Report: Catholic healthcare limits reproductive care for women of color in Wisconsin

A wave of healthcare consolidation that has increased the reach of Catholic healthcare facilities could lead to more women of color receiving limited sexual and reproductive healthcare, according to the co-author of a report studying the trend.

Kira Shepherd, director of the Racial Justice Program at the Public Rights/Private Conscience Project at the Center for General and Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School, spoke at a panel in Milwaukee last month.

The report, published earlier this year, found that the growth of Catholic healthcare facilities has had a “disproportionate effect” on healthcare for women of color.

Healthcare at the facilities are governed by guidelines called Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, which are created by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and bar facilities from offering services like contraception, sterilization and abortion.

Of the 33 states and one territory the report studied, Wisconsin had the highest percentage of births at Catholic hospitals compared to non-Catholic hospitals for all racial groups. Wisconsin was also the only state in the report where black women were more likely to give birth at a Catholic than a non-Catholic institution.

“The trend is continuing,” Shepherd told Wisconsin Health News. “It’s only getting worse.”

The report recommends legislation that would bar facilities from denying reproductive healthcare if it poses a serious risk to patients’ health. It also recommended other changes, like requiring hospitals to notify patients that they don’t provide certain services or covering the transport to a facility that can.

Shepherd is also looking to raise public awareness, including collecting stories from doctors about instances where directives affected patient care.

Sr. Carol Keehan, president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association of the United States, said the report distorts a “few select patient cases to unfairly disparage all of Catholic healthcare.”

Catholic hospitals are accredited and held to the same standards as non-Catholic hospitals, she added.

“Catholic healthcare’s mission is to serve all people, regardless of their race, religion or socioeconomic status,” she said in a statement. “While there are a few medical procedures we don’t perform based on our belief that every human life is sacred, we provide a wide range of life-saving procedures that are essential to the health and well-being of the communities we serve.”

Sara Finger, executive director of the Wisconsin Alliance for Women’s Health, said the report confirms their concerns that an increase in religious-affiliated healthcare institutions is hindering access to reproductive healthcare.

“To deny the fact that there are these institutions that are restricting the level of access to services is unacceptable,” she said. “It doesn’t matter to me if it’s one women or thousands of women who are being denied healthcare.”

Taryn McGinn Valley, a medical student at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, said that communities of color are more likely to face hardships “given broader disparities that exist in our society” that can make it more difficult to find another health system or insurance plan.

She noted in a recent op-ed that activists in the state are working to change the paradigm of women’s healthcare.

“I’m being trained as a physician to put my patients first, and this kind of care puts them last — directly behind someone else’s values,” she wrote. “I am proud to be a Wisconsinite, but something has to change. I have been a practicing Catholic my whole life, and these are not my values.”

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