Do Religious Restrictions Force Doctors to Commit Malpractice?

Do Religious Restrictions Force Doctors to Commit Malpractice? June 8, 2013
Picture this: You wake up far too early one morning because your hand is intensely painful and you don’t know why. When the pain gets worse, you go to the ER. The attending doctor, a gray-haired man, examines you, draws blood, and then tells you an unusual flesh-eating infection in your finger is putting your health at risk. He recommends amputating the hand immediately before the infection causes more harm. What he doesn’t tell you is that at this early stage the simple injection of a state-of-the art antibiotic would solve the problem. Why the omission? His hospital is managed by a self-described religious health-care ministry that forbids the use of antibiotics.
Across the United States, religious health-care corporations are absorbing once secular and independent hospitals and in the process imposing  religious restrictions that sometimes pit standard medical practice against theology. To the best of my knowledge, no religious system that is licensed to serve the general public forbids the use of antibiotics. But facilities under the direct or indirect control of Catholic bishops are providing maternity care that is tantamount to unwarranted amputation.
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