The “top doc” in this case is Yogendra Shah, an abortionist who, until the story broke, had been the interim chief of staff of the OB/GYN department at St. Elizabeth Medical Center in Granite City, Ill. Although the hospital, which is operated by the Sisters of Divine Providence, claims it found out in 1995 that Shah is an abortionist, he has reportedly been on St. Elizabeth's staff for approximately 20 years. He has also performed abortions for close to the same numbers of years — at the abortion clinic he owns, located directly across the street from the hospital, where some 7,000 babies are murdered each year.
Two days after the story broke, in the face of intense public pressure, hospital managers removed Shah from his position as OB/GYN chief of staff — but not from the hospital. The reason, according to a December 14 follow-up article on the same website, was because “The hospital's legal staff discovered that under Title 42 of the U.S. Code, §300a-7, Catholic hospitals and physicians are not required to perform abortions because such procedures would violate Catholic beliefs and moral codes.
“But the same law also says Catholic and other religion-based hospitals philosophically opposed to abortion and other medical procedures cannot discriminate regarding employment or staff privileges of physicians or staff who do perform these procedures at other locations.” In other words, it's a double-edged sword.
The Catholic Diocese of Springfield, Ill., explained it this way in a statement issued December 8: “Diocesan and hospital legal consultants have concluded that to protest the law that protects Dr. Shah (by revoking his privileges), they would be provoking litigation that might endanger the legal right of Catholic hospitals to refuse to perform abortions . . . Legally, the hospital's hands are tied.”
The law, of course, does not excuse St. Elizabeth's 20-year relationship with Shah nor explain its claim of ignorance about his abortion activities across the street until only five years ago. However, it does expose the vulnerability of Catholic healthcare organizations in the vise of the secular state.
St. Elizabeth's unwittingly fell into a very clever legal trap: one which ostensibly allows Catholic institutions to operate in full accordance with Church teaching but simultaneously prohibits them from making hiring and firing decisions based on employees' adherence to that same teaching. If St. Elizabeth's had not had an abortionist on its staff, the trap would never have been sprung. But once sprung, the hospital was caught helpless in its vise.
In contrast to St. Elizabeth's claim of invincible ignorance about Yogendra Shah's extracurricular murders, St. Vincent Infirmary Center in the Diocese of Little Rock, Ark., enjoyed the full approval of its bishop, Andrew J. McDonald, to perform sterilizations from June, 1998, until last October when the Vatican demanded they be stopped.
Bishop McDonald's decision to allow sterilizations resulted from pressure by managed care plans to stay competitive with other hospitals that have no such restrictions. Although his approval “provoked intense criticism” throughout his diocese, “hospital spokespersons said the action was based on the church’s principle of 'cooperation,' which allows participation in an act of wrongdoing in times of 'duress' if that participation is for the greater good. The source of duress was managed care; the greater good was the hospital’s financial health.”
While the circumstances of St. Vincent's case differ from St. Elizabeth's, both illustrate an increasingly frequent and disturbing trend in Catholic healthcare. Organizations are somehow inadvertently getting caught between the proverbial rock and hard place, and cannot choose either without drastic consequences. Should any guilt ensue from the decision, however, a convenient doctrinal rationale can always be found to justify it. St. Vincent's decided that “financial health” in the form of managed care revenues was more important than forbidding tubal ligations; St. Elizabeth's decided it was better to keep an abortionist on staff than to risk a costly federal lawsuit. Both are typical examples of current Catholic healthcare risk-return theory: When faced with a situation that requires choosing between Church teaching or secularist attack, Church teaching invariably loses.
And the reason it loses is precisely because of that choice: The more Church teaching is not chosen, the deeper Catholic healthcare organizations sink into the mire. Fearing the state more than God, they give in to its demands. The state, in turn, binds them ever more tightly, like a black widow cocooning her prey, until there is no way out but one.
But, before they can find it, they must first choose it.
