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Reproductive Health Care |
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Compiled by GayToday American Civil Liberties Union
The report, Religious Refusals and Reproductive Rights, makes available for the first time the ACLU's recent public opinion research, which shows that Americans overwhelmingly oppose laws that protect religious objectors at the expense of the patient's rights and the public health. "The debate over religious refusals to provide certain reproductive health services is often miscast as a straightforward contest between religion and reproductive rights," said Catherine Weiss, an author of the report and Director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project. "But people of all faiths and no faith need and provide reproductive health care. And institutional religions stand on both sides of the debate about reproductive choice." The poll found that 72 percent of the public agrees that "religious liberty is not threatened by requiring hospitals to provide basic medical care. We are not talking about limiting a person's ability to worship, but access to basic health care." "Instead of posing a winner-take-all contest between rights, we should aim to balance protecting the public health in general, reproductive health in particular, patient autonomy, and gender equality with protecting individual religious belief and institutional religious worship," Weiss said.
The ACLU poll found that the public is particularly concerned that allowing religious refusals in the health care context obstructs patients' access to services and violates their right to make their own health care decisions. And Americans believe strongly that the government should hold "all hospitals--whether religiously affiliated or not--to the same standards." The report also chronicles the growing number of circumstances in which religious refusals impede patients' access to the health care they need, reviews the main factors contributing to the current debate, and surveys how courts have responded to the issue. In addition, the report includes a kit for advocates working in the legislative arena to help them assess and address bills that protect religious refusals. A related report, released today by MergerWatch, a project of Family Planning Advocates of New York State, presents a national study analyzing data on acute care community hospitals, including religiously affiliated facilities. The report, No Strings Attached: Public Funding of Religiously-Sponsored Hospitals in the United States, documents that religiously affiliated hospitals rely on public funding for about half of their operating revenues while refusing to provide certain essential reproductive health services. In addition, these same facilities lag far behind public hospitals in providing charity care and service to the poor. |
New York, New York--As the nation marks nearly 30 years since the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion, access to reproductive health care is increasingly jeopardized by the imposition of religious beliefs in the health care context, according to a report released yesterday by the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project.
