I recently stumbled upon a story about an ongoing lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union against Ascension Health, a Catholic-based health care provider, and its subsidiary, Genesys Health System, in Grand Blanc, Michigan. The suit was filed on behalf of Jessica Mann, a patient of Genesys who was denied a tubal ligation by Genesys because the procedure went against the Catholic principles on which they are founded. This procedure was recommended to Mann during her third pregnancy due to a preexisting brain tumor that would make future pregnancies incredibly risky.

Mann's story is part of a bigger issue. Non-profit Catholic hospitals and health care providers throughout the United States have found themselves embroiled in controversy over their refusals to provide services such as abortion, contraception, and sterilization, on the basis that they violate Catholic doctrine. Many such hospitals are dictated by a set of ethical and religious directives put out by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which they are permitted to do under the Church Amendment. This has spurred numerous legal challenges, many brought up by the ACLU, in defense of patients like Mann who were denied necessary medical care on the basis of the hospital's religious doctrine.

The actions of these various hospitals and logic used to justify them are problematic for obvious reasons. Allowing religious-based health care providers to deny specific treatments if it violates their religious beliefs is a slippery slope, especially when such treatments could mean the difference between life and death. Indeed, the denial of care has often had disastrous results for the patients who were denied it.

Comedian Samantha Bee did a phenomenal segment on her show "Full Frontal," in which she eviscerated the hospitals for prioritizing their moral dogma over the welfare of patients. In response, a woman named Alexandra Descantis wrote a rebuttal in the conservative magazine National Review, which I stumbled upon researching the hospitals and read just to get a second opinion. What I read left me seething by the end of it.

Descantis begins by accusing Bee of using a straw man argument, and misrepresenting Catholic doctrine on life and reproduction.

"First, Bee ignores the fact that Catholic teaching on human life and reproduction is a fundamental, longstanding tradition of the Church, passed down from one generation to the next for centuries. Instead of acknowledging this understanding of Catholic dogma, she portrays the Catholic guidelines for hospitals as a set of random proscriptions cobbled together by a group of old men (bishops) trying to control and harm women. 'When I need reproductive advice from a virgin in a bathrobe, I’ll let you know,' Bee says. And later, 'a uterus is the wrong place for a priest.'"

I don't honestly care whether the basis for denying patients essential health care is rooted in "a fundamental, longstanding tradition of the Church." It's still denying patients health care that their lives might depend on.

Descantis continues:

"But Catholic priests, bishops, and cardinals don’t give “reproductive advice”; they articulate the truth about human life and reproductive ethics in accord with Catholic teaching. A teaching promulgated and practiced for centuries by an entire religious group is fundamentally distinct from a panel of “virgins in bathrobes” dictating to women what they can and cannot do."

Yeah, that's kind of the point. Patients don't go to hospitals for "the truth about human life and reproductive ethics in accord with the Catholic teaching." They go for treatment. And in many of the cases that have resulted in complaints, it didn't matter if Catholic clergy didn't give "reproductive advice," because that's what these patients were seeking. Case in point: if clergy don't give "reproductive advice," they should have no authority or say in what advice or treatment is given.

Descantis's next point reflects a deep naivety and ignorance about the necessity of access to immediate medical care.

"In most cases, when women want a particular reproductive service, they have ample time to locate and attend a non-Catholic hospital. Even in the few emergency situations — which Bee presents as if they are the vast majority of cases — it’s still highly unlikely that a Catholic facility is the only available option. No woman has to grab the wheel of an ambulance while in the midst of miscarrying; she just has to call an ambulance from a non-Catholic hospital. Though it sometimes might be inconvenient for a woman to travel to a non-Catholic hospital, the inconvenience surely does not outweigh the importance of conscience rights, which demand that Catholic hospitals not be forced to provide procedures that Catholicism deems morally wrong."

This mindset would be incredibly dangerous if put in practice. First of all, despite what Descantis says, there are places where Catholic hospitals are the only available option, and relocating to another hospital could put patients far out of their way, depending on where they are. In some circumstances, that would be more than an "inconvenience" and it would pose a serious risk to that patient's health or life. Descantis's assumption also overlooks the potential complications of miscarriage; babycenter.com recommends that if heavy bleeding or excessive pain occurs, the individual should visit the emergency room immediately.

Such a scenario isn't only hypothetical; it has legitimately played out. An Arizona woman had a severe miscarriage of twins, in which one miscarried. The other baby had slim chances of survival and continuing with the pregnancy would pose significant health risks for her, necessitating an emergency abortion. However, the nearest hospital was in the midst of merging with a Catholic health care network, which forbade its health centers from performing abortions. The OB-GYN who would have performed the abortion later testified in an affidavit that he was forced to send the woman on a three-hour drive to a hospital in Tucson 70 miles away, jeopardizing her health and potentially her life. And her case isn't the only one I've read of patients being relocated miles and miles away because the nearest hospital had moral objections to a medical procedure they needed.

Descantis paints such cases as the exception to the rule, but why does that make it any better? It doesn't matter whether these cases represent the majority or the exception to the rule, because this shouldn't be happening at all. Redirecting patients with potentially life-threatening complications three hours out of their way because the hospital had a religious objection to a medical procedure necessary to save that patient's life is not acceptable.

"Finally, Bee’s case rests heavily on the argument that Catholic hospitals put women in grave physical danger by denying them abortion. “A miscarriage is already the worst day of a woman’s life, and in a Catholic health-care network, it could also be her last,” Bee asserts. In reality, a direct abortion (in which a doctor intentionally kills a child) is never medically necessary to save a mother’s life. If a woman is having a miscarriage, having her child killed in an abortion will do nothing to improve her health or save her life."

Um...you want to run that last part by me again, Alexandra?

"In reality, a direct abortion (in which a doctor intentionally kills a child) is never medically necessary to save a mother’s life. If a woman is having a miscarriage, having her child killed in an abortion will do nothing to improve her health or save her life."

I...I just cited a case above in which a woman's life would have been jeopardized if she didn't have an abortion! Honestly, that view is ignorant on a whole new level, especially when one considers the rising maternal mortality rate in the United States. It once again reflects Descantis's naivety and cavalier attitude toward the necessity of access to immediate medical care.

An example of this, written about by Nicholas Kristof in his New York Times column and cited by Samantha Bee in her Full Frontal segment, concerns a pregnant woman who would have almost certainly died if she had gone through with her pregnancy. She was being treated at a Catholic hospital, which approved an abortion for this woman, and as a result had its affiliation with the Catholic diocese stripped by a prominent Catholic bishop. If your response to this is, "Well, this is a few isolated incidents," why don't you go up to this woman, who would have died had she been forced to continue with the pregnancy, and tell her that? I'm sure she would be very understanding.

I won't address any further arguments made in the article, because I would probably just be repeating myself. There are many more nuances to this issue that I didn't touch on, such as merging of non-Catholic hospitals with Catholic-based health care networks, and how some hospitals will refuse to abort ectopic pregnancies until they pose a serious threat to the mother's health or life. The main point that I'm trying to get across is that allowing hospitals to pick and choose which health care treatments they would give sets a dangerous precedent, dangerous along the lines of the Hobby Lobby decision. It places religious beliefs between patients and doctors and prioritizes religious dogma over the health and welfare of patients. A central principle of health care is "first, do no harm." If you cannot adhere to that without violating your religious beliefs, you shouldn't be working in health care.

For Catholic hospitals worried about being forced to violate their religious beliefs, no one forced them to go into health care. It would be a lot easier for them to simply choose another profession than it would be for many patients to relocate to another hospital at the expense of their own health. But while the Catholic individuals who run these hospitals and networks are free to hold the beliefs they do about abortion, contraception, and sterilization, their placing of those principles above the welfare of their patients calls into question their use of the refrain "conscience rights" as a defense. For individuals so preoccupied with living by their consciences, their consciences don't seem to be perturbed by forcing patients into life-threatening complications as a result of their very efforts to uphold their consciences. For individuals so concerned about the "sanctity of life," they don't seem so concerned about the sanctity of lives jeopardized by their refusal of care.

But to each their own, I suppose. Just know that if you are a hospital that refuses to allow abortions under any circumstance, you have blood on your hands. If you still don't believe that your actions are jeopardizing human lives, you definitely shouldn't be working in health care.