The announced takeover of St George public hospital in Sydney's south by the Catholic Sisters of Charity, sponsored by NSW health minister Andrew Refshauge, was quickly abandoned — for the moment anyway — because of public outrage. But the government's change of mind doesn't undo the lessons for women's health services.
The Catholic Church was not only to swallow a 102-year old public health service but also to close the women's health section of the hospital — ending the provision of contraception, abortion, sterilisation and IVF services to the community.
It was Refshauge — the leader of the ALP "left"] in NSW — who really added insult to injury when he commented in an ALP caucus meeting that women seeking these services could always "go private". His remark highlights both the point that women who have the money can always buy the services they need, and the reason that women — who often don't have the money, especially young and working-class women — need a public health service run in the interests of the community.
The interests of the community, and women in particular, don't appear to overly burden the NSW health minister. It they did, he wouldn't be turning sections of the public hospital system over to the management of religious groups — particularly those with a history of anti-woman attitudes — to render the NSW fiscal picture in a rosier light. Neither would he be driving women to find the health services they need in the for-profit health system, run also by the private sector beneficiaries of public sector "saving".
Perhaps it's not the state government's fault entirely. Federal governments of both veneers have long been cutting the funds that states rely upon to deliver health and other community services. The implications of this particular state government political disaster are horrifying when you recall Howard's plans to transfer responsibilities for health services to the states. Or maybe disgusting.
That's how a St George nurse, Jennifer Thompson (no relation) described the situation facing the public hospital "which services a vast range of cultures and religions with dignity, care and respect" and which was to be taken over by a Catholic value-laden management "lowering the care that will be provided".
By Jennifer Thompson