register |  login
› ARVADA
Loading Ad
Visit Other Hubs:
ADVERTISEMENT
Loading Tower
RECENT STORIES

Readers sound off about proposed Exempla sale
Contributed by: Seth Davis/YourHub.com staff on 12/11/2007

YourHub.com has received several letters about the proposed sale of Exempla Lutheran Medical Centerto Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth Health Systems, which you can read below. You can submit your own letter by registering and posting a comment below, posting your own letter to the editor on this site, e-mailing daviss@yourhub.com or calling 303-954-2457.

Arvada resident Kevin Jones said the proposed merger is fine by him.

Sale of Exempla limits patients' treatment options
As a woman and longtime Wheat Ridge resident, I am dismayed to learn that the sale of Lutheran to Sisters of Charity will limit accessibility to women's health. It will also directly affect end-of-life decisions. I guess the only choice is to change insurance (I have Kaiser, so I go where they say), move or keep a loved one at home near the end.

My doctor could not do a tubal ligation at St. Anthony's North due to their religious beliefs at St. Anthony, so my doctor performed the procedure at Avista in Louisville. At the time, my insurance as a federal employee let me go to any hospital. I won't have to make that choice again, but if I or one of my family members wanted a feeding tube removed, what choices do we have? Go elsewhere, pay out of pocket, do without, stay home.

The attorney general needs to block this sale. How are we different from the regimes the president is always harping about if we limit accessible health services to only those with "other" options?

Cheryl Brungardt
Wheat Ridge

Sale of Exempla would be more like a hostile takeover
Hospitals serve the entire community and are not considered private institutions. Sometimes people have a choice of which hospital to use, but more often they are taken by ambulance for emergency treatment, or they go to the hospital their physician recommends.

To deny any type of care to any patient because of religious bias is unprofessional and un-American. Our country was founded on the principle of separation of church and state for both the benefit of the church and the benefit of the state. Recently, those boundaries have been crossed as evangelical Christians and others who fear death infringe on the personal rights of others.

Americans are also supposed to abide by equal treatment regardless of race, sex or national origin. Denying health care to women who want tubal ligations or abortions is clearly prejudicial against women and is unlawful.

People who are ill and in need of hospitalization don't need religion forced on them by means of denying care that patient wants or needs. I urge all citizens to petition their physicians and their political representatives to block the Sisters of Charity organization.

Kathleen Flynn
Arvada

Catholic morals aren't a fit for everyone when it comes to health care
Kevin Jones gave a layman's explanation of why the Sisters of Charity and their Catholic base should be embraced as potential owners of Exempla hospitals. He offers their "higher" code of ethics and hopes that the rest of us would be principled enough to accept doctrines that have evolved over "centuries of considered ethical thought."

First, let's not confuse ethics with morals. Human behavior is typically guided by legal, ethical and moral precepts. Generally, legal guidelines come from governments, ethical guidelines come from institutions and professions, and moral guidelines come from churches, i.e., a divine being of some sort. Currently, no Colorado statute prohibits tubal ligations, so it's not illegal. Additionally, no medical profession has defined performing tubal ligations as unethical, so it's not unethical.

Consequently, we're being asked to ignore our own legal and ethical guidelines and accept the Catholic church as our moral compass. Here, Jones says that we need not worry because of the "centuries of considered ethical thought" that surely preceded the path chosen by the Catholic church.

To help us with this "considered thought," Kevin gives us the analogy between a severed optic nerve and a tubal ligation. Well, in the first case the result is blindness, and in the second case the result is ... well, no more babies. Not many people are currently choosing voluntary blindness, but many women would like to end the chance of pregnancy.

And this brings us back to not legal or ethical considerations, but Kevin's desire to have his church prescribe our medical decisions based on the moral teachings of the Catholic church, which, in this case, would like women to have as many babies as their bodies can tolerate: hardly a testament of centuries of learned thought.

But it does bring to mind a statement made by Martin Luther, once a "learned thinker in the Catholic church":

"Women should remain at home, sit still, keep house, and bear and bring up children ... If a woman grows weary and, at last, dies from childbearing, it matters not. Let her die from bearing, she is there to do it."

Almost makes a person want to poke his eye out.

Ed Tyrrell
Arvada

Parker resident Fran Miller weighed in on the subject, saying that the sale makes sense to him.

Jeff Petersen, of Arvada, says Fran Miller's letter lacks compassion.


SUBMIT COMMENT

Rate the above story



Current Rating
Based on 1 user ratings.

Talk Back : submit comments to the story

*Note: you need to log-in to add a comment or rating.

CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Seth Davis has posted 1404 stories and 211 comments since joining on 9/14/2005. Seth Davis's average story rating is 4.69.
SAVE AND SHARE THIS STORY
STORY RSS FEEDS
WANT TO WRITE FOR YOURHUB.COM?
Want to see the stories you write and the photos you shoot featured in the YourHub.com Thursday print section available all over the Front Range and with home subscriptions of the Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post? All you have to do is register, then post a story or column, start a blog or tell everyone what events are happening in town. We will print the best stories, columns, event listings, photos and blog entries in our print sections.

ADVERTISEMENT
Loading Ad

Loading Ad
ADVERTISEMENT
Loading Ad

This YourHub.com community is produced by The Denver Newspaper Agency
Web Development and Channel Analytics provided by Indigio

terms of use //  privacy policy
the staff //  advertise //  help & faq
buy photos