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>In any case your accusation wasn't related to abortion, it was an accusation of refusing anesthesia to some women because they were naughty. Ironically in 2014 the cool view is that home birth without anesthesia is *the* optimum form of childbirth so if your story were true, perhaps the Catholics' crime was to be even more enlightened than you. ;-)
This is hardly "cool" and new....it's been going on for a number of years.
I actually know someone who has been a mid-wife. Even when the goal is home birth without anesthesia, the mid-wife is still always close by, and in in touch with a local hospital where immediate care is available (including anesthesia) if complications occur.
So none of this changes the context of the report from Michael Crichton that Catholic hospitals in the 1960's gave preferential treatment to married mothers-to-be over unmarried ones.