Bishops, Bodies & Medical Morality: Addressing Inequities in Reproductive Healthcare
On March 6, 2024, Call To Action hosted medical sociologist Lori Freedman, Ph.D., author of Bishops and Bodies: Reproductive Care in American Catholic Hospitals. Freedman presented her research on reproductive healthcare at U.S. Catholic hospitals, including the devastating impact the bishops’ influence and authority over medicine have had on patients, physicians, and hospital personnel.
One in six Americans receives treatment from a Catholic medical facility. However, many Americans don’t receive the same standard of care as patients at non-Catholic hospitals because of the bishops’ Ethical Religious Directives (ERDs). Developed and approved by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, these directives strictly adhere to Catholic moral theology on medicine, sexuality, and human dignity; they generally forbid pregnancy terminations and other reproductive care, such as contraception and postpartum sterilization.
After interviewing more than 100 physicians and patients, Freedman found that even though Catholic hospitals have the wealth and funding, the ERDs create a hostile, resource-poor environment that limits the agency and decision-making authority of the physicians and the patients they care for. Freedman’s work highlights the nuances of reproductive healthcare and compels us to consider the boundaries of autonomy and agency. How do Catholic hospitals disempower patients? Who makes the ultimate decision about a person’s health? Who is truly in control of their body?
About the speaker: Lori Freedman, Ph.D., is a sociologist and a Greenwall Faculty Scholar at the University of California, San Francisco. She conducts research with Advancing New Standards In Reproductive Health (ANSIRH), a program of the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at UCSF. Dr. Freedman investigates the ways in which reproductive healthcare is shaped by our social structure and medical culture. Her book, Willing and Unable: Doctors’ Constraints in Abortion Care, is a qualitative study of the challenges to integrating abortion into physician practice. Unexpected findings from those physician interviews led her to research and write about the intersection of religion and healthcare, especially in the case of Catholic-owned hospitals, with an interest in how conscientious objection in medical practice operates at the institutional level. Her latest book, Bishops and Bodies: Reproductive Care in American Catholic Hospitals, reveals how the bishops’ directives operate and how people inside Catholic hospitals navigate the resulting restrictions on medical practice. Dr. Freedman received her Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Oregon and her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Davis.
