What are the implications of a faith-based hospital in Los Alamos?
In a Catholic hospital, because the Ethical and Religious Directives (ERDs) strictly define any intentional termination while a heartbeat exists as an abortion, doctors face systemic hurdles.
The three major scenarios where a Catholic hospital may argue, debate, or delay care include:
- Previable Premature Rupture of Membranes (PPROM)
This is when a patient’s water breaks long before the fetus can survive (e.g., 16 to 20 weeks). Inevitably, infection will set in, and the fetus cannot survive.
- Secular Hospital: The doctor will tell the patient that continuing the pregnancy carries a massive risk of infection (chorioamnionitis) which can lead to sepsis or infertility. The standard of care is to offer immediate induction or a surgical D&E to protect the patient’s health.
- Catholic Hospital: If there is still a fetal heartbeat, the hospital cannot actively terminate the pregnancy. The medical team is often forced to wait. The “debate” involves the ethics committee determining if the patient is “sick enough” to qualify under the life-saving exception. Doctors frequently have to wait until the patient develops a fever, their white blood cell count spikes, or the fetal heartbeat stops naturally.
- Treatment for Severe Pre-Eclampsia or Severe Health Declines
If a patient develops severe pre-eclampsia early in the second trimester, their blood pressure skyrockets, risking stroke, organ failure, or death.
- Secular Hospital: If the pregnancy is pre-viable and threatening the patient’s organ function, the medical team will recommend delivering or terminating immediately to save the patient from severe, lifelong disability.
- Catholic Hospital: The directives allow for interventions to save a life, but they explicitly do not allow for interventions to prevent a future condition that might put a life at risk, nor do they allow interventions solely to prevent lifelong disability. The ethics board will evaluate whether the threat is immediate enough. This can create a terrifying holding pattern where care is delayed until the patient’s status downgrades from “at serious risk” to “actively dying.”
- Management of an Incomplete or Inevitable Miscarriage
When a patient is actively miscarrying, bleeding heavily, and the cervix is fully dilated, but the tissue has not completely passed.
- Secular Hospital: The doctor can immediately use medication (like misoprostol) or perform a quick D&C to stop the bleeding and empty the uterus.
- Catholic Hospital: If a faint fetal heartbeat is still present, the doctor cannot perform that D&C or give that medication immediately. They are limited to “expectant management”—which means monitoring and waiting while the patient bleeds or waits for the heartbeat to stop on its own, or transferring the patient to a non-Catholic facility if they are stable enough to travel.
Why the Delay Happens: The Ethics Committee
In a secular hospital, the decision sits entirely between the physician and the patient based on clinical standards. In a Catholic hospital, doctors who violate the ERDs risk losing their practicing privileges.
When a gray-area case arises, the decision is elevated to the hospital’s Ethics Committee, which often includes administrators and spiritual directors. While the committee deliberates over whether a clinical situation has crossed the line into a “proportionately serious, life-threatening pathology,” hours or days can pass—putting the patient at an escalated risk for hemorrhage, sepsis, or emergency hysterectomy.
Medical decisions in complex or restricted cases are handled by an internal Institutional Ethics Committee. Among them:
The Hospital Chaplain: Usually a priest or sister employed full-time by the hospital network who is specially trained in clinical pastoral education.
announcement here: