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Cross to Bear
A hospital is a hospital is a hospital . . . unless it’s a taxpayer-funded Catholic hospital in Canada. As Wendy Glauser reports in “Divine Intervention” (March / April), patients suffer when Catholic hospitals refuse to provide health care on religious grounds. People have a right to abortions, medical assistance in dying, and other procedures to which the church objects. As a biomedical ethics professor, I am appalled at how the church uses public funds to subvert patient rights. Here in Kingston, where the secular Kingston General Hospital has merged with the Catholic Hotel Dieu Hospital, those with HIV, including LGBTQ2+ people, have to seek specialist health care in the Catholic part—a troubling fact considering the church’s historical stances on queer rights and HIV/AIDS. No matter how fancily it is dressed up by the church, the truth is that ideology is trumping patient care.
