By John Norton

Encouraging 'ethics audits' of Catholic hospitals

Longtime OSV contributor Ann Carey has been working on our cover story on sterilization in Catholic hospitals for months now.

And I think you'll agree that it shows.

Her research is exhaustive. She draws on a broad range of sources, including John Haas, a moral theologian and bioethicist who has been one of the most closely engaged with this issue as a consultant to bishops and Catholic health providers.

Haas says bishops today are exercising more ethical oversight of hospitals than in the past. But there's still much more to be done, and on an ongoing basis.

"Hospitals already have medical audits and financial audits, and they should have ethics audits, too," he says in a can't-miss interview on Page 12.

Other components of the story include: on Page 3, a look at the whistleblower report, based on state data, showing that Catholic hospitals in Texas performed nearly 10,000 sterilizations between 2000 and 2003.

The researchers who compiled the data remain anonymous because of fears of employment retribution, but we interviewed one of them multiple times over the course of several weeks.

The story continues in our In Focus section beginning on Page 9, where we take you inside four decades of misunderstandings and missteps over implementation of the U.S. bishops' ethical directives in Catholic health care institutions.

As Carey reports, the stakes are very high: The failure of some hospitals to resist the admittedly significant financial, staff, societal and sometimes governmental pressure to provide sterilizations reverberates for those who still manage to operate ethically.

The In Focus section includes a chart with the Texas data, and a brief interview with an obstetrician/gynecologist who serves as a regional director for the Catholic Medical Association on her experience with sterilizations in Catholic facilities.

On Page 12, an article titled "Ongoing confusion" charts continuing misunderstandings, and some evidence of sterilizations, at several of the hospitals named in the report. This is based on data publicly available (with some digging) on a health care trade group's website, and which was the starting point for Carey's investigation.

And if you are a little unclear on the difference between "indirect" (allowed) and "direct" (not allowed) sterilization, you won't be when you finish reading this issue. The difference is fairly simple, but you'd be surprised at how many people get it wrong.

Our coverage closes with our editorial on Page 19, in which we hail this report, despite the pain of scandal, as a welcome opportunity for bishops around the country to reassess their oversight -- and for health care institutions to reconnect to the fullness of their Catholic identity.