UC's planned partnership with a Catholic hospital chain could be unconstitutional

[trotsky]

https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-ucsf-dignity-partnership-20190503-story.html

Some of the troubling issues raised by the proposed “affiliation” between UC San Francisco, the state’s premier medical school, and the Catholic hospital chain Dignity Health are becoming clear.

There are the moral issues bound up in the idea of a public university partnering with a system that openly discriminates against women and transgender patients purely on religious grounds. And the ethical issues related to doctors having to misrepresent their patients’ conditions in order to fend off Catholic bishops’ interference with their professional judgments.

But another issue may have a greater impact on whether the UC regents ultimately give the plan their blessing: whether it’s even legal or constitutional.

...On Thursday, the Trump administration issued a final rule allowing healthcare workers — including doctors, nurses, paramedics and pharmacists — to refuse to provide care based on their own “religious beliefs or moral convictions.” The rule is being cast as protection for religious practices, but in fact it’s a weapon aimed at “women, LGBTQ people and religious minorities,” says Rachel Laser, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The rule’s text makes clear that clearing the way for healthcare providers to refuse to perform abortions is among its chief goals.

[Major Nikon]

1. Another day closer to living in a theocracy

[trotsky]

2. But whatabout China? n/t

[Major Nikon]

3. Thanks for the "counterpoint"

I thought it only applied to RCC child rape apologia, but I see no reason why we can't expand the original scope.

[trotsky]

4. You can always use it metaphorically. n/t

[emmaverybo]

5. Dignity has excellent hospitals. No reason to throw the baby

Out with the bath water. UC is not going to let Catholicism dictate medicine.
I was lucky to have surgery at Mercy hospital in SF. Nurses and doctors of all faiths there or none. Catholicism not pushed, but a spiritual place in the compassion that every single medical professional from lab tech on up showed.
Yes, the problem could come in reproductive health planning, but it need not.

[trotsky]

6. Let's just say that history is proving otherwise.

As soon as the Catholic Church gets in the healthcare mix, they move to restrict treatment options and try to make everyone else live by their religious mandates. This has been the case everywhere they've taken over local hospitals.

[MineralMan]

7. But, you see, we've seen bias happen before.

You mention reproductive health issues, and those are a real concern. If I were a woman with a difficult problem with pregnancy, I would specifically never enter a Catholic-run hospital, because of my concern for my own life. If saving my life required termination of the pregnancy, I would not be confident that option would be offered to me. If I were a young woman, I would not seek reproductive health counseling at such a facility, due to the built-in bias of the people who own it.

If I were an LGBTQ person, I would choose a different hospital due to biases against LGBTQ people by the RCC.

Now, if I were none of those things, which is the case for me, I would have no concerns for myself, but concerns for the welfare of others would cause me to choose a secular hospital, because I am an atheist.

It might not bother you, because you are unaffected by the RCC's biases. It's important to think about others, however, and how they would be affected. Attitudes matter, whether those biases are applied or not.

The State of California and the University of California should form no relationship with a church-owned hospital. That would be unconstitutional.