Directors Quit Catholic Hospital in Ethics Code Row

A Catholic hospital is in turmoil after two directors resigned, refusing to accept tighter ethical codes on abortions, contraception and sex-change operations.

Dr Martin Scurr and Lord Fitzalan-Howard voted against implementing new guidelines at the Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth in north London, according to the Catholic newspaper the Tablet, and resigned in protest when the board accepted the code issued earlier this year by Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor, head of the Catholic church in England and Wales and patron of the 150-year-old medical institution. The code bars doctors from offering any service which conflicts with Catholic teaching on the value of human life and on sexual ethics. This includes sex-change operations, providing contraception, abortion referrals and IVF treatment. Solicitors and management consultants warned that implementing such rules would affect profitability and the General Medical Council deemed them unworkable.

In a letter to the hospital's chairman, Lord Bridgeman, who is expected to resign next week over the same issue, Scurr criticized the board's decision to place Catholic values above patient care.

He said: "Expert advisers have been chosen who give the hierarchy of the church the answers they wish to hear ... in the matter of modern medical care the cardinal has chosen to listen to individuals who have no specific expertise in that arena. The damage to the church will be worse if the hospital closes, unless he chooses to withdraw his patronage." He added that the Catholic church must withdraw from involvement in front line health care because of the clash between religious beliefs and secular medicine.

Howard resigned shortly after the crucial vote, taken at a meeting last month, and said that he did "not believe that what is being asked of us by the cardinal is in the best interests of this truly wonderful 150-year-old charity".

He suggested that an "amicable disassociation from certain requirements in our constitution" was the preferred solution but did not wish to pursue options without the cardinal's approval.

The cardinal demanded the hospital's code be revised in 2005, when it was revealed that GPs had been prescribing the morning-after pill and referring patients for abortions. Writing to Bridgeman, the cardinal said: "There must be clarity that the hospital, being a Catholic hospital with a distinct vision of what is truly in the interests of human persons, cannot offer its patients, non-Catholic or Catholic, the whole range of services routinely accepted by many in modern secular society as being in a patient's best interest." The Rt Rev George Stack, an auxiliary bishop of Westminster, was appointed to the ethics committee of the hospital to ensure that Catholic teaching was upheld in the new document. There are 13 board members, with five belonging to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta charitable institution, including the order's president, Charles Weld. These men, reports the Tablet, are "uncompromising Catholics" who reportedly said they would prefer to see the hospital "become a soup kitchen" than abandon the code.

The hospital, founded in 1856, is funded by the NHS, self-paying private patients, private health insurance companies and charitable donations. It welcomes patients of any or no religion and its north London location has attracted celebrities living in St John's Wood, Hampstead and Primrose Hill. Cate Blanchett, Emma Thompson, Kate Moss and Heather Mills-McCartney have given birth there.

No one from the hospital was available for comment.