Could Schenectady County be the first NY State County to have no hospitals providing abortions? We can only hope, but the murderers are ringing the gong.

Based on an article in today’s Times-Union it appears that the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany is taking a firm stand on the issue of hospital mergers. The Times-Union does a pretty good job of providing the contrast between affirming life and engaging in the business of death.

See: Merger poses clash of values: Abortion issue splits Catholic St. Clare’s, secular Ellis

When Troy’s Leonard Hospital merged with St. Mary’s Hospital more than a decade ago, Leonard’s doctors suddenly were prohibited from writing prescriptions for birth control pills.

Likewise, the proposed merger of Schenectady’s St. Clare’s Hospital, a Catholic institution, and secular Ellis Hospital raises an array of conflicts over institutional values, including policies on abortion, birth control and when a feeding tube can be removed.

Capital Region obstetrical doctors expressed doubt Wednesday that St. Clare’s and Ellis can merge their values. They also doubted that the institutions, merged or not, could handle the increase of volume if Niskayuna’s Bellevue Woman’s Hospital is forced to close.

The hospital-closing commission, also known as the Berger Commission, recommended merging Ellis and St. Clare’s and closing Bellevue, which has a 40-bed maternity ward and delivers 2,200 babies a year. Ellis Hospital, a 368-bed hospital, closed its maternity ward eight years ago. St. Clare’s Hospital, a 200-bed Roman Catholic hospital, has a 12-bed maternity ward and delivers 800 babies a year.

St. Clare’s does not perform abortions, while Ellis and Bellevue allow them. Bellevue has performed 180 abortions this year, according to the hospital administration. The number of abortions performed at Ellis was not available Wednesday.

The Berger Commission gave St. Clare’s and Ellis a deadline of December 2007 to merge, and if they fail to, one must close.

“It’s probably not going to work because of the religious background,” said Dr. David Cryns, a Latham OB/GYN doctor. “I think St. Clare’s will have to close. I don’t think the diocese will cave.”

The religious differences and the union issues — Ellis nurses are unionized and St. Clare’s are not — will be difficult to surmount, said Dr. Elaine Cheon-Lee, who is chief of obstetrics at St. Clare’s.

“Those are tough issues to resolve and there’s not a lot of middle ground,” Cheon-Lee said.

Dr. Fe Mondragon, of Mondragon McGrinder Medical Associates in Schenectady and Clifton Park, said if St. Clare’s policies prevail, options for women in Schenectady will be minimized.

The U.S. Conference of Bishops dictates health care policies at Catholic hospitals like St. Clare’s and St. Peters in Albany in a document called “The Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services.”

The document lays out 72 rules for Catholic institutions that encourage serving the poor and administering to the spiritual needs of patients but prohibit artificial fertilization, tubal ligation, vasectomies, the use of condoms or birth control and abortions.

Bishop Howard J. Hubbard of the Diocese of Albany chided the Berger Commission at a hearing before the state Senate Health Committee on Friday for not protecting religious values in the proposed mergers.

“Religiously-sponsored hospitals and nursing homes provide a unique and distinctively different approach to the planning for and delivery of health care services, especially in ministering to the spiritual component of illness and recovery,” he said. “We are concerned that this is a fundamental element of care that was not mentioned, or even alluded to in the criteria.”

Meanwhile, an Ellis Hospital spokeswoman said Wednesday that Ellis is committed to providing health care services for women in the Schenectady area.

“A hospital merger is like a marriage, and all of the issues that come up in a marriage come up in hospital mergers,” said Lois Uttley, director of the MergerWatch Project. “How will the kids be raised, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish? When the two partners are different, there can be quite a lot of questions about that.”

No, it is not. Neither in business nor in marriage should one be required to loose his or her sole for the purpose of attaining the goal. Better to be single or out-of-business than to loose your everlasting soul.

MergerWatch, an affiliate of the Family Planning Advocates of New York, was created in response to the loss of contraceptive services after the Troy hospitals merger.

“The health care landscape is littered with divorces of hospital mergers that failed,” Uttley said. “A lot of them failed over these cultural and religious issues.”

MergerWatch does not oppose the consolidation of religious and secular institution, but it advocates for protecting women’s health care services. That can be done, Uttley said, by creating a “hospital within a hospital.” In Austin, Texas, for example, one floor of a Catholic-run hospital is incorporated under a different name. It has its own staff and its own funding, and doctors there can offer birth control, abortions, tubal ligations, and family planning advice.

“People in Schenectady need to go into this with their eyes open,” Uttley said. “When the community is aware that a merger is being proposed and gets a chance to have a say, then very creative solutions can be devised.”

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Again, being creative is wonderful, but being creative doesn’t require that you loose your soul. The ultimate solution to any problem is the solution that is consistent with faith in Christ and His Church. That’s the sort of faith we must live by.