The Associated Press reports on a disturbing legal development out of California, where a judge has ruled in favor of a Catholic hospital in a reproductive health care case:

Ordering a Catholic hospital in California to perform a tubal ligation sterilization procedure on a woman would violate its religious freedom, a San Francisco judge ruled Thursday.

“Religious-based hospitals have an enshrined place in American history and its communities, and the religious beliefs reflected in their operation are not to be interfered with by courts at this moment in history,” Superior Court Judge Ernest Goldsmith said while finalizing his previous tentative ruling.

The decision came after Rebecca Chamorro, 33, filed a lawsuit seeking a preliminary injunction that would require Mercy Medical Center in Redding, California, to perform the procedure after she delivered her third baby.

The judge also noted that Chamorro could get the birth control procedure elsewhere, and the hospital was not engaging in sex discrimination by denying it because its policy against sterilization on religious grounds also applies to men.

You can read the entire article here.