Women Protest Church Takeover of Hospital

About 100 chanting feminists held a one-hour candlelight demonstration Monday at Northridge Hospital Medical Center, contending the hospital might eliminate reproductive medicine services when it falls under Catholic ownership.

Hospital administrators said the demonstrators’ fears were overstated; that few changes will be made.

The protest was initiated by students from the Women in Today’s Society club at Cleveland High School in Reseda and included activists from local, state and national feminist groups.

The facility, which operates one of only two rape crisis centers in the San Fernando Valley, is among eight hospitals to be acquired this month by Catholic Healthcare West.

Protesters said they fear Catholic religious principles could jeopardize the rape clinic and curtail other reproductive services at the center.

But hospital administrators said that Northridge Hospital, along with seven other facilities to be acquired this month by the Catholic chain, will continue to operate as community-sponsored hospitals.

“They will not become Catholic hospitals,” said Debbie Cantu, director of communications and marketing for the San Francisco-based Catholic Healthcare West, which operates 40 other hospitals, mostly in California.

With three exceptions, “women’s services will be provided as they have been provided,” including emergency contraceptives and other services for rape victims, Cantu said in an interview.

Exceptions will prohibit assisted suicide, in vitro fertilization and abortion except in situations that are life-threatening to the mother, Cantu said.

Susan Fogel, legal director of the California Women’s Law Center, challenged the pledge to continue services. She said the ban on in vitro fertilization is new in the Catholic chain’s policies at community hospitals.

The rules are “more restrictive now and we are therefore apprehensive about the future,” Fogel said.

Fogel called on Catholic Healthcare executives to meet with the protesters to discuss policies. She said the chain has in the past imposed religious and ethical directives on health care in some hospitals it took over.

“One of the most disturbing aspects of these types of mergers is that this is a stealth issue,” Fogel said. “In most cases, the elimination of these services takes the community by surprise.”

She added: “We want to know that there will be no restrictions on the services that they provide and we want to know that since they want to be the health-care provider to the community that they will provide all of the services that the community needs.”

Similar demonstrations are planned at other hospitals owned by Unihealth America, a Burbank-based chain that has agreed to merge with Catholic Healthcare West.

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In addition to the Northridge hospital, the chain owns a second campus in Van Nuys, previously called Valley Hospital Medical Center, and Glendale Memorial Medical Center.

Its other facilities in Los Angeles County are Long Beach Community Hospital, California Hospital Medical Center Los Angeles and San Gabriel Valley Medical Center. Two hospitals in Orange County are Martin Luther Hospital Anaheim and La Palma Intercommunity Hospital.

Feminist organizations say they are concerned by the growing number of nonsectarian community hospitals locally and nationally that are being taken over by religious groups.

In testimony before an Assembly committee earlier this year, Fogel said takeovers are proceeding “at an unprecedented rate” and changes are “quietly eroding the reproductive rights of women and men.”