In May, Newport Hospital District inked an agreement with an anti-abortion nonprofit that would allow some of its doctors to provide reproductive health care through the nonprofit’s pregnancy services center in Sandpoint, across the border in Idaho.
The agreement would have partly filled a hole in the healthcare landscape in North Idaho, which OB-GYNs — doctors who provide a range of reproductive health services — have essentially abandoned because of the state’s anti-abortion law that came into effect in August, 2022.
But on June 2, the day services were supposed to start, Kevin McNamee, the Newport Hospital and Health Services doctor assigned to the shift, was presented with what the district says was a surprise. The 7B Health Clinic, part of a “nonprofit ministry committed to seeing every mother, father, child, and family healthy and thriving in Christ,” wanted him to sign a statement professing "sexual purity," not being in a gay marriage and a relationship with “Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior."
McNamee, who declined to comment on this story, refused, and the district canceled the agreement the next day.
The district’s CEO Kim Manus said in a report to the Newport hospital's administration and board of commissioners she learned of the statement of faith the same day McNamee did.
“The District was not informed during negotiations that its providers would be required to individually subscribe to religious doctrines, ministry principles, or additional conditions of participation as a prerequisite to providing services,” Chief Financial Officer Justin Peters wrote in a letter to 7B Care Clinic terminating the PSA dated June 3.
In a letter to the district’s board on June 10, 7B Care Clinic Executive Director Janine Shepard disputed this.
“We were surprised by the assertion that the Statement of Faith and Statement of Principle were not disclosed prior to execution of the agreement or that their existence was concealed during negotiations.” The nonprofit that runs the center, Shepard asserted, “has always operated as a Christian, faith-based ministry.”
That nonprofit is called Life Choices Pregnancy Center, and its mission statement suggests that it refuses employment generally to gay people and people who are not married and having sex.
Shepard did not return a request for comment on this story.
The 7B clientele has grown since Bonner General Hospital closed its labor and delivery unit and its OB-GYNs moved out of state three years ago, when Idaho enacted laws to punish doctors for abortion care. According to news reports, the closure left a hole in reproductive health services in Sandpoint and surrounding rural communities.
“The intent of the collaboration was to provide access to maternity care and safe deliveries,” said Newport Hospital spokesperson Jenny Smith in an email.
Under the agreement, the district would have made services available one day every other week, depending on physicians’ availability. All providers must be licensed to practice medicine in Washington and Idaho. The clinic would pay $200 per hour for the services.
Law professor Richard Seamon of the University of Idaho said the collapse of the agreement represents two different sides of the same coin. He cited the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, which prevents the government from interfering with someone’s religion.
“In this example, the governmental entity would be the hospital, and they could not target a contractor based on their religious beliefs,” Seamon said. “However, the idea of requiring a provider to sign a Statement of Faith they don’t subscribe to infers a different constitutional doctrine called compelled speech, which in this case means Life Choices cannot force others to support viewpoints they don’t agree with.”
In the document, Life Choices Pregnancy Center, which quotes scripture on the home page of its website, outlines its mission, vision and statement of faith. The statement asserts that the center provides clients information about prenatal development and potential abortion risks, but that the clinic will not recommend abortion or abortion-causing drugs. Neither will they recommend contraceptives for unmarried women.
“Married women and their husbands seeking this information are urged to counsel with their pastor and physician,” the document reads.
“We are committed to presenting the Gospel of our Lord to women and men faced with unplanned pregnancies, both in word and deed,” the statement says.
It goes on to say pregnancy center staff, board members, directors and volunteers are “expected to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and to conduct their lives in accordance with Biblical principles."
“Thus, each person who is single must be committed to sexual purity and those married must be in a heterosexual marriage consisting of one biological man and one biological woman,” the statement says.
Physicians working for the hospital district and providing services at 7B Care Clinic would be required by the pregnancy center to sign the statement under the words, “I have read and agree fully with the above statements.”
Manus said the district severed the agreement the day after she learned of the statement.
Shepard goes on to say in her letter that during the negotiation process, she raised the issue of our Statement of Faith and asked whether participating providers would be willing to sign it. Shepard said that one of the Newport doctors said that all of the providers listed were Christian and, “It would not be a problem.”
Additionally, she said that copies of the Statement of Faith were provided to district CFO Peters at a meeting held at Newport Hospital on April 29, and that Peters distributed the copies to those in attendance.
“Had we been informed at that time that the Statement of Faith presented a concern or conflict for the District or its providers, we would have welcomed the opportunity to discuss the issue further before significant time and resources were invested by either party,” Shepard said.
Spokesperson Smith denied that any district staff were aware of the statement of faith beforehand.
“The doctor Shephard mentions had not seen the statement of faith, nor anyone else from [the hospital] during the process of the agreement,” Smith said.
While the agreement's description of services does require that doctors will not discuss abortion or birth control with 7B Care Clinic clients, Manus maintains in her report that at no point was the statement of faith brought up in negotiations.
“I personally attended the meeting; a copy of this document was not handed out,” Manus said.
Seamon said legal action based on the hospital’s decision to reject the agreement was unlikely.
“It’s hard to imagine this resulting in any kind of lawsuit, just sour feelings and much-needed services not happening,” Seamon said. “If I was talking to my students about this particular incident, I would encourage a third party coming in and mitigating between Life Choices and the hospital district because the ultimate goal would be to get the two entities to work out their differences so clients can be helped.”
Sophia Mattice-Aldous is a Murrow News fellow working directly with newsrooms at The Newport Miner and RANGE Media through a program administered by Washington State University. Her reporting is available for use via Creative Commons with credit.
