Posted on 08/26/2015 10:28:39 AM PDT by Kaslin
The woefully misnamed American Civil Liberties Union is launching a crusade to force Catholic hospitals to act against Catholic moral teachings and the natural law.
This is an un-American attack on religious liberty.
The ACLU's intentions came to light this week after it threatened to sue Mercy Medical Center in Redding, California, which is operated by the Sisters of Mercy. The hospital is a part of Dignity Health, a nonprofit that operates 40 hospitals -- 22 of which are Catholic -- in California, Nevada and Arizona.
As reported by the San Francisco Chronicle on Monday, Elizabeth Gill, an ACLU lawyer, sent a letter to the hospital threatening legal action if it would not relent on its refusal to allow a woman to be sterilized in its facilities after giving birth there to a child due next month.
"In an Aug. 17 letter to Mercy Medical Center in Redding, Gill said the ACLU would go to court unless the hospital reversed course and authorized the sterilization procedure," the Chronicle reported. "By denying 'pregnancy-related care'..., Gill wrote, the hospital is discriminating on the basis of sex, as defined by California law, and is also allowing 'your corporate entity's religious beliefs' to override a doctor's medical decision, violating a state law against the corporate practice of medicine."
On Tuesday, the Chronicle published another article with this lead: "Facing a possible sex-discrimination lawsuit, a Catholic hospital in Redding reversed its position Monday and agreed to let a woman's doctor sterilize her after she gives birth next month."
Dignity Health's Mercy Medical Center then issued a carefully worded statement indicating that the center, in fact, had not and would not turn away from the Catholic bishops' moral directives on health care.
"In accordance with policy, as well as state and federal law, we respect our patients' privacy by not discussing the specifics of their care," said Dignity's statement.
"What we can share is that in general, it is our practice not to provide sterilization services at Dignity Health's Catholic facilities in accordance with the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services," said the statement. "As such, tubal ligations are not performed in Catholic hospitals except on a case-by-case basis where a formal review by a committee of physicians and others gives permission to perform the procedure."
"The hospital has always and will continue to operate in accordance with the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services and medical staff bylaws," Dignity insisted in its statement.
The Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, published by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, say this about sterilization: "Direct sterilization of either men or women, whether permanent or temporary, is not permitted in a Catholic hospital. Procedures that induce sterility are permitted when their direct effect is the cure or alleviation of a present and serious pathology and a simpler treatment is not available."
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has posted a collection of quotations from church documents on contraception, sterilization and abortion. It includes a statement from Pope Pius XII explaining that "direct sterilization" is a violation of the natural law.
"Direct sterilization -- that is, the sterilization which aims, either as a means or as an end in itself, to render child-bearing impossible -- is a grave violation of the moral law and therefore unlawful," said the pope.
"[W]hen sterilization began to be much more widely used the Holy See was obliged to declare openly and explicitly that direct sterilization, permanent or temporary, whether of men or women, is illicit in virtue of the natural law, from which the Church herself, as you know, has no power to dispense."
For its part, the ACLU made clear that its ultimate target was not this particular hospital or the outcome of the particular case discussed in the Chronicle. Its ultimate target is the practice of Catholic morality inside Catholic hospitals.
"While we are grateful Mercy Medical Center has agreed to provide medical care in this instance ... the reality remains that there is a clear conflict between the best interests of patients and the directives of the Catholic hospital system," said the ACLU's Gill in an ACLU press release.
"Religious institutions that provide services to the general public should not be allowed to hold religion as an excuse to discriminate or deny important health care," she said.
The ACLU then said: "The hospital's directives, written by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, classify common reproductive health procedures as 'intrinsically evil."
In fact, Directive 70 published by the bishops says: "Catholic health care organizations are not permitted to engage in immediate material cooperation in actions that are intrinsically immoral, such as abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, and direct sterilization."
We now live in a country where self-proclaimed advocates of "civil liberties" believe they can get the courts to force Catholic institutions to cooperate in these evil acts.
Sue them into bankruptcy. That is the plan and it works often enough. ACLU has effectively unlimited resources to sue. Hospitals and small bakery shops and ultimately individuals who don’t step off the sidewalk when a Mohammedan approaches don’t have unlimited resources for defense.
That's part of the problem right there. The hospital has already put itself in a compromising position through its business arrangements.
Wasn’t the ACLU founded to protect the 1st amendment?
Bake The Cake!!!
There was a story like this about ten years ago in Vancouver, Canada. The local bishop — who wasn’t really known for being a strong defender of the faith — sent letters to all of the patients informing them that the hospital was going to shut down rather than capitulate to the diabolical dictates of the city or provincial government. Surprisingly, the government backed down in that case ... probably because a shutdown of the hospital would have overwhelmed the other city hospitals.
Pope F. and the Leftists will finish off the Catholic Church
Very selectively, I guess. It is basically a communist organization with its own political agenda and has no use for the U.S. Constitution.
Rather than submit.
No. It was founded to advance communism.
Their immediate plans may have come to light this week, but their intentions towards actual freedom to practice one's religion have been repeatedly demonstrated over their 95 year history. They are not, and never have been really about protecting civil liberties. Rather they have been systematically seeking to undermine American cultural institutions throughout their history.
For a closer look at the ACLU, see Leftwing Word Games & Freedom Of Religion.
This organization should be banned-—it is unconstitutional. It’s whole premise is to destroy Freedom of Religion and to promote Vice-—killing of others, sterilization of human beings, promoting the rights (vice) to sodomize others——all it promotes is a censorship of Good (Virtue/Justice) and a promotion of Vice.
Doctors who sterilize, or kill babies should be put in prison. Since when did we allow the dehumanization of people to be “normalized”-—that Margaret Sanger murdering of the inferior and sterilization of inferiors——Satanic mindset be “Good”.
Flipping Good and Evil is NOT allowed in our Justice System...which is STILL based on Natural Law Theory (Individual Natural Rights/dignity from God).
All evil is to be banned in a Just society. Any organization that forces human beings to be used as a Means to an End is promoting Marxism-—and Stalin’s Constitution which is antithetical to our Natural Rights from God only “Justice System”.
Our Justice system is only applicable to Christian Ethics where ALL human beings have Dignity and Worth—and are treated EQUALLY-—never Stalin’s or Satan’s system, where sterilization and sodomizing others and killing babies and old useless eaters, is “Good”.
We need to get back to Constitutional Law-—and Rule of Law (Higher Law/God’s) and eject all these unconstitutional, evil-promoting organizations which destroy Freedom and deny our Constitutional Rights.
They want people to suffer and for all of us to have less hospitals because they want to shove their religion of Atheism down our throats.
It looks like the Catholics will be forced into become John Galt.
They may just find that the Catholic Faith ends up abandoning the Catholic Hospitals...and shuts them down or sells them off.
*CATHOLIC HOSPITALS SHOULD SHUT DOWN THEIR OB/GYN DEPARTMENTS...
Rather than submit. *
I totally agree. They will show that they are standing up for what is right.
When they close they should put a huge billboard size sign in front of the hospital that says:
“OB/GYN DEPARTMENT CLOSED DUE TO THE ATHEISTS AND COMMUNISTS AT THE ACLU.”
The Catholics need to sic Jay Sekulow on their demonic heinies.
This is vindictive by the ACLU athiests.
We’ve always been treated good by the Catholic Healthcare System.
My wife is Buddhist and they still provide her with superior service without any problems.
“Force Catholic Hospitals to Abandon Catholic Faith”
That is the intention of the left.
From your posted article worth noting.....
“Forty years ago, the Veritas Foundation (headed by President Theodore Roosevelt’s son Archibald) published a staff study on The Great Deceit, Social Pseudo-Sciences, which carefully documented the Fabian Socialist assault upon the American Social Sciences and legal system during the first six decades of the past Century. After dealing at length with the antics of former Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter—whom Roosevelt’s father once compared to Leon Trotsky (ibid.., p.295)—the study described the birth of the ACLU”
This is the beginning of the Fabian takeover (Marxist) of the USA. As Sugar Keynes of Harvard (a Fabian) stated-—he and his homosexual “friends” who were raping all the boys and even castrating ones in third world countries—and bragging about it in letters that can be read today-—stated that they would make this “Love” that dare not be spoken-—”normal”.....the infiltrating Marxists did that just recently with the use of unjust, perverted “law” by the Marxists planted on SCOTUS.
We have had unjust (unconstitutional) laws that promote Vice and censorship of Religion and Traditions for 100 years-to erase God and Christianity off the map so our children will be raised to believe “snow is black” and boys are girls—and it is Stalin’s Constitution—never ours.
The Fabians actually flipped Good and Evil over the period of a century-—(Evil is promoted in all public schools for the last 30 years) to make Satanic (Stalin’s) Ethics the ethics of America in our children....to posit a satanic, evil worldview in our children-—that collective, group think where base emotions reduce us to godless animals.
They virtually removed Chrsitian Ethics (demonized and marginalized everything to do with Jesus Christ in art/movies/public “schools”) which basically perverted our Constitution and Truth-—which is the basis of our Individual Natural Rigths (from God).
Removing God (unconstitutional) makes the State into god for totalitarianism and a collective (dependent) culture where there is no individual natural rights for anyone but the elitists who are our masters and dictate Good and Evil perversions to us.
How did they place themselves in a compromising position?
Did you see where they are now trying to purge any religious appeals in athletic coaching motivation? They have gotten away with outright insanity for far too long.
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