The UC Board of Regents is once again voting on the very bad idea of UC Health contracting with discriminatory religious hospitals. Urgent email! They vote on Wednesday!

We say “NO” (AGAIN!) to discrimination in UC health care, and “YES” to the high-quality, evidence-based care that all patients expect and deserve.

A mechanical voice but a good, short overview.

A little more than a year ago, we asked people to email the University of California Board of Regents, as they were planning to partner up the UC San Francisco Medical Center, one of the nation’s leading teaching hospitals, with Dignity Health, a Catholic hospital chain that uses religious directives to openly discriminate against women, disproportionately affecting women of color, LGBTQ patients, and those seeking end-of-life care, in order to help resolve a bedspace problem. We, the people who demand the separation of church and state in our health care, said “NO!,” and the Board backed off, then. But since then, the ACLU has discovered that every single UC Health center has contracts that impose harmful non-medical restrictions on care.

On Wednesday, the regents are going to vote on a policy which would allow UC Health, the university division that oversees six health centers 20 health professional schools, and the medical education more than fifty percent of our state’s doctors, to normalize the process of affiliating with Catholic or other entities with discriminatory religious restrictions, despite the fact that contracting with such organizations is in clear violation of CA’s constitution and state laws.

The Regent’s draft policy being voted on has guidelines that would prevent these affiliate hospitals from actually gagging UC professionals’ from counseling their patients and prescribing treatments they feel are in the patients’ best interest, at least for now… However, they are absolutely unable to ensure that those professionals can actually perform those treatments at these facilities, as hard experience shows that the Conference of Catholic Bishops will place their Ethical and Reigious Directives (ERDs) over doctor/patient decisions, even at the cost of human life.

Reading between the lines of Point #3 of the draft policy, the authors anticipate the bewilderment, humiliation and possible endangerment that people will face upon being denied legal health care on the grounds that what they need is considered “intrinsically evil.” This includes women seeking abortions, miscarriage treatment, contraception or sterilization, LGBTQ+ patients seeking gender-affirming surgeries and the terminally ill seeking euthanasia (legal since 2016).

Each University location contracting with healthcare organizations that have adopted policy-based restrictions on care must develop and implement a process to inform UC patients, faculty, staff, and trainees: (i) about such restrictions at sites to which they may be referred or assigned; (ii) that such referrals or assignments are voluntary; and (iii) and that information about alternative sites for care, practice, and training will be provided upon request.

The paragraph ends on how to relocate people who need such “restricted services,” resulting in a “stigma inconsistent with the history and dynamics of civil rights laws that ensure equal access to goods, services, and public accommodations.”

Each location must also develop a process to transfer patients who need restricted services to a UC or other location where the services can be provided.

It’s also a dry reminder of how dangerous their religious strictures are, as these facilities have to “relocate” women suffering from miscarriage emergencies, because the best practices to save their lives would be construed as an abortion by their ERD rules. The is modern “separate, but definitely not equal accommodation,” and we don’t accept it.

Action #1 – EMAIL the UC Board of Regents to oppose any UC-system health care affiliation with any religious, anti-choice, anti-LGBTQ hospital. 

Write them an email to tell them that this discussion of whether or not to allow this trojan horse of discrimination into our health system should be an easy “NO”. Use whatever of the attached sample script makes sense to you. Make it as personal as you can, by adding any stories how this type of discrimination could have or did affect you, family member or an acquaintance.

Sample email script:

(Put in “Subject” line): DRAFT Regents Policy on Affiliations with Healthcare Organizations that Have Adopted Policy-Based Restrictions on Care

Continue reading “The UC Board of Regents is once again voting on the very bad idea of UC Health contracting with discriminatory religious hospitals. Urgent email! They vote on Wednesday!”

Wed 5/29: Update on the unsuccessful “side door” incursion of a Catholic hospital into our UC medical system. Thanks to all who called and emailed!

We won! This time.  

(Original post from 5/15/19 hereYesterday, we got news that the University of California Board of Regents put aside 3 years of planning and abandoned their proposal for UCSF Medical Center to “expand their relationship” with Catholic-based Dignity Health. If the proposed partnership had passed, the health needs of women, LGBTQ people and the dying would placed in the crosshairs of religious directives from the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops. Resistance in the form of protests from UCSF faculty and staffers, a record 147 speakers at the Regent’s board meeting, a lawsuit threat from the ACLU and calls and letters from people like us, convinced the board to stop the process.

Action  –  Call/email Governor Newsom to stop all taxpayer-funded religiously-based discrimination by hospitals. All hospitals. Full stop.

We’ve heard a growing chorus of concern from multiple stakeholders over the last several weeks particularly in light of the passage of very severe anti-abortion legislation in many states and the stripping down of transgender anti-discrimination protections by the [Trump] administration.”- Vanessa Jacoby, an associate OB-GYN professor at UCSF, regarding the proposed “partnership”.

Minimal script: I’m calling from [zip code] and in light of the recent UCSF/Dignity Health issue, I want to know what Governor Newsom is going to do about Covered CA and other taxpayer-funder support to our 49 Catholic hospitals, one of which is a “sole community provider”. These hospitals systemically discriminate against the legal and common medical needs of women, the poor, minorities and our LGBTQ community.

Continue reading “Wed 5/29: Update on the unsuccessful “side door” incursion of a Catholic hospital into our UC medical system. Thanks to all who called and emailed!”

Fri 5/17: Thank our legislators for supporting H.R.5 – the Equality Act. They do George proud!

Action #1 – Thank our legislators for supporting HR. 5 – the Equality Act!

We are so lucky! Please take a moment to thank all of our elected officials (Brownly, Carbajal, Feinstein and Harris) for being cosponsors of the Equality Act [H.R. 5/S. 788], a bill that would clarify existing civil rights legislation to specifically ban discrimination against our LGBTQ citizens in employment, housing, public accommodations, jury service, education, federal programs, adoption programs and credit. It would also provide additional protection for women and POC from common forms of discrimination. This measure has unprecedented support from nearly 70 percent of Americans, more than 280 members of Congress, 165 major businesses and 288 statewide and national organizations. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has made passing the Equality Act a top priority for the new Congress, and it’s in the House today.

Minimal email script: I want to thank you for standing up for our LGBTQ friends, family and neighbors and supporting  [Rep. =  H.R. 5/Sen. = S. 788] the Equality Act.

Contact Information

Rep. Julia Brownley: email
or Rep. Salud Carbajal: email.
Senator Feinstein: email
and Senator Harris: email,
Who’s my representative/senator?: https://whoismyrepresentative.com

Action #2 – Petition for all people of faith to endorse equality for all.

Sign the Faith in Public Life “We are all Equal” Petition here. Continue reading “Fri 5/17: Thank our legislators for supporting H.R.5 – the Equality Act. They do George proud!”

Wed 5/15: CA is not immune from forced-birther madness & LGBTQ discrimination. It’s just taking the “side door” into our UC medical campuses. Urgent call/email!

Action – Write an email/letter opposing any UC-system university affiliation with any religious, anti-choice, anti-LGBTQ hospital. 

The University of California regents are deciding if they should solve a bed-space issue at UC San Francisco Medical Center, one of the nation’s leading teaching hospitals, by “affiliating” with Dignity Health, a Catholic hospital chain that uses religious directives to openly discriminate against women and LGBTQ patients. If this goes through, it could be the beginning of other UC-Catholic hospital “affiliations,” spreading intolerance into our public hospitals with our own tax dollars as fuel. All the rights and values Californians are rightly proud of mean nothing if, in our most vulnerable moment as a patient, they are not respected.

The regents are meeting May 14-16. Our Governor, Lt. Governor and Assembly Speaker are voting members. This issue is NOT on the agenda but they will be voting on it soon. Call them, and write them an email or letter to tell them that this discussion of whether or not to allow this trojan horse into our health system should be an easy “NO”. Make it as personal as you can.

Minimal script: I’m calling from [zip code] and I want [__] to know that it would be unforgivable to tie UCSF Medical Center or any taxpayer-supported hospital with Dignity Health, or any other system that discriminates and harms women, the poor, minorities and our LGBTQ community.

More script if you want it: If religious hospitals refused to treat non-white people, we would shut them down. Why do we tolerate the verifiable harm these hospitals cause women and LGBTQ people?

Continue reading “Wed 5/15: CA is not immune from forced-birther madness & LGBTQ discrimination. It’s just taking the “side door” into our UC medical campuses. Urgent call/email!”

Wed. 10/24: The GOP would like y’all to use the restroom that matches your birth certificate…Sure. No problem.

This is a photo of Jake Miller, better known by his stage name Buck Angel. He is an transgender American adult film producer and amazing motivational speaker. Because he started out life as a baby named “Susan“, proposed federal regulations might soon force him to use women’s restrooms and suffer various other indignities. All because the GOP, the party of “smaller, less intrusive government”,  just released this inhumane and unscientific pronouncement…

“The sex listed on a person’s birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a person’s sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence.”
– Department of Health and Human Services memo, according to the New York Times.

Not only does this effectively erase the existence of the 1.4 MILLION transgender American citizens, who, often from early childhood, have struggled with being born into the “wrong” body,  but it’s going to make the lives of the 1-in-1500 babies born with intersex conditions much more complicated too. Twenty-first century, people!

Continue reading “Wed. 10/24: The GOP would like y’all to use the restroom that matches your birth certificate…Sure. No problem.”

Thurs – 9/27: Last day to comment! – Tell our CA Attorney General we don’t want these guys in the middle of our most private medical decisions.

Action #1 – Write/call our Attorney General by 9/27 and say “NO”

Dignity Health and Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI) want to merge into one huge Catholic church-controlled conglomerate whose religious strictures threaten women’s lives and access to reproductive health care, along with gender-affirming care, and services for low-income communities. In Ventura County, this “Ministry Alignment Agreement” would effect St. John’s Regional Medical Center and St. John’s Pleasant Valley Hospital, removing what little leeway they have left in providing services within religious strictures. The two Catholic hospital systems have to get approval from our state attorney general before they can proceed with the merger. Let’s say “NO”.

Continue reading “Thurs – 9/27: Last day to comment! – Tell our CA Attorney General we don’t want these guys in the middle of our most private medical decisions.”

Thurs – 9/20: Meeting today at 1:00 pm! – Tell our CA Attorney General to prevent a huge Catholic hospital merger that will further endanger health care to women.

Photo: A hanger featuring a picture of Indian woman Savita Halappanavar, 31, who died of blood poisoning in a Catholic hospital in Ireland in 2012 after being refused a termination of her pregnancy, even after diagnosis of miscarriage. Ireland just overturned their anti-abortion law.

Action #1 – Go to the meeting today at 1:00 pm at Oxnard College and just say “NO” to our attorney general.

Dignity Health and Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI) want to merge into one huge Catholic church-controlled conglomerate whose religious strictures threaten women’s lives and access to reproductive health care, along with gender-affirming care, and services for low-income communities. In Ventura County, this “Ministry Alignment Agreement” would effect St. John’s Regional Medical Center and St. John’s Pleasant Valley Hospital, removing what little leeway they have left in providing services within religious strictures. The two Catholic hospital systems have to get approval from our state attorney general before they can proceed with the merger. Let’s say “NO”.

Ventura County’s public meeting is today, Thursday, September 20, 2018, beginning at 1:00 p.m., at Oxnard College, Performing Arts Building Conference Center, 4000 S. Rose Avenue, Oxnard, CA 93033. Spanish notice here. RSVP here.

Continue reading “Thurs – 9/20: Meeting today at 1:00 pm! – Tell our CA Attorney General to prevent a huge Catholic hospital merger that will further endanger health care to women.”

Stand Indivisible with our LGBTQ youth. Deadline to help them is tomorrow, June 13th.

Today marks two-years since the shooting at that took the lives of 49 people celebrating Latin Night during . Join  and others by using to share how you are challenging anti- harassment, discrimination, and violence.

Today’s action is focused on the manipulation of a questionaire from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that particularly addresses the needs of #LGBTQ youth.

Currently, they must ask if children left home because of “family conflict related to child’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.

Trump’s HHS would like to “streamline” their data reporting requirements, and “reduce burden on title IV-E agencies, by allowing them to stop asking this question. They would like to downgrade the information chain for Native American children as well, which tribes are fighting back with letters in the comments section describing how the placing of Indian children in foster care is both a failure to follow the rule of law and to protect children from identified and preventable harm. Continue reading “Stand Indivisible with our LGBTQ youth. Deadline to help them is tomorrow, June 13th.”

Fri 6/8: Come to Plaza Park tomorrow for “A Gathering to Disarm Hate”!

Between 12:00 pm and 2:00, there will be a peaceful community gathering at Plaza Park to commemorate the anniversary of the Pulse Nightclub shooting, and to educate ourselves and discuss how gun violence affects the LGBTQ+ community and other minority communities. All are welcome!

Facebook event listing here for more information.

In the spirit of “information, then action”, Indivisible Ventura, Indivisible Ojai Valley and others will be there to register voters for the November election.

Mon. – 5/7: Our judges are the last barrier we have against injustice. Tell your senator that this matters to you.

#1 – Protest the End of the “Blue Slip” Process.

Trump is packing the courts with anti-labor, anti-women’s rights, anti-workers’ rights, anti-civil rights and anti-LGBTQ rights, right-wing judges. This week Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley aim to confirm multiple federal judges as quickly as possible. They have set up a week of votes and hearings starting May 7.

To speed the process, Grassley has abandoned the “blue slip” process whereby a Senator from a nominee’s state may block an appointment. The Judiciary Committee’s ranking member, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, strongly opposed this move in the case of Seventh Circuit nominee Michael Brennan, which is being pushed forward over the objection of his home-state senator Tammy Baldwin. Feinstein has noted that if Brennan is confirmed it would be the first time in more than 30 years that a circuit court nominee was confirmed over a home-state senator’s objections. Brennan’s is one of six circuit court nominations that could be voted on during the week. Meanwhile, there are reports that a hearing will be held Wednesday for Ninth Circuit (which includes California) nominee Ryan Bounds of Oregon, for whom neither Oregon senator has returned a blue slip signaling approval for the process to advance. This action on Bounds is “an unprecedented affront to the advise-and-consent role of senators”; no circuit court nominee has ever been confirmed over objections of both home-state senators.

Minimum Script: I’m calling from [zip code] to ask Senator Feinstein to voice my outrage that Senators Grassley and McConnell are destroying the time-honored blue slip system. Continue reading “Mon. – 5/7: Our judges are the last barrier we have against injustice. Tell your senator that this matters to you.”