Get it in Writing Campaign
OVERVIEW: St. Vincent Hospital plans to merge with a Dallas-based, Catholic health corporation called Christus Health. Christus Health must follow directives issued by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that limit family planning services and restrict patients' freedom to die with dignity. St. Vincent Hospital says creative management structures will overcome these constraints. But such schemes have failed in other states.
Christus Health and St. Vincent Hospital are asking the community to trust that family planning and end-of-life services will not be compromised in the pending merger. We're asking that this commitment be written into the legal agreements between the two entities. If St. Vincent Hospital and Christus Health are serious about their assurances, then they won't mind including language in their contract that guarantees them.
We believe the people of Northern New Mexico need written assurances that the hospital will continue to provide the family planning and end-of-life care they deserve.
PETITION
We, the undersigned, are concerned that your pending merger with
CHRISTUS Health will compromise our access to comprehensive family
planning services and our freedom to die with dignity at St. Vincent
Hospital. The people of Northern New Mexico rely upon you as their
primary source of health care.
We hear and appreciate your assurances that services will not change
after the merger. However, such guarantees have been abandoned in
similar mergers in Austin, Texas, Little Rock, Arkansas, and Carrington,
North Dakota, among other places, after the Church changed its
application of the Ethical and Religious Directives (ERDs).
For example, mere days after the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops
revised the Directives in 2001, a Catholic health system in Austin,
Texas--Seton Health Care--broke its longstanding promise to Austin city
officials that sterilizations would continue to be provided in a
city-owned hospital that Seton Health Care managed.
In the past, CHRISTUS has initiated its own such changes after a merger
is signed. Not long after CHRISTUS acquired McCuistion Hospital, in
Paris, Texas, it removed maternity services from the hospital,
separating delivery and tubal ligation services from critical emergency
room facilities.
We urge you to protect us against these possibilities and to share with
the community the details of how you intend to do so. In your legal
agreement with CHRISTUS Health, please include language that not only
ensures compliance with state laws, but that also ensures that patients
will continue to have access to comprehensive family planning services
and can control their own end of life decisions, without segregation of
services that conflict with the ERDs into different wards or locations.
