Tagged: ACLU

 Last year the secular Swedish Medical Center stopped performing elective abortions after affiliating with a Catholic health care provider, Providence Health & Services. Now some organizations in Washington state are calling for a moratorium on similar contracts between secular, publicly funded hospitals and religious providers. They fear patients in the state could see a reduction in access to services.

What happens when faith and health care mix? Should the state do anything about it? Ross Reynolds talks with Peter Adler, senior vice president and chief strategy officer for Catholic provider Peacehealth, and Kathleen Turner, head of the ACLU of Washington.

A legislator in Washington state says she will revive a bill that would make it easier for police to collect DNA samples. That’s in the wake of a US Supreme Court ruling Monday. The five-to-four ruling upheld a Maryland law that allows police to collect DNA samples at the time of arrest from people who are charged with certain violent crimes or sex offenses.

The ACLU is asking Governor Jay Inslee to call for a moratorium on hospital mergers and affiliations for six months.  Many of these partnerships involve faith-based health care providers. The ACLU, along with ten other local organizations, sent a letter to the governor saying they’re worried that these mergers will hurt patients in the long run.

Slavery. When we hear that word, we often think of it as something in the distant past. But an underground network of human cargo thrives right under our noses.

Today, we hear the first in a special series on human trafficking. We'll start small, as police bust up a prostitution ring in a small Boston town. It's a story that could have happened anywhere. Here in Seattle, police busted a similar ring two years ago.

Boston investigative reporter Phillip Martin wanted to go deeper than the breaking stories of busts and find out what's beneath the surface. As he began unraveling the story, it took him all over the globe. Over the next couple of weeks, we'll follow him from Boston to Thailand to China and back, and over that period we'll discover that these stories of prostitution rings are part of a much larger story. It's a story that links two different kinds of men: the western man who believes Asian women are more willing to please, and the kidnapper who transports young girls across Southeast Asian borders.

Full list of stories from KUOW Presents, June 3: