly funded, private organization to provide parallel health services, the breadth of which is dictated by religious mores, rather than community standards or financial considerations."

The newspaper went on to denounce a Church hierarchy "that wants to impose itself on the reproductive rights and sexuality of individual Canadians" and "also advocates against the rights of same-sex couples." This Church, it said, "persists in preaching against the use of condoms in countries where AIDS is running rampant and against practising birth control when thousands of them die each year while giving birth to children they neither wanted nor could manage."

Apart from the newspaper's anti-Catholic rhetoric, as well as questions of Catholic ethics, Dr. John B. Shea, medical contributor to Catholic Insight magazine, observes: "A tubal ligation is a permanent form of birth control that can rarely be reversed. There are, in fact, no medical indications that would justify its performance. It is also associated with increased risk of ectopic pregnancy and with some risk of injury to adjacent abdominal organs, bleeding and infections."

The right to exist

Mark Miller, ethicist at St. Paul's Hospital in Saskatoon, has pointed out that Catholics have been involved in providing health care in Saskatchewan for 100 years. When Canada turned to a single-payer system, Catholic and other faith-based providers were assured that they could continue to provide their services in accord with their own principles and consciences, he said.

Catholic health care does not consider the provision of sterilization as falling under the category of care for the sick, the suffering and the dying, he pointed out. He added that Catholic moral sensitivities, in light of the overall picture, are relatively minor issues (Prairie Messenger, Sept. 20, 2006).

Other Canadian Catholics pointed out that Humboldt-area Catholics are taxpayers, too, and deserve a say in the operation of publicly funded institutions. Yet, media continue to run with headlines such as the StarPhoenix's, "Humboldt doesn't want a Catholic-run hospital" (Jan, 25, 2007).

On March 8, the NDP government of Saskatchewan announced that it would build a new secular hospital, with provisions for committing abortions and tubal ligations.

Media secularism 

Catholics across the country should be alarmed at the degree of venom levelled against the Church over the Humboldt situation. They should be concerned not only with the prospects for Catholic health care, but also for other areas of Catholic endeavours that intersect with public services at large, such as education. James Roche, vice-president of advocacy and public policy for the Catholic Health Association of Canada in Ottawa, noted there have been cases in the U.S. where secular and Catholic ideals have clashed, with the end result being that Catholic hospitals lost their status as hospitals (LiFeSiteNews, Sept. 14, 2006).