But the state Permanent Commission on the Status of Women—with MergerWatch, a hospital watchdog group—successfully argued against the merger by making the case that since the new hospital would honor Catholic religious directives, a significant portion of patients would be left vulnerable—because God help you if you are a woman and need emergency reproductive services at a Roman Catholic hospital.

Medical professionals at Catholic-owned or -sponsored hospitals operate under directives—known officially as the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services. These directives come from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and take 43 pages (plus footnotes) to describe what constitutes appropriate Catholic health care.

As might be expected, the rules ban abortions, but they go much deeper.

“What people don’t realize is the other, more quiet and sometimes insidious ways that these kinds of takeovers can play out—and not just with reproductive care, but with end of life care,” said Carolyn Treiss, executive director of the commission.

So here’s irony for you. Legislators bowed to the state’s budgetary crisis in May and consolidated the not-so-permanent commission with two other state watchdog agencies. On her way out the door, Treiss is writing a memo that includes hospital mergers among the commission’s priorities. But with a smaller staff, hospital mergers may not be high on their list of priorities. Other organizations, among them Planned Parenthood of Southern New England and Connecticut Women’s Education and Legal Fund, will have to take up the slack.

And this is important. In an era of hospital mergers, according to an American Civil Liberties Union report released in May, one in six hospital beds in this country are in hospitals that comply with Catholic directives. Using data provided by MergerWatch, the study said that women seeking critical reproductive health care services are routinely denied services—sometimes at great risk to the patients.

According to a MergerWatch study from earlier this year, 14.5 percent of all U.S. acute care hospitals are Catholic-owned. In five states—Alaska, Iowa, Washington, Wisconsin and South Dakota—more than 40 percent of those hospitals are operating under Catholic directives. In another five states—Nebraska, Colorado, Missouri, Oregon and Kentucky—between 30 percent and 39 percent of hospitals are Catholic-owned or Catholic-affiliated.

Catholic hospitals in Connecticut include Mount Sinai Rehabilitation Center and St. Francis Hospital & Medical Care in Hartford, St. Mary’s Hospital in Waterbury, the Johnson Entities (including Johnson Memorial Medical Center) in Stafford Springs, and St. Vincent’s Medical Care in Bridgeport. All serve economically vulnerable populations in some of the state’s poorest neighborhoods. Each receives money from the federal government, yet they are allowed to impose their religious values on patients who may not share them.

Depending on the language of the agreements, hospital mergers can birth the strangest of rules. A 2012 New Haven merger between the Hospital of St. Raphael and Yale-New Haven Hospital allows the St. Raphael’s campus to continue to follow Catholic directives.

In 2015 St. Francis joined Trinity Health, one of the country’s largest Catholic-sponsored health care systems with 60 acute hospitals and 13,506 staffed-beds, according to MergerWatch. Nearly 46 percent of its money comes from Medicare or Medicare. When a hospital receives Medicare or Medicaid payments, that hospital must provide a certain level of care. So how does that jibe with the list of don’ts from the non-medical professionals at the conference of bishops?

With the demise of the commission, how the next threat to women’s health will end is anybody’s guess. Maybe we should all pray?

Susan Campbell is a distinguished lecturer at the University of New Haven. She can be reached at slcampbell417@gmail.com.

That is unfair and wrong, and damaging to far more than the female employees earning smaller paychecks than their male peers. More and more, families rely on the female wage earners for necessities.

What’s worse, in a few years, the gap is going to hit everyone where it hurts – in the pocketbook in the form of increased taxes needed to pay for public services for baby boomer women (like me, and thank you for your contribution) who may not be able to make ends meet living on smaller pensions and/or Social Security benefits.

So now is as good a time as any to practice a little math.

If a woman earns, say, 78 cents for every dollar a man makes (and that is the figure for Connecticut women in an American Association of University Women study released earlier this year), then over her lifetime, that puts her behind her male counterparts to the tune of $435,049, says a recent study by the National Women’s Legal Center. The Wage Project puts the figure higher, at roughly $1 million. The disparity is greater for women of color, and women with disabilities, though Asian women tend to fare better; they earn 87 percent of what their male peers make.

And then when a woman retires or leaves the full-time workforce, keep in mind that the vast majority of retirees rely heavily on their Social Security benefits, which are based on lifetime earnings. In 2012, for 65 percent of people age 65 or older, half or more of their income came from Social Security. Thirty-six percent rely on Social Security for 90 percent or more of their income.

The average monthly Social Security payment is $1,294. Since Social Security benefits are based on life-long earnings, in 2013, the average monthly Social Security income for women 65 years and older was $1,071.42, compared to $1,382.50 for men.

Add to that the fact that women live longer – 81.5 years, compared to 76.4 for men nationally — and you have a recipe for financial disaster that goes far beyond individual women.

“My fear is you’re going to have all of these women who are going to retire and these women may well wake up and see the pay gap is long-term problem,” said Carolyn Treiss, executive director of the state’s Permanent Commission on the Status of Women. “For women, it’s almost like adding insult to injury. We make less and we live longer.”

The challenges will be particularly acute in Connecticut, where policymakers warn of a coming silver tsunami of aging Americans threatening to break the federal bank. In a 2007 satirical novel, Christopher Buckley called the phenomenon “Boomsday.” Connecticut ranks third in the nation in terms of life expectancy. Already, more than a third of state residents are over the age of 50. Places such as Salisbury, Wethersfield and Lyme have populations where 20 percent or more of their residents are 65 or older. The Connecticut Legislative Commission on Aging says that by 2030, Connecticut’s over-65 population could grow by as much as 64 percent.

“Think about what a difference it could be if women had more money in their retirement,” said Treiss. “Over time, it compounds.”

The Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) released a report last month that examined the status of women by state. Overall, Minnesota was named the best place for women because of that state’s policies around issues such as reproductive rights, employment, poverty, and health.

Three states – Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont – tied for second. Even better news? Connecticut has consistently ranked among the best states for women in 1998, 2000, 2002, and 2004, according to the study.

The state generally scores well in such reports, said Carolyn Treiss, executive director of the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women who is also on the IWPR’s national advisory committee. Having a forward-thinking populace helps.

“We are not beating back attempts to take steps backward,” said Treiss. “One of the things that makes the state rate at the top is that we’re constantly trying to advance and move forward.”

With no serious legislative threats to, say, Connecticut women’s reproductive rights – as is common in places such as Texas and other states, such as Missouri, where abortion clinics are rare – policymakers can devote their energy to issues surrounding employment, work, and family. Those latter aren’t, of course, strictly “women’s issues,” but bolstering women’s financial health has long-reaching and important health effects on their families.

Overall, Connecticut earned an A- in reproductive rights, Bs in employment and earnings, and poverty and opportunity, a B- in health and well-being, and Cs in political participation, and work and family.

(We would have earned an A in reproductive rights, but state law doesn’t require schools to teach sex education. Curriculum is left in the hands of local school boards.)

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In the report, CT earned a C in the work and family category.

The state scores lower in some categories because according to the report, the gender wage gap in Connecticut is 76.7 percent. At this rate, women won’t reach pay equity in the state until 2061. Some of us don’t have that long to wait.

During the Connecticut legislative session that ended last week, the bulk of the bills supported by Treiss’ commission focused on women’s economic security. Not all their bills were successful, but Treiss takes the long view. Bills that don’t make it into law can sometimes start a conversation that leads to successful passage later, as with a bill on paid family and medical leave from this most recent session. That bill, said Treiss, went farther than expected, and illustrated that Connecticut’s workplace policies have yet to catch up with the state’s workplace realities.

Some of the victories, said Treiss, involved getting a conversation going about students giving affirmative consent before sexual encounters, calling attention to the needs of women veterans, and pushing forward a bill that protects interns from sexual harassment.

“That’s a huge group of young women who were unprotected but now will be,” she said. “These are women who were in an incredibly vulnerable situation.”

Treiss said Connecticut’s relatively high financial ranking is encouraging, since a significant portion of the state’s workforce is employed in high-paying jobs, where the gender pay gap is greatest. A recent study found that the higher the income, the greater the disparity.

Though the state must remain vigilant about protecting our reproductive rights, we could use a little of that vigilance around income and job opportunities. Connecticut is a pretty good place to be if you’re a woman, but it could be better.

Susan Campbell is the Robert C. Vance Chair for Journalism and Mass Communication at Central Connecticut State University. She can be reached at slcampbell417@gmail.com.