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A same sex domestic partner was denied visitation with her partner while in the hospital with complications with her pregnancy. She lost the baby while her partner had to wait for hours depending on only occasional updates from the doctor.
Under Nevada law the couple was supposed to have all the same rights as a married couple.
Quote:
A woman who identified herself as public relations representative at Spring Valley Hospital told a Review-Journal reporter in a phone interview that the hospital policy requires gay couples have power of attorney in order to make medical decisions for each other .
When asked if she was aware of Nevada's domestic partnership law, she accused the reporter of bias and hung up the telephone.
That law states: "Domestic partners have the same rights, protections and benefits, and are subject to the same responsibilities, obligations and duties under law, whether derived from statutes, administrative regulations, court rules, government policies, common law or any other provisions or sources of law, as are granted to and imposed upon spouses."
Gay marriage is prohibited in Nevada by constitutional amendment, so domestic partners are not considered legally married. But they have the same rights under law as married couples. The only difference is that employers do not have to provide health care benefits to gay couples, even if they are provided to married, heterosexual couples.
I love it when people say they are all for "civil unions" or "domestic partnerships" with the same rights as marriage, but we repeatedly see examples like this.
A lawsuit will not turn back time and allow this woman to be there to offer emotional support to her partner during a life changing medical emergency.
This is the reason that marriage needs to be allowed for same sex couples.
No, it won't turn back time. But it will definitely send a message to all of the healthcare facilities in Nevada and make it much less likely that this will ever happen again.
Its a hard thing to have compassion these days. The damage is done and it is a shame that in 2012 we cant find a way to accept that people care for each other and should be treated exactly the same.
See, I've seen repeated claims that if those uppity (militant, etc.-- insert your perjorative of choice here) gays would just sit in the back of the bus in the seats labelled "civil unions" or "domestic partnership" (or whatever the euphemism du jour happens to be) that everything would be fine.
I am shocked! Shocked, I say, to discover that this second-class institution that Nevada has created treats people like... second-class citizens.
Just floored, I am!
I mean... who ever could have seen this coming... ?
This does seem to be a ridiculous case of not knowing what a legal domestic partnership is and the hospital will suffer some bad PR and no doubt review their policies to make things clear.
HOWEVER, there doesn't seem to have been any real harm done. The issue was whether the partner could make medical decisions, there was nothing to decide. The only real question at all is whether an opposite sex spouse would have been kept waiting for 90 minutes or if there was some malice on the part of the hospital staff, since they had been keeping here updated all through the surgery up until the final hour when the Dr was called away. Hospitals often fail to follow up on things and people do get lost in the shuffle so who knows.
They aren't going to sue.
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