Calvary national chief executive Martin Bowles responds to abortion inquiry findings

The report, released last week, found there were a series of barriers to abortion access in the ACT and it said it was "problematic" that one of Canberra's major hospitals did not offer full reproductive services due to an "overriding religious ethos".

But Calvary's national chief executive Martin Bowles said he categorically rejected the suggestion that staff delivered health care with an "overriding religious ethos".

"These professional staff are committed to fair and compassionate care no matter the circumstances. I want to reassure all women in the ACT that their care needs will be responded to appropriately when attending our hospital," Mr Bowles wrote in an opinion piece in The Canberra Times.

Calvary is a Catholic organisation but part of its Bruce campus is a public hospital funded by the ACT government.

The hospital does not provide abortions but will provide treatment in emergency cases.

"Calvary does respond in situations when a mother (and/or the unborn child she carries) suffers an urgent, life threatening condition during pregnancy," Mr Bowles said.

"In these instances, and with informed patient consent, our clinicians provide medically indicated treatment, even if this treatment poses a risk to the fetus or may result in the unintended death of the unborn child."

The Assembly's standing committee on health and wellbeing included a section on Calvary Public Hospital. This section claimed the hospital did not provide a procedure, a dilation and curettage, to treat those who experience an incomplete miscarriage.

The inquiry based this conclusion on a submission in which a woman had said she had been told the hospital did not provide this procedure. But the hospital does provide the procedure.

MORE A.C.T. POLITICS NEWS:

Other submissions to the inquiry had also criticised Calvary for its religious stance.

"It is intensely problematic for the ACT to be reliant on a public hospital that will not provide termination of pregnancy services and whose management (and no doubt many staff) are opposed to providing it on religious grounds, and where those grounds come with an implicit moral judgement," one submission said.

The report also referred to a federal Senate inquiry into hospital funding from 2000 which said giving public funding to private hospitals resulted in the "blurring of the roles of the private and public sectors".

It also mentioned a case from Ireland where a woman died after attending a Catholic hospital when her waters broke at 17 to 18 weeks. The report said the doctors did not remove the pregnancy because there was a heartbeat.

Mr Bowles said the report did not indicate how this related to Calvary.

"There is no documented evidence of poor care at Calvary and there is no attempt to describe the many excellent services Calvary provides," he said.

The inquiry recommended the ACT government advocate to Calvary to provide a full range of reproductive services.

"Terminations generally do not necessarily require an acute hospital setting and to suggest that not offering elective pregnancy terminations at Calvary Public Hospital Bruce is contributing to barriers for such healthcare, is misleading by the standing committee," Mr Bowles said.

We've made it a whole lot easier for you to have your say. Our new comment platform requires only one log-in to access articles and to join the discussion on The Canberra Times website. Find out how to register so you can enjoy civil, friendly and engaging discussions. See our moderation policy here.