The Null Device

In the US, the Catholic church's health-care division has been aggressively expanding, taking over secular hospitals and forging joint ventures, and now has a health-care monopoly in 91 communities. Needless to say, the Catholic hospitals do not provide services that go against the Vatican's increasingly conservative doctrines. Which is bad news if you're a rape victim in need of emergency contraception.

Women in need of reproductive health care who find they must rely on a Catholic-run facility may suddenly encounter the strictures of the Ethical and Religious Directives, adopted by the church's National Council of Bishops in 1994, which applies to all U.S. Catholic institutions. It explicitly states that abortion "is never permitted." It also prohibits sterilization, including tubal ligation, the most commonly used method of birth control in the nation, as well as other legal reproductive health services. The religious proscriptions apply to all patients, regardless of their individual religious beliefs

(via Unknown News)

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