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Loading ...Fresno hospital bars lesbian from visiting partner
06.15.2009 6:01pm EDT
(San Francisco) After a lesbian was barred from visiting her partner and giving advice about her treatment at a Fresno hospital, the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Center for Lesbian Rights sent a letter to the hospital today urging that it adopt policy changes respecting same-sex relationships.
“We just couldn’t believe this was happening to us. This was the nightmare that we hoped we’d never have to live through,” said Teresa Rowe, who grew up in Clovis, California, but now lives in the Bay Area with her partner of four years, Kristin Orbin.“Unfortunately, because Kristin suffers from epilepsy, trips to the hospital are pretty common for us, which is why we filled out the legal paper work to make sure I would be able to be with her and make
emergency decisions about her care. But the hospital wouldn’t let me see Kristen and ignored my advice about her treatment. They ended up giving her the exact medication I repeatedly asked them not to give her.”
On May 29, 2009, Rowe and Orbin attended the “Meet in the Middle” rally in support of marriage for same-sex couples in Fresno. After the couple completed a 14-mile march in 90 degree heat, Orbin collapsed in a seizure. The couple experienced hostility from the ambulance driver, but Rowe was ultimately allowed to accompany Orbin to Community Regional Medical Center in Fresno. However, when the couple got the hospital, the driver would not allow Rowe to accompany Orbin into the emergency room even though Orbin had been in and out of consciousness, and Rowe was familiar with her medical history and care.
Rowe repeatedly asked hospital employees to allow her to see Orbin and talk to a physician about her care but was refused. She volunteered to have Orbin’s legal paperwork naming Rowe as her health care agent faxed to the hospital but was told that it wouldn’t do any good.
When she asked that she at least be allowed to pass along the message that Orbin not be given the
drug Ativan, she was told the message would be conveyed. If the message was given to those treating Orbin, it was ignored because Orbin was given the drug, which she didn’t need and which causes her unnecessary pain.
Meanwhile, when she was awake, Orbin was also asking to be allowed to see Rowe. Although they were both told that no visitors were allowed in the area where Orbin was being treated, other patients were receiving guests. After being separated for several hours, Orbin finally saw her doctor. She
complained to him, and Rowe was eventually allowed to be with her.
“Until the California Supreme Court upheld Prop 8, Kristen and Teresa were planning to get married. In this climate, hospitals must be especially diligent to protect same-sex couples from discrimination,” said Elizabeth Gill, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California. “As these events so painfully demonstrate, no matter what hoops same-sex couples jump through to
protect their relationships, these kinds of horrible things will continue to happen as long as couples are denied the recognition and respect that only comes with marriage.”
The letter sent by the ACLU and NCLR charges that it was a violation of state law for the hospital to discriminate against the couple based on their sexual orientation, as well as to refuse to recognize Rowe’s legal authority, which was authorized by Orbin’s advance health care directive.
The letter also notes that hospitals must post and follow a patient’s bill of rights that bars discrimination based on sexual orientation and grants patients the ability to designate visitors of their choosing and to decide who is able to make emergency decision about their care. The letter urges Community Medical Centers immediately to affirm their commitment to inclusive and sensitive medical care for LGBT patients, and to take a number of steps to carry out that commitment.
“Discrimination in healthcare settings is still far too common for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people,” said Jason Schneider, MD, President of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association (GLMA). “No one is served when partners are barred from visitation and kept from participating in conversations about their loved one’s care. It’s bad for doctors who are kept
from potentially life threatening information, it’s bad for partners who are left waiting hopelessly in the waiting rooms and it’s especially traumatic for patients who need the love and support that only their partners can provide to help them through health care emergencies.”
The hospital has until June 22 to respond.
Sue the bastards. Plain and simple. Hospitals are required to follow advanced directives no matter who the person has designated; it is a legally binding contract. Also, the doctor who ordered the ativan should also be sued for negligence, plain and simple. I think that they would have a strong case if they get a good lawyer and have a judge who isn’t a right-wing nut. I hope for the best for the two of you.
Fresno California is nothing but a sewer above ground.. always has been, always will be! wanna hurt fresno in the pocketbook? Quit buying raisins, grapes or anything to do with them and additionally plums or prunes!
SUE THE PISS OUT OF THE BIGOTTED F*CKS!…. from the ambulance to the emergency room staff and the hospital! SUE’eM ALL!
All in the name of God. The Taliban christian God.
Sue not only the hospital, but everyone connected with this denial.
This is indeed a very sad story! And did you say that this is 2009?
My heart goes out to both of these women.
GET EM! But for heavens sakes if you have a loved one who needs frequent medical care…get and ‘plasticize’ a Power of Attorney for HEALTH, they can be issued to ANYONE the patient choses, irredgardless of relationship. Keep it with you at all times. Then you can really sue them, if they ignore that.
Wow, just wow.
When Prop. 22 was passed it’s supporters said it wouldn’t be used against us. The moment it went into effect fundementalists tried to roll back our domestic partnership rights, saying it was too much like marriage.
Now that 8 has been upheld they’re just going to refuse even legal documents. I wonder if that hospital would refuse to recognize our certified marriage certificate? Bet they’d do their damnedest to try!
This is horrible, and I hope something positive comes out of this, but I’m left to wonder what would happen if the queer community, in places where discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation was still permitted, started barring straight people from places? Show them just how ridiculous they really are. Or at least give them a hard slap to the face to show what it feels like.
I recommend they get a Civil Union the hospital would have vary Little wiggle room then, also the hospital would not except an advanced medical directive truly scary. I have aspbergers a form autism, and epilepsy and my foster moms white and I am N.American so would it be all right for people to follow AMD because they don’t like bi-racial foster familis run by single moms ?
This is absolutely outrageous. California state law is very clear on this and the hospital chose to ignore the law. While marriage or domestic partnership might have helped, the laws regarding discrimination and those regarding pertaining to the patient’s rights to designate a person to serve as a medical power of attorney for health care and to have visitors of their choice are separate and distinct.
They should sue the pants off that hospital and hit them where it hurts. If it was me in that situation, I would have forced my way into the emergency room and made a huge public rucus in the hospital to embarass them. They would have had to drag me out kicking and screaming.
Sue the bastards.
This is exactly the kind of story that the “middle-of-the-road” voters in California need to hear. Throughout the Prop 8 campaign, our opposition repeatedly downplayed the effects of their (anti) marriage amendments on our relationships, by telling undecided voters that, even without marriage equality, the law was sufficient to protect same-sex couples from such discrimination. It was a lie that I think a lot of people fell for.
This story shows just how dangerous it is, even in the oh-so-progressive state of California, for the state to create a two-tiered system of relationship recognition. Without full marriage rights, these stories will not disappear from the headlines.
My heart goes out the couple–I hope that Kristin is recovering well and that they both know they have our support in this tough time.
Fresno is awful. So this couple might even have been mistreated if they had been married before prop H8 passed. However, the couple had, and still has, the right to register a California domestic partnership. Their legal case would have been much stronger if they had done so.
Unfortunagely, the majority of these institutions will not actively change their policies unless they are hit in the pocket book. Sue the bastards!