On March 6, Sister Elizabeth Davis, Executive Director of St. Clare’s Mercy Hospital in St. John’s, Newfoundland, issued a statement concerning a controversial decision that the hospital had made to eliminate its obstetric and gynecology department.
Budget cuts
Anticipating budget cuts, she said, the provincial Ministry of Health had asked the three St. John’s acute care hospitals to consider the rationalization and centralization of some of their services.
Despite the facts that the owners of the hospital are a religious congregation of women, and that the obstetrics and gynecology service was recognized for its excellence and its innovations, it was decided that this service should be surrendered to another hospital.
Stated Sister Elizabeth: “The hospital’s owners and board of governors, in consultation with the Archbishop of St. John’s, accepted the fact that, given its ethical tradition, St. Clare’s could not provide the full scope of services to which the community was entitled.” (Translation: It cannot perform abortions and sterilizations.)
“Our mission as a Catholic hospital and a provincial tertiary care centre, has always been and continues to be the provision of the best hospital health services to the whole community. That mission remains unchanged,” Sister Elizabeth concluded.
The statement and the decision itself were blasted by Dr. Robert Walley, a physician on the St. Clare staff, in an interview with the St. John’s Catholic monthly paper, The Monitor.
The statement, said Dr. Walley, a member of Physicians for Life, amounted to a recognition that the community is entitled to abortion services. The elimination of obstetric services at the hospital, he pointed out, would force pregnant women into hospital facilities offering abortions and thus would amount to an implicit endorsement of abortion and other medical procedures, which the Church rejects and disapproves of.
The government was less concerned with eliminating duplication of medical services, he said, than with circumventing the Church’s position on abortion and sterilization.
Disappeared
“In the United Kingdom all Catholic hospitals disappeared,” he stated. There hospitals will only employ people who will do abortions.
“This has made it impossible for people with a Catholic view on life to work in obstetrics. The government must be absolutely delighted in the cooperation they’re getting with this one,” he added.
“It’s a real Pontius Pilate approach to the thing, and (the hospital) should be taken to task by the whole community.” He also wondered where this kind of blight would stop: “If euthanasia becomes legalized, will we then say, ‘We cannot provide the full scope of services to which the community is entitled,’ and thus get out of palliative care?”
An editorial in The Monitor, signed by Dr. Walley, contended that Sister Elizabeth’s statement raised more questions than it answered, and neglected to show how the new arrangement would provide optimum care for mothers and their babies.
Where would women get “the full scope of services to which they are entitled,” including respect for human life? What will happen to nurses in obstetrics at St. Clare’s, who will no longer be able to work in their specialty?
Practical reality
Dr. Walley concluded his very forceful statement by saying, “Is it not also time for Roman Catholics to find new ways of making a practical reality of their beliefs on life and death issues, which have not changed, in order to serve the entire community as they have done in the past?”
Dr. Walley’s wife confirmed with The Interim by telephone that nothing has changed since Sister Elizabeth announced the new policy. Her husband has received little support from the other doctors in St. John’s and he is going to have to switch to Grace Hospital in order to continue to practice obstetrics.
But Dr. Walley is going to spend more of his time in Africa, which he has visited several times already: “That is the only thing keeping him sane,” Mrs. Walley said. “In other words,” she offered, “It is becoming impossible for a sane and moral obstetrician and gynecologist to practice his profession in Newfoundland. He is going to have to look elsewhere.”
The president of the city’s Right to Life Association, Philomena Rogers, added her support to Dr. Walley’s concerns, saying that the closing was a great loss for the community.
