Originally published at National Catholic Register
A lawsuit filed in federal court claims that officials in an Ohio city retaliated against a Catholic hospital, violating its constitutional rights in the process, after doctors there refused to perform a drug search on a patient.
The suit, filed by Mercy Health in Lorain, Ohio, said police in August brought a “detainee” to the hospital’s emergency room and requested that doctors “perform a body cavity search” to determine if the suspect was in possession of drugs.
Doctors refused to perform the search, the suit says, because they “determined there was an unjustifiably high risk of serious bodily injury or death” if the procedure released drugs into the patient’s system.
Police attempted to force doctors to perform the search, threatening arrest and obstruction of justice if they failed to do so. The doctors continued to refuse, citing a state statute that allows doctors to “refuse to participate in any medical procedure which violates the practitioner’s right of conscience.”
Police subsequently terminated an agreement with the hospital to provide policing services to its campus. That move “thrust the safety and operation of the hospital into uncertainty,” the lawsuit says, alleging “heightened risks to the hospital, its staff, providers, patients, and community.”
The hospital in
