Catholic Hospital Services

Re “When Hospitals and Doctors Play God,” Commentary, April 8:

It is an interesting twist of logic for Susan Berke Fogel to state that Catholic hospitals are dictating what health care services are available by electing to not do certain things: Kill nascent infants in the womb, mutilate the body via sterilization, separate the procreative and unity aspects of sexual intercourse in a myriad of ways, and so on. Even if Catholic hospitals were a monopoly in Southern California, the tremendous good that they provide us vastly offsets the inconvenience a few people have who need an inpatient procedure that they do not provide. Her entire list of “reproductive services” is available in non-Catholic hospitals, physicians’ offices and outpatient surgery settings as near as your phone book.

Does she think Catholic hospitals should be unfaithful to the teaching magisterium of the church?

GREGORY E. POLITO MD

Whittier

* Fogel’s column provided an important forum about a mounting trend of the public’s rights being subverted by a religious doctrine the majority does not subscribe to. In the South Bay, we now have only one non-Catholic private hospital. Doctors at both the Catholic hospitals and the non-Catholic hospital may be one and the same, but in the Catholic hospital they must abide by religious directives that they don’t subscribe to. How does this affect the non-Catholic doctors and their control over their patients who also don’t subscribe to the religious directives? Will it increase their costs by having to provide more expensive facilities in their own offices?

The long-term outlook for the overall rights of all can only be protected by people who can separate their religious beliefs in their decision-making capabilities. We all have the right to carry out our own beliefs as we see fit, but people are being held hostage to the dictates of another’s religious views.

SHEILA HOFF

Rancho Palos Verdes