Cardinal strikes against proposed AMA resolution

By Michael D. Wamble
STAFF WRITER

“If you drive the churches out of health care by making it impossible for them to operate according to their ethical and religious mission, who will take care of the poor?,” asked Cardinal George June 12 before a committee of the American Medical Association’s House of Delegates.

“Will the National Abortion Rights Action League take care of them? Will Catholics for a Free Choice take care of them? You and I both know they will not.”

Those were some of verbal jabs leveled by Cardinal George in his testimony against Resolution 218, defeated on June 15 by a vote of the AMA’s delegates.

The proposal brought before the AMA was intended to force Catholic hospitals to provide “a full range of reproductive services, including temporary or permanent birth control.”

“Clearly this includes requirements of contraceptions, sterilizations and abortion, with which Catholic hospitals simply can not comply,” said the cardinal on June 12. “Effectively, the American Medical Association is being asked to help abolish Catholic health care.”

The absence of Catholic health care in the United States would mean the loss of roughly one of every 10 hospitals in the country.

In Illinois, 30 percent of all health care providers are Catholic institutions, with more than 20 Catholic hospitals located within the Chicago Archdiocese.

Cardinal George’s presence at the event was believed to be the first time that a Catholic leader has actively lobbied the AMA about an internal resolution. In 1995, Cardinal Bernardin addressed the AMA on the need for moral renewal within the medical profession.

Dr. Michael Collins, an AMA member who is president and CEO of Caritas Christi Health Care System in Boston, also testified before the committee.
Speaking on behalf of the Catholic Health Association (CHA), Collins called the proposal “an unprecedented and unwarranted intrusion into the delivery of health care” that had the ability to cause Catholic hospitals to end all obstetric services or even to close their doors.

Days before the vote, Collins said the resolution—titled “Access to Comprehensive Reproductive Health Care’’—“is misnamed and misguided and if passed would lead to a decrease in access to health care services for women throughout the country.’’

In another indication of how seriously the CHA took the resolution, Father Michael Place, CHA president and CEO, flew to Chicago from his association’s own convention, held in San Francisco June 11-14, the same dates as the AMA gathering.

One of several points overlooked by the resolution, said Place, was the fact that most hospitals specialize in areas of medical services they offer to patients.

“If you have a severe heart condition a rural hospital is not going to be able to treat all heart conditions so you will have to go somewhere else,” said Place, at a news conference held after the cardinal’s testimony.

He continued, “The question raised by the resolution is one of commitment and how you preserve the commitment our institutions have to the communities and how you provides services in accord to our conscience.”

Proposed by the AMA’s California delegation, the resolution would express the 300,000-member organization’s support for legislation requiring “any hospital providing perinatal services which receives public or taxpayer funds, including Medicare and/or Medicaid, ... to provide a full range of reproductive services.”

Much of the supporting documentation for the resolution, the cardinal said, came from Catholics for a Free Choice.

“This is a group with no medical expertise,’’ the cardinal said. “This is a group with no affiliation with the Catholic Church, except as an adversary.”

In written testimony, CHA called Resolution 218 “a thinly veiled attack on the right of Catholic health care organizations to provide health care services in a manner that is consistent with their religious and ethical beliefs.’’

“Though we recognize that in a pluralistic society there is debate on the Catholic Church’s positions on abortion and contraception, the resolution … would start this nation down a perilous track for American medicine if we were to invite the federal and state governments to compel health care facilities to do what in conscience they cannot do,’’ it said.

Cardinal George’s testimony was followed by more than an hour of debate where the majority of AMA members who rose to microphones posted in the aisles echoed the cardinal’s point of view.

Speaking on behalf of the association, John Nelson, an obstetrician and member of the AMA’s board of trustees, questioned the desired results of Resolution 218.

Making reference to AMA policy relevant to the resolution, Nelson quoted the group’s written policy that states “Neither physician, hospital, nor hospital personnel shall be required to perform any act violative of personally held moral principles.”

When asked if there was a need for the resolution, Nelson agreed that it was unnecessary.

“That is our feeling exactly,” said Nelson. “This issue has been discussed by a good and very deliberative body. It has been voted upon and taken care of and is right where it needs to be. This [resolution] is unnecessary.”

The AMA’s House of Delegates agreed, voting on June 15 against Resolution 218, in what CHA head Place called “a victory for women.”

In a statement that followed the vote, Place said, “The dialogue of the last week ...reaffirms what Catholic healthcare and other like-minded providers and individuals have been stressing in regards to there being a fundamental, constitutionally protected right of freedom of conscience in the delivery of healthcare in this country.”

CNS contributed to this story.

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