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Catholic World News News Feature

Church leaders probe sterilizations done at Texas Catholic hospitals July 04, 2008

Church leaders in Texas are engaged in "intense conversations" about practice in Catholic hospitals, after anonymous whistle-blowers revealed that thousands of sterilizations had been done at Catholic institutions, Our Sunday Vistor(OSV) reports.

OSV, a national weekly Catholic newspaper, contacted the whistle-blowers' group, which had anonymously sent information to American Church leaders and journalists detailing the record of sterilizations at 23 Catholic hospitals in Texas between 2000 and 2003.

Based on official statistics filed with the state government, the report found 9,684 instances of "sterilization for contraceptive purposes." The group also found some instances of aborton, although the medical records in those cases were less clear.

Catholic hospital officials in Texas said that the state records could be misleading, "and cannot be taken to infer immoral practices." They emphasized the good work done by the Catholic hospitals. But independent medical authorities consulted by OSV said that the data submitted by the whistle-blowers seemed clearly to show thousands of cases of voluntary sterilization, done for contraceptive purposes, in gross violation of Catholic moral principles.

[For a more detailed report see the Our Sunday Visitor web site.]