Hospital Pairing Leaves Area With One Less Choice About Abortion

Officials at San Pedro Peninsula Hospital are promising its upcoming alignment with Little Company of Mary Hospital in Torrance will mean better services, but the change has stirred concern among abortion rights advocates.

The reason: Abortions and sterilizations will no longer be performed at the San Pedro facility after it becomes affiliated next month with Little Company of Mary, a Catholic hospital.

Some are questioning whether the change will restrict the health care options of San Pedro residents, and they worry that it is part of a larger trend that has seen the number of hospitals offering abortion services drop steadily nationwide since the 1970s.

“I’m just very sad that, once again, women’s health care is being pushed aside,” said Deborah Blair Porter, an officer of the Palos Verdes/South Bay chapter of the National Organization for Women.

“It’s a lack of choice,” added Helene Pizzini, a critic of the change who serves as executive director of the YWCA for the Harbor area. “Our choices are being cut off by something other than ourselves.”

San Pedro officials note that the new affiliation will pump $12 million into their hospital for improvements, including a larger and remodeled obstetrics ward. More upgrading is planned for the acute rehabilitation unit serving stroke victims and patients recovering from serious injuries.

Dropping the abortion services, they said, will occur because the San Pedro facility will be governed by Catholic directives that do not permit abortions or sterilization techniques intended for contraceptive purposes.

Hospital officials, however, point out that most abortions are not performed in hospitals, but rather in out-patient clinics. According to figures from the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a research institution in New York, the number of hospitals performing abortions has dropped from 1,654 in 1977 to 1,040 in 1988, when they accounted for only 10% of abortions.

John M. Wilson, San Pedro Peninsula’s president, said his hospital in 1991 performed only nine abortions and 66 tubal ligations, a procedure in which a woman’s Fallopian tubes are tied. The hospital does not normally perform vasectomies, a spokeswoman said.

Wilson said he recognized that the changes are “a matter of concern to some people.” But he emphasized that he believes his hospital will benefit in aligning itself with Little Company of Mary.

“We think that by affiliating, the hospitals will be stronger together as one corporation,” Wilson said. Together, he said, the hospitals will offer a wide spectrum of services for an area stretching from El Segundo to Long Beach.

James C. Lester, Little Company of Mary’s president, said officials discussed the Catholic directives with obstetricians in San Pedro, who said they believe they could continue to serve their patients adequately under the new guidelines.

San Pedro officials said they have prepared a referral list of “family planning resources” that gives the names of 32 clinics and hospitals in the South Bay and the surrounding area, some of which offer abortion services.

Lester said officials decided the benefits of the two hospitals joining forces “far outweighed the issue of loss of access (to abortion services).”

The affiliation, in the planning stages for more than a year, will become official Oct. 9. Both hospitals will maintain separate licenses, medical staffs and foundations.

But they will operate under a single company, known as Little Company of Mary Health Services Inc. They will be governed by a 19-member board of directors, with six members from the San Pedro Peninsula board, 10 from the Little Company board and three nuns from the religious order associated with Little Company of Mary.

Such mergers and affiliations are occurring more frequently for several reasons, said David Langness, spokesman for the Hospital Council of Southern California.

Hospitals are finding they can no longer afford to invest in technology and operate on their own, so they are more amenable to forming networks, he said.

The linkup will give both hospitals broader medical services, which will strengthen their position when negotiating with insurers and health maintenance organizations, Wilson said.

“They’re looking for full-service hospitals where they can go to one place,” Wilson said.

San Pedro has services that Little Company of Mary lacks, such as a chemical dependency center and acute rehabilitation unit, and Little Company of Mary has a type of cardiac surgery program that San Pedro lacks, Wilson said. By affiliating, they do not have to spend money developing those programs themselves.

The hospitals may also be able to contain costs through joint purchasing, he said.

The income from each hospital will be returned to that hospital.

The 396-bed Little Company of Mary Hospital reported an overall bed-occupancy rate of 65.4% in 1990, according to the latest state figures available. San Pedro Peninsula, which has 436 beds, had a 1990 occupancy rate of 47.5%, compared to the 51.6% average rate for all Los Angeles County hospitals.

Pizzini said she is not questioning how the affiliation will affect health care quality, and she calls Little Company of Mary “an excellent hospital.”

But after the Catholic directives are implemented in San Pedro, she said, “The hospital will no longer offer a range of reproductive services and guidance. . . . It became clear to me that this is not a fight I was going to win.”