Editor:
With the denial of surgery to Oliver Knight by St. Joseph Hospital, we have yet another demonstration of how this hospital does not serve the needs of its community (NCJ Daily, March 28).
What Mr. Knight underwent there is truly unconscionable — humiliation, then denial of the scheduled surgery and, finally, being given the drug benzodiazepine and told to get out. This is our community hospital, folks! No milk of human kindness to be found there, for sure.
It is to be noted that the surgery required by Mr. Knight is by no means the only kind of surgery that the hospital will not allow to be done at its premises. Two procedures that are much more common than that requested by Mr. Knight are tubal ligation for women, and the parallel procedure for men, the vasectomy. Why? Because all these procedures are forbidden by the Catholic Church.
The Church and its adherents are free to believe what they will. But the large majority of their patients, being non-Catholic, must also conform to the dictates of this belief system.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Kathryn Corbett, Eureka
This article appears in Looking Upriver.
“(Women seeking abortion) become unmindful of the course marked out for her by Providence, she yields to the pleasures – but shrinks from the pains and responsibilities of maternity; and, destitute of all delicacy and refinement, resigns herself, body and soul, into the hands of unscrupulous and wicked men. Let not the husband of such a woman flatter himself that he possesses her affection. Nor can she in turn ever merit even the respect of a virtuous husband. She sinks into old age like a withered tree, stripped of its foliage; with the stain of blood upon her soul, she dies without the hand of affection to sooth her pillow.”
(The American Medical Association, “Report of the Committee on Criminal Abortion”, 1871, 241).
While there certainly is a lack of sensitivity in the handling of Mr.Knight, Ms. Corbett’s condemnation of St Joseph Hospital essentially for being a Catholic hospital is rather absurd. “the large majority of their patients,being non-Catholic, must also conform to the dictates of this belief system” is essentially the way it is. Mr.Knight did receive his surgery at the local non secular hospital which does not have these particular restrictions. Sensitivity and dignity are the real issues, not conformity. SJH is, and always has been a Catholic hospital. Ms. Corbett is free to visit Arcata anytime.
Are you still living according to the standards, and mores of 1871, or just trying to impress us with your “research”?