Category: Religious Health Directives

Reinforcing the Separation of Church and State in Kentucky.

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Judge rules that Kentucky must recognize legal same-sex marriages.

Last week the Commonwealth of Kentucky made headlines all around the country when Federal Judge John G. Heyburn II ruled that Kentucky’s laws and constitutional amendment prohibiting the recognition of legal same-sex marriages performed in other states were unconstitutional. (Bourke v. Beshear) We are not the last state to recognize the wrongs of the past, but sadly we were not the first. In its recent Windsor decision, the US Supreme Court recently came to the same conclusion. Those institutions who currently discriminate against such marriages no longer can use the lame excuse that they are only following the law to cover what for at least some is simple institutional intolerance.

I find it both ironic yet predictable that some folks locally and nationally rail against Judge Heyburn’s decision concerning same-sex marriage as judicial activism and an attack on the Constitution even as they admit to not having read it!  I found in the language of the opinion the most logical, eloquent, and powerful arguments in support of our Constitutions in recent memory. It will be instructive to see how local institutions change their existing policies. I asked KentuckyOne Health how they plan to modify their exclusionary policies for their Kentucky employees, but received no response yet. Perhaps KentuckyOne is waiting for the decision to become final at which time they they will have no choice but to change? Continue reading “Reinforcing the Separation of Church and State in Kentucky.”

How Much Information Is There In Informed Consent at UofL?

A Retraction.research-man

Is informed consent being censored?

I take some pride that I have not, until now, had to retract anything of factual substance that I have written in these pages despite the fact that I have always invited others to offer corrections or to point out misinterpretations. I freely admit to offering a healthy amount of speculation about matters that turned out otherwise. However, I always identify speculation as such and do so in the interest of bringing a variety of issues into the arena of public discussion. However, I must now retract my earlier article congratulating KentuckyOne Health and the Catholic Church for joining the 21st century with respect to their apparent changing views on justified contraception and termination of pregnancy. I was wrong.

Continue reading “How Much Information Is There In Informed Consent at UofL?”

KentuckyOne Health Confronts Legitimate Role of Contraception and Abortion in Healthcare.

Catholic Church enters 20th century on reproductive health by passively accepting justifiability of contraception and abortion in its institutions.

See Partial Retraction

Background.
The Roman Catholic Church, Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI), and KentuckyOne Health (KOH) most certainly had only an incomplete understanding of what they were getting into when they assumed management earlier this year of a secular University of Louisville Hospital and also effective control of the academic medical practices of the University’s faculty and trainees. These religious organizations must now also learn how to deal with contemporary academic research standards. KentuckyOne is promoting its intention to participate in the University’s clinical research enterprise. Indeed, Jewish Hospital has been doing so for many years. Increasing clinical research is also a prominent part of the UofL’s commercial research enterprise.

As Catholic organizations, CHI and KentuckyOne expect University employees, physicians, trainees, and patients to accept its religious tenants with respect to medical care. Indeed, trainees are now required to attest that they have received training about those religious directives. I suspect these faith-based organizations were unaware of the extent to which the Church itself was going to have to, in turn, confront and modify some of its traditional dogma in order to participate in the clinical practices and research of a modern, science-based University and Medical School. By entering the contemporary world of research; CHI, KentuckyOne, and their supervising Catholic Church have tacitly acquiesced to the reality that contraception and abortion are integral to scientific and medical standards of honest and ethical clinical research. Even if unintended, this is a break-through of historic proportions in the history of religion. I congratulate the Catholic Church for allowing its medical mission to enter the 21st Century. Allow me to explain how the Church is being forced to confront and partially alter its previously sacrosanct medieval dogma. Continue reading “KentuckyOne Health Confronts Legitimate Role of Contraception and Abortion in Healthcare.”

The Ides of March Are Upon Us.

The Bishops are coming!
The Bishops are coming!

The saga of the corporate takeover of the University of Louisville Hospital and most of the clinical operations of the University’s Medical School by Catholic Health Initiatives and KentuckyOne Health has been going on for so long that I have plumb run out of clever tag lines!  Today’s report by Laura Unger of the Courier-Journal reminds us that March 1 is the official “integration day” on which KentuckyOne Health formally takes the reins from the University. Continue reading “The Ides of March Are Upon Us.”