As the University of California’s health system renews contracts with hundreds of outside hospitals and clinics — many with religious affiliations — some of its doctors and faculty want stronger language to ensure that physicians can perform the treatments they deem appropriate, including abortions for women or hysterectomies for transgender patients.
University of California Health is in the middle of a two-year process to renew contracts with affiliate hospitals and clinics that help the university deliver care in underserved parts of the state. Many of the agreements are with faith-based facilities, including prominent hospitals operated by Dignity Health, Providence, or Adventist Health. Such arrangements generate more than $20 million a year for the UC system and help the public university approach its goal of improving public health.
The current policy, adopted in 2021, states that UC physicians have the freedom to advise, refer, prescribe, or provide emergency care, covering cases in which moving a patient “would risk material deterioration to the patient’s condition.” But some UC doctors and faculty worry that physicians would be allowed to perform certain surgeries only in an emergency.
They want to add a clause stating that physicians have the right to perform procedures in a manner they deem advisable or necessary without waiting for the patient’s condition to get worse.
Others have gone so far as to urge the university to reject partnerships with hospitals that have ethical and religious directives against sterilization, abortion, some miscarriage management procedures, and some gender-affirming treatments. The Academic Senate, a faculty body that helps the university set academic policies, and other faculty councils urged the university’s president to avoid working with health care facilities because many have restrictions that “have the potential for discriminatory impact on patients.”
Full story at laist.com.
Babies ask for “protections” from evil UC doctors.
Aren’t there enough doctors excluding the UC miscreants, who believe in real health care for mothers and babies, and genuine mental health resources for those confused with their own sex, that Catholic hospitals won’t be plagued by this harassment. They are noisemakers who should be reminded of freedom of religion.
Money is always the reason. Abortions and unnecessary mutilating hysterectomies make money. Therefore, babies need to die. That’s how pagans look at life. Catholics are the reason there are hospital systems in this country; we cared for patients before corporations and big universities took over so much of healthcare. It was just fine with everyone then; now we are just too religious for them. We need to dump them.
Why all the fuss? What has changed? Catholic hospitals that have prohibited these procedures have had contracts with UC before. Now UC is clutching their pearls? What gives, girls?