Whose family is it anyway?
by digby
This is just heartbreaking:
A Lee’s Summit man is fighting a restraining order that he says was issued against him after he says he was arrested for refusing to leave the bedside of his sick partner.
Roger Gorley went to visit his partner, Allen at Research Medical Center, 2316 E. Meyer Blvd., Tuesday afternoon.
He says when he got there, a member of Allen’s family asked him to leave.
When Gorley refused, he says hospital security forcibly removed him from the property and put him in handcuffs.
“I was not recognized as being the husband, I wasn’t recognized as being the partner,” Gorley said.
While not legally recognized as a couple in Missouri, Gorley says he and his partner Allen have been in a civil union for nearly five years, and make medical decisions for each other.
He says the nurse refused to verify they also share joint Power of Attorney.
This is illegal:
Jan. 19, 2011
Patients at nearly every hospital in the country will now be allowed to decide who has visitation rights and who can make medical decisions on their behalf -- regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity or family makeup -- under new federal regulations that took effect Tuesday.
The rules, which apply to hospitals participating in the Medicare and Medicaid programs, were first proposed by President Obama in an April memorandum and later implemented by the Department of Health and Human Services after a period of public review.
They represent a landmark advance in the rights of same-sex couples and domestic partners who heretofore had no legal authority to be with a hospitalized partner because they were either not a blood relative or spouse.
Hospitals must now inform patients, or an attending friend or family member, of their rights to visitors of their choosing. The policy also prohibits discrimination against visitors based on race, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation or disability.
Janice Langbehn, who was barred from her partner Lisa Pond's bedside at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami for eight hours after she suffered an aneurysm in 2007, hailed the development as bittersweet justice.
"Other couples, no matter how they define themselves as families, won't have to go through what we went through, and I am grateful," she said. "But the fact that the hospital didn't let our children say goodbye to their mom... That's just something that will haunt me forever."
Langbehn, 41, had raised three adopted teenage children with Pond, her partner of nearly 18 years. At the start of a cruise vacation to the Bahamas, Pond collapsed suddenly and unexpectedly and later died at the hospital.
The couple's story, and forced separation during Pond's dying hours, inspired Obama to pursue a change to government regulations.
"The president saw an injustice and felt very strongly about correcting this and has spoken about it often over the years," White House deputy director of public engagement Brian Bond wrote on the White House blog.
I'm sure the hospital will say that he was disruptive when "the family" told him to leave his sick partner's bedside. I've been around enough hospitals in my life to know that families and friends are often "disruptive" for any number of reasons. People are often stressed, sometimes to the breaking point. Rarely does a hospital issue restraining orders and never to a spouse. In fact, if this was a straight couple, the "family" would have been the ones evicted in a dispute like this.
Not to mention, the sheer inhumanity of forcing someone's chosen life partner, wife, husband, significant other, best friend whatever --- from beside their sickbed is overwhelming. It's as low as it gets and anyone who does such a hideous thing deserves to be haunted by their cruelty.
I hope he sues this hospital and makes a ton of money. And the federal government should demand that this hospital reverse this decision or give up its funding. That's what the order was designed to do.
You have to love this statement from the hospital:
We believe involving the family is an important part of the patient care process. And, the patient`s needs are always our first priority. When anyone becomes disruptive to providing the necessary patient care, we involve our security team to help calm the situation and to protect our patients and staff. If the situation continues to escalate, we have no choice but to request police assistance.
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