Health Care Denied: Patients and Physicians Speak Out About Catholic Hospitals and the Threat to Women's Health and Lives

The "Health Care Denied: Patients and Physicians Speak Out About Catholic Hospitals and the Threat to Women's Health and Lives" report recounts stories told to the ACLU by women who were denied medically indicated reproductive health care at Catholic hospitals, where religion too often takes precedence over medical standards.

Some of the women included in the report describe rushing to a nearby Catholic hospital when something went horribly awry with their pregnancies, only to be turned away because of the hospital’s religious restrictions on care.

The map below shows the prevalence of hospitals and acute care beds in Catholic facilities in the U.S., 2016.

Other women were forced to undergo an additional surgery after recovering from childbirth because a Catholic hospital refused to let their doctor perform a tubal ligation (commonly known as “getting your tubes tied”) at the time of delivery, when the procedure is safest. We also heard from doctors at Catholic hospitals who are forbidden from providing essential reproductive health care to their patients, and from physicians at secular hospitals, like Dr. Davidson, who treat these very sick women after they are denied care at a Catholic hospital.

The stories summarized here are presented as they were told to the ACLU.