American Civil Liberties Union

Earlier this month, the ACLU asked the federal government to ensure that religiously affiliated hospitals provide emergency reproductive health care as required by the Emergency Medical Conditions and Women in Labor Act and the Conditions of Participation for hospitals receiving Medicare and Medicaid funds (PDF). Our letter was prompted by a situation in Phoenix, Arizona, where St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center, a Catholic-owned hospital, provided a life-saving abortion to a young mother of four who was dying from pulmonary hypertension.

A Catholic-owned hospital in Arizona recently made national headlines for demoting a nun for approving an abortion for a pregnant mother of four to save her life. While most of us would like to think this was an isolated incident, based on the Catholic Church's response and other reports, it wasn't and it won't be. Today the ACLU asked the federal government to investigate and take action against these hospitals. Denying such care is not only unethical, it also violates federal law. Our government should ensure that emergency rooms that open their doors to the public provide all necessary emergency care, including abortion. No hospital, religiously affiliated or otherwise, has a right to impose its beliefs to deny anyone necessary emergency medical care.

On Monday, a federal district court in Massachusetts ruled that an ACLU challenge to the government's use of taxpayer dollars to impose religious doctrine on victims of human trafficking may go forward. The decision is a victory for women's health and for the basic constitutional principle that federal dollars cannot be used to favor one religious perspective over all others.

After six years of protracted litigation, women in Maricopa County Jail — you know, the one run by the infamous Sherriff Joe Arpaio — have finally (hopefully) secured their constitutional right to obtain an abortion. The case began in 2004 when a woman, referred to under the pseudonym Jane Doe, was in jail and sought an abortion. Jail officials denied her request, and told her that she had to go to court and have a judge order the jail to transport her for an abortion. She tried this route, but the court denied her request. That's when the ACLU filed a legal challenge on her behalf, both to ensure that she receive a safe, timely abortion and to strike down Arpaio's unconstitutional policy. We won. Arpaio appealed. And we won again. Arpaio appealed again, to the Arizona Supreme Court, which refused to review the decision. And Arpaio appealed again, this time to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to hear the case.