Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center in Southeastern Arizona has recently partnered with Carondelet Health Network, a Catholic not-for-profit health care system that follows the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. Therefore, as a condition of the partnership, the hospital will stop performing sterilization procedures. The CEO of Sierra Vista insists that ‘we are not taking away anyone’s rights,” and states that these procedures can be done in a doctor’s office.

The obstetricians that perform tubal ligations at Sierra Vista (200 were performed in 2009) are up in arms and at least one is considering moving her practice out of Sierra Vista, and several are contemplating seeking privileges in other facilities because of this decision. Some OB doctors said that they would not perform a tubal in their offices and prefer a hospital setting. It is an invasive procedure and has its risks.

For me, this is yet another assault on a woman’s right to choose her preferred method of birth control. Sure, women can still choose sterilization, but must now recover from childbirth and then have yet another event to recover from thereafter. For those women who have c-sections, this is especially terrible as it’s relatively simple to quickly perform a tubal immediately after the baby is born as to avoid a second invasive surgery. It makes the most sense and is safer for the mother. Denying a woman this choice is indeed taking away her rights. It’s not even as if the women of Cochise County can even go anywhere else in their county to birth because according to the article, the other hospitals in the county don’t deliver babies.

The other problems here are these. There are other reproductive issues that the Catholic church takes a strong stand on. Birth control and abortion being two hot-button issues. Where will Carondelet draw the line? Will doctors be permitted to save a pregnant woman’s life at the expense of her unborn child if such a medical emergency arises? Will a woman be permitted to have an abortion if a medical condition related to pregnancy is threatening her life? Will doctors who offer women other methods of birth control be barred from providing that service to women and still be able to retain privileges at Sierra Vista? These are all rights and circumstances that women and their doctors have been accustomed to receiving-and rightfully deserve under the law, and in my opinion, under moral law. Denying women medical procedures because of religious beliefs of the entity running the hospital sets a dangerous precedent and who knows what other lines will be crossed.

Cochise County has 19 people per square mile and a total population of 129,000 people. This is a rural place. These women would have to go to Tucson to deliver and also receive a tubal. Tucson is 70 miles away.

There are currently 223 federal NuvaRing suits pending in the MDL, with another 90 cases filed in various state courts throughout the United States. All of the claims involve allegations that problems with NuvaRing caused women to suffer blood-clot related injuries, such as pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis (DVT), stroke, heart attack or sudden death.

I decided to look and see the safety records of other hormonal birth control methods to compare. Many have been recalled and of the ones on the market, it seems that none are 100% safe and many (if not all) have at least one death associated with its use.

I found one other good article citing several possible reasons why death by contraception is not being discussed. Although I do not agree with her pro-life stance, I do think that she makes some excellent points about the roles that pharmaceutical companies might play, and the fact that there are no questions relating to hormonal contraception in the U.S. Standard Certificate of Death (even though over 21,000 women die of cardiac arrest each year).

I did a little research to find out how many people have to die before a product is pulled off the market. For Cisapride (used for gastric reflux) it was 300 deaths and 16 000 injuries. Vioxx, 10,000 cases of injury. I wonder if we put all the injuries related to hormonal contraception together if we might hit these numbers. My guess is yes.

So what’s a girl to do? That’s a great question- because as I pointed out in a recent article about birth control in Africa, women need effective birth control. They single handedly control the health and well being of their societies and countries by controlling their fertility. But, if what we are taking isn’t safe, then what do we do? It’s a large and scary question.

When it comes to Africa and AIDS, George W. Bush has enjoyed praise even from liberals. From some estimations, this was the one thing in his abysmal presidency that he actually got right. He has poured billions of dollars into AIDS relief and is considered to have saved millions of lives by supplying the AIDS drugs that are prolonging lives all over Africa. He did all this pretty quietly, without a lot of publicity and fanfare. He did it because his ‘faith’ told him to-in the form of lobbyists from Christian missionary groups working in Africa.

The problem with his approach is that because it was ‘faith based’, he specifically prohibited groups from spending any of it on family planning services or counseling programs. He eliminated all funding for birth control and instead proposed abstinence.

The problem of too many babies in Africa is now being called epidemic. There are several reasons why. Most of these women already live in extreme poverty and nearly all their efforts to control their own fertility have now been undermined. In surveys, 41% of African women wanted to use birth control, yet only around 18% do. Most cultures in Africa are heavily influenced by the Roman Catholic Church and their husbands are of the mindset that a large family is a sign of status-irregardless of their ability to support them. Abortion is illegal. Because of the lack of birth control, the number of babies being born with AIDS is extremely high, a whole can of worms that was predicted by the World Health Organization (WHO) and other international health agencies “all of whom touted contraception as a crucial method of preventing births of babies being infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.”

Before “W”, the US government gave lots of $$ for birth control, allowing women in some of the world’s poorest countries to exercise greater control over their fertility to spite what their husbands said or wanted. Now schools are overcrowded, children are not being fed, families don’t have enough land or resources to care for these kids, and many of them are born sick.

This is all because conservatives equate birth control with abortion and deny women the right to control their fertility. It’s a devastating state of affairs that Obama is already working on fixing. Some of the billions of dollars given to Africa to fight AIDS must be appropriated for birth control or an entire continent’s population growth may spiral out of control.