Providence St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka. | File photo.

###

This past October, less than a month after being sued by California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s Office for denying emergency abortion care to hospital patients, Providence-St. Joseph Health Northern California, LLC (SJH) entered into an agreement with the state, promising to follow California’s Emergency Services Law (ESL). 

Per the terms of that stipulated agreement, the Catholic operators of Eureka’s St. Joseph Hospital promised to leave abortion care decisions in the hands of its doctors. Specifically, the not-for-profit religious organization agreed to allow its treating physicians to terminate a patient’s pregnancy whenever those physicians determine that failing to do so would seriously jeopardize the patient’s health.

Now, however, SJH wants that agreement to be modified or, failing that, dissolved altogether.

In a motion filed July 22, attorneys for SJH ask the court to change the agreement to accommodate its religious beliefs. In short, SJH wants permission to apply the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services (ERD), a set of rules established by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) to govern health care practices within Catholic healthcare institutions. 

Those directives, as we’ve reported before, state in no uncertain terms, “Abortion is never permitted.” 

In their July 22 motion, SJH’s attorneys argue that the stipulated agreement “improperly interferes with the Hospital’s autonomy as a religious institution, and violates the Hospital’s First Amendment right to Free Exercise of Religion.”

Turns out, the “Most Reverend Bishop Robert Vasa,” who serves as bishop for the Diocese of Santa Rosa, found the agreement unacceptable. After reading its terms, he determined that it’s simply incompatible with those Catholic Ethical and Religious Directives.

The motion filed last month argues that the agreement goes beyond the requirements of California’s ESL, improperly giving individual physicians authority to determine hospital procedures, rather than leaving that authority where it rightly belongs — with a hospital’s board of directors.

It also alleges that the agreement violates the “church autonomy doctrine” by interfering with internal religious decisions in a way that would force the hospital to act contrary to its Catholic mission and potentially lose its Catholic status.

Protesters gathered outside the Humboldt County Courthouse in February to support Anna Nusslock, the Eureka chiropractor at the center of the Attorney General’s lawsuit against Providence-St. Joseph Health. | File photo by Andrew Goff.

The AG’s Office Pushes Back

On Friday, Bonta’s office filed a brief asking the court to uphold and enforce the agreement. A deal’s a deal, the office’s attorneys argue, and this one in particular is an unambiguous contract that SJH voluntarily entered into with the help of its own legal counsel.

The stipulated agreement guaranteed “that the women of Humboldt County would be able to access emergency abortion care when needed to save the life and health of patients,” the brief says.

“SJH now seeks to avoid its obligations under the agreement and the Court’s order, upending the status quo that has protected patients since the inception of this case and putting the women of Humboldt County back in harms’ way.”

The state’s lawsuit, as you may recall, focuses in particular on the case of Anna Nusslock, a Eureka chiropractor who was just 15 weeks pregnant with twins when she arrived at Providence-St. Joseph Hospital hemorrhaging and in severe pain. 

“Despite the immediate threat to her life and health, and despite the fact her pregnancy was no longer viable, Providence refused to treat her,” Bonta’s office said in a press release. Care providers instead sent Nusslock north to Mad River Community Hospital, which has since closed its birthing center. “On the way out the door, Providence handed Nusslock a bucket and towels ‘in case something happens in the car,’” the suit alleges.

In the brief filed Friday, the AG’s Office says SJH’s latest motion improperly “pivots” to another agreement altogether: the Conditions of Consent issued by the Attorney General way back in 2016 when Providence Health & Services merged with St. Joseph Health. 

Indeed, SJH’s motion says that in those conditions of consent, “the AG expressly agreed and mandated that the Hospital would continue to apply the ERDs on a case-by-case basis at least through 2027.”

Bonta’s office replies that even if that were true, “it would change nothing.” The Attorney General is in charge of enforcing the law, and in California, the ESL is the law.

Furthermore, the AG’s Office says California’s bar on the corporate practice of medicine means that doctors, not boards of directors, should determine when a patient needs emergency care. As for the argument that the stipulated agreement violates the hospital’s First Amendment right to free exercise of religion, Bonta’s office notes that Judge Timothy Canning already rejected that argument, finding that the ESL is both neutral and generally applicable.

“In support of its [latest] motion, SJH put forward a written policy detailing when it will allow its physicians to terminate a pregnancy,” the AG’s Friday filing says. That hospital policy says a doctor can only perform an abortion if the death of the woman and child is otherwise “certain.” (In the brief, the word “certain” is in quotes and bolded.) That policy is “flatly inconsistent” with the ESL, Bonta’s office says.

“Accepting SJH’s position would therefore not merely relieve them of the obligations they voluntarily accepted at the outset of this case, it would give them carte blanche to ignore the ESL to the detriment of their pregnant patients, setting a dangerous precedent for other hospitals throughout the State,” the brief argues.

It goes on to address the specific local stakes should Judge Canning grant SJH’s motion.

“Dissolving the Stipulation and allowing SJH to impose its policy would have immediate impacts on the lives and health of pregnant patients, especially given that SJH is now the only option for the women of Humboldt,” it says. 

The court should not modify or dissolve the stipulated agreement, the AG’s Office says.

The Outpost left a phone message this morning for Providence’s media relations person but had not heard back by the time this post was published. 

The next hearing in this case is scheduled for August 29 at 10:30 a.m. in Courtroom 4 of the Humboldt County Courthouse.

DOCUMENTS

###

PREVIOUSLY