Louise Melling, ACLU Deputy Legal Director
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When you show up at a hospital in need of medical aid, you expect that the doctors and nurses will figure out what's wrong, explain to you the options for treating it, and give you the best medical care possible.
That's what Tamesha Means thought, until she showed up at Mercy Health hospital.
Tamesha was only 18 weeks pregnant when her water broke prematurely. She rushed to Mercy Health—the only hospital within half an hour of where she lived.
The hospital did not tell her then that she had little chance of a successful pregnancy, that she was at risk if she tried to continue the pregnancy, and that the safest course of care in her case was to end it. They didn't tell her these things: the hospital simply sent her home.
She came back the next day, bleeding and in pain, and again was turned away. Again, she was not told of the risks of trying to continue the pregnancy, or what her treatment options were. Tamesha returned yet a third time—by now suffering a significant infection. The hospital was prepared to send her away once more, when she started to deliver.
Tamesha's baby died within hours of being born—at 18 weeks, it never had a chance.
How could something like this happen? Because Mercy Health is Catholic-sponsored, it is required to adhere to the "Ethical and Religious Directives," a set of rules created by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) to govern the provision of medical care at Catholic-run hospitals.
At hospitals like Mercy Health, these religious directives are put above medical standards of care.