Michael Hiltzik: How the University of California betrays its doctors, students and patients on abortion

One year ago, the University of California Board of Regents voted to approve an uncompromising policy governing the terms of partnerships between UC's medical schools and Catholic hospital systems.

The policy led UC doctors to believe that they would be permitted to provide any care they judged warranted for their patients, including performing abortions and contraceptive implants that are otherwise forbidden at Catholic healthcare facilities.

They couldn't be required to transfer or refer those patients to non-religious hospitals if moving them or delaying treatment would be "detrimental to the patient's care," as is often the case.

But somehow the policy language changed when the regents' vote was translated into a formal UC policy. The policy now fails to guarantee that UC doctors can perform any procedure they deem necessary, only that they can prescribe and counsel patients about their options.

And it now says doctors can refuse to transfer a patient only if the move would "risk material deterioration to the patient's condition." That's a stricter standard that doctors say deprives them of significant discretion to direct patient treatment.

Many UC doctors say the policy, as it's now written, is not a significant improvement over the situation that prevailed before the regents' vote, when affiliation contracts