Hoag Hospital’s no-abortions decision

The emails already are flying around the Internet in Orange County, they’re predictably from women, and they’re saying let’s forget about getting our medical care at Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach.

Hoag said it was not the review of its services, prompted by its partnership with St. Joseph Health, a Roman Catholic-affiliated institution, that led to its decision to stop performing elective abortions. The hospital does too few of them -- about 100 a year -- to maintain the required level of excellence, a spokesman said.

Maybe. But it’s also striking a lot of women as the kind of convenient explanation a hospital comes up with when it wants to avoid controversy. And if that was its aim, it doesn’t seem to be working.

Hoag triggered concern when it became another supposedly full-service hospital that stopped offering a procedure that has been the subject of so much conservative and religious attack, and at the same time a procedure that many women see themselves as having an interest in seeing preserved even if they would never need one.

A protest is planned for Thursday.

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