Loosing our rights to healthcare

I respect the right of individuals and religious organisations to hold their own beliefs. But what happens when those beliefs determine which healthcare services are available to an entire community?

Loosing our rights to healthcare
Photo by Gayatri Malhotra / Unsplash

This is a serious post. Firstly because I know colleagues who have spoken out about injustice in health care and have been persecuted both professionally and personally. So I will do my best to try and raise this issue and hopefully maintain a respectful relationship with my contacts, colleagues and customers.
Have we forgotten how hard women fought for the right to choose?

For generations, women fought to have a voice.
The suffragists fought for our right to vote. Women fought for equal pay, equal opportunities, access to contraception, reproductive choice and the freedom to make decisions about their own lives and bodies.
Many of the freedoms we take for granted today were hard won. And some are still being fought for.
Which brings me to something happening in Australian healthcare that I believe deserves a much broader conversation.
Catholic healthcare provider Calvary Health Care is expanding its hospital network through the acquisition of existing private hospitals.
Calvary provides valuable healthcare services to many Australians. However, its religious and ethical framework means certain otherwise lawful healthcare services, including IVF, some reproductive procedures and voluntary assisted dying, are not provided within its facilities.
I respect the right of individuals and religious organisations to hold their own beliefs.
But what happens when those beliefs determine which healthcare services are available to an entire community?
What happens when a woman seeking a lawful reproductive healthcare procedure has fewer local options?
Or when someone nearing the end of their life finds that their preferred legal choices cannot be supported within the facility providing their care?
And what happens when the hospital involved is one of only a small number of providers serving that community?
As a Registered Nurse who has spent many years working in healthcare, I believe we must be able to discuss this without questioning anyone's personal faith.
This is not about being anti-religion. Nor is it about diminishing the care provided by thousands of dedicated professionals working in faith-based organisations.
It is about the difference between respecting religious freedom and ensuring that one organisation's religious beliefs do not unnecessarily restrict another person's healthcare choices.

Healthcare should be grounded in clinical evidence, informed consent, dignity and genuine patient choice.

How do we protect both freedom of religion and freedom of healthcare choice when essential health services are increasingly concentrated among fewer organisations?
Another Coles / Woolies scenario