When she was 22 weeks pregnant, Mindy Swank began to bleed. She had known for nearly 2 weeks that she was miscarrying – and in such a way that she was at threat for infection.
But the Catholic hospital near her home had rejected to induce labor, apparently considering that doing so would violate its ban on abortion. And on this morning, the bleeding made no difference. The hospital sent her home – and then again and again, for 5 more weeks until she started severely hemorrhaging at week 27. Then, they induced her labor.
Swank’s story comes from a latest report by the American Civil Liberties Union and MergerWatch, a public health watchdog that monitors healthcare institutions with religious links. The report finds that one out of every 6 beds in the country’s acute care hospitals is in a hospital with Catholic affiliations and that Catholic hospitals make up 15 percent, or 548, of the country’s hospitals. Those numbers attest to the sharp rise in Catholic control of medical institutions over a decade: since 2001, through a steady thrum of sales and mergers, the number of hospitals with Catholic ties has gone up by 22 percent.
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