By John Tomasic Lori Stodghill was 31-one years old, seven-months pregnant with twin
boys and feeling sick when she arrived at St. Thomas More hospital in
CaƱon City on New Year’s Day 2006. She was vomiting and short of breath
and she passed out as she was being wheeled into an examination room.
Medical staff tried to resuscitate her but, as became clear only later, a
main artery feeding her lungs was clogged and the clog led to a massive
heart attack. Stodghill’s obstetrician, Dr. Pelham Staples, who also
happened to be the obstetrician on call for emergencies that night,
never answered a page. His patient died at the hospital less than an
hour after she arrived and her twins died in her womb.
In the aftermath of the tragedy, Stodghill’s husband Jeremy, a prison
guard, filed a wrongful-death lawsuit on behalf of himself and the
couple’s then-two-year-old daughter Elizabeth. Staples should have made
it to the hospital, his lawyers argued, or at least instructed the
frantic emergency room staff to perform a caesarian-section. The
procedure likely would not have saved the mother, a testifying expert
said, but it may have saved the twins.
The lead defendant in the case is Catholic Health Initiatives, the
Englewood-based nonprofit that runs St. Thomas More Hospital as well as
roughly 170 other health facilities in 17 states. Last year, the
hospital chain reported national assets of $15 billion. The
organization’s mission, according to its promotional literature, is to
“nurture the healing ministry of the Church” and to be guided by
“fidelity to the Gospel.” Toward those ends, Catholic Health facilities
seek to follow the Ethical and Religious Directives of the Catholic
Church authored by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Those rules
have stirred controversy for decades, mainly for forbidding non-natural
birth control and abortions. “Catholic health care ministry witnesses to
the sanctity of life ‘from the moment of conception until death,’” the
directives state. “The Church’s defense of life encompasses the unborn.”
The directives can complicate business deals for Catholic Health, as
they can for other Catholic health care providers, partly by spurring
political resistance. In 2011, the Kentucky attorney general and
governor nixed a plan
in which Catholic Health sought to merge with and ultimately gain
control of publicly funded hospitals in Louisville. The officials were
reacting to citizen concerns that access to reproductive and end-of-life
services would be curtailed. According to The Denver Post,
similar fears slowed the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth’s plan over
the last few years to buy out Exempla Lutheran Medical Center and
Exempla Good Samaritan Medical Center in the Denver metro area.
But when it came to mounting a defense in the Stodghill case,
Catholic Health’s lawyers effectively turned the Church directives on
their head. Catholic organizations have for decades fought to change
federal and state laws that fail to protect “unborn persons,” and
Catholic Health’s lawyers in this case had the chance to set precedent
bolstering anti-abortion legal arguments. Instead, they are arguing
state law protects doctors from liability concerning unborn fetuses on
grounds that those fetuses are not persons with legal rights.
As Jason Langley, an attorney with Denver-based Kennedy Childs,
argued in one of the briefs he filed for the defense, the court “should
not overturn the long-standing rule in Colorado that the term ‘person,’
as is used in the Wrongful Death Act, encompasses only individuals born
alive. Colorado state courts define ‘person’ under the Act to include
only those born alive. Therefore Plaintiffs cannot maintain wrongful
death claims based on two unborn fetuses.”
The Catholic Health attorneys have so far won decisions from Fremont
County District Court Judge David M. Thorson and now-retired Colorado
Court of Appeals Judge Arthur Roy.
In September, the Stodghills’ Aspen-based attorney Beth Krulewitch
working with Denver-based attorney Dan Gerash appealed the case to the
state Supreme Court. In their petition they argued that Judges Thorson
and Roy overlooked key facts and set bad legal precedent that would open
loopholes in Colorado’s malpractice law, relieving doctors of
responsibility to patients whose viable fetuses are at risk.
Whether the high court decides to take the case, kick it back down to
the appellate court for a second review or accept the decisions as they
stand, the details of the arguments the lawyers involved have already
mounted will likely renew debate about Church health care directives and
trigger sharp reaction from activists on both sides of the debate
looking to underline the apparent hypocrisy of Catholic Health’s
defense.
At press time, Colorado Health did not return messages seeking
comment. The Stodghills’ attorneys declined to comment while the case
was still being considered for appeal.
The Supreme Court is set to decide whether to take the case in the next few weeks.
HuffingtonPost
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