The California Medical Association is hoping to interfere in a lawsuit concerning whether San Francisco-based Dignity Health will allow physicians in its 32 hospitals to provide tubal ligation procedures to female patients, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Last December, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against Dignity Health, claiming the system is unlawfully denying women's rights to contraception.
Since more than half of Dignity Health's hospitals are affiliated with the Catholic Church, they're bound by the church's religious regulations, which forbid sterilization, contraception, abortion and reproductive assistance technology.
The CMA disagrees with Dignity's prohibitions. "Dignity Health knowingly is subjecting female patients to substandard care in direct contravention of their physicians' sound medical judgment," the CMA's lawyers said, according to the report.
Dignity said it's dissatisfied with the CMA's decision.
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