INSTITUTIONAL CRUELTY

Institutional cruelty isn’t something that that gets a lot of recognition these days, but it’s out there and I wish it would get the kind of broad attention it deserves. Take the John Peter Smith Hospital in El Paso, Texas for example. That’s the hospital that put Erick Munoz and his family through hell by refusing to honor Erick’s wife, Marlise’s Advance Medical Directive to remove her brain-dead corpse from life-support equipment. Nobody, let alone a family grieving from the loss of a loved one, should be forced to resort to legal action to get a hospital to honor a legitimate medical directive, nor should any grieving family have to suffer the indignity of having a hospital refuse to release a corpse to further the hospital’s own agenda. That’s institutional cruelty.

In 2009, Sister Margaret Mary McBride of the Sisters of Mercy was an administrator on the ethics board at the Saint Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix, Arizona. A pregnant patient at the hospital was diagnosed with severe pulmonary hypertension and the Hospital’s doctors indicated that the pregnant woman would surely die if her pregnancy was allowed to continue. An abortion was the only procedure that would spare the woman’s life. Sister McBride joined in the Hospital’s ethics board’s decision to authorize the abortion. The abortion was performed and the woman lived. Subsequently, Bishop Olmstead of the Catholic Diocese of Phoenix excommunicated Sister McBride for her decision. That’s institutional cruelty.

Several years ago, a guy I knew was enrolled in a three-month trainee program at a local company. The guy had been unemployed for two years and the trainee program was his best chance of securing a meaningful job in his field of expertise. One of the requirements of the company’s trainee program was that a trainee could not refuse any work during the three-month probation period or incur any absences, including any absences for illness. That meant that the company could insist a trainee work on any of three shifts, plus work on Saturdays and Sundays. My friend’s wife was diagnosed with cancer a week after the trainee program began, but the company refused my friend’s request to adjust his shift so he could take his wife for treatment. That’s institutional cruelty.

There are plenty of similar stories out there that are just as maddening. Feel free to share yours.