When Catholic hospitals turn away pregnant women in distress, we need to start asking new questions
December 9, 2013
By Scott Alessi
By now you've likely heard about the controversy surrounding Tamesha Means and the care she received--or more so, the care she didn't receive--at Mercy Health Partners, a Catholic hospital in her home state of Michigan. Back in 2010, Means was 18 weeks pregnant when her water broke and she visited Mercy Health in serious pain, but they sent her home. She returned twice but the hospital insisted it could do nothing to help her until she ultimately went into labor just before being sent home a third time.
Of course, the hospital's claim that there was nothing they could do meant that as a Catholic institution, they couldn't terminate the pregnancy even though there was little chance the fetus would survive. The story became headline news last week when the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit on behalf of Means. But rather than sue the hospital for negligent care, the ACLU targeted the U.S. bishops and their Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care. The bishops have called the lawsuit "baseless," and others have painted it as an attack on the church's teaching about abortion.
I'll leave that argument to the lawyers, but the case does raise once again the question of where the line is drawn on protecting human life when two lives are at stake--those of the pregnant woman and her unborn baby. Means contends that she was never told by the hospital that the reason they couldn't help her--even when she arrived in pain, bleeding, and possibly with an infection--was because of the ethical directives, nor was she told that a non-Catholic hospital might have responded to her concerns differently.
Luckily, Means survived, even though her baby died shortly after being delivered. But as CNN reports, other women in similar situations haven't been as lucky. Last year in Ireland, a woman who was 17 weeks pregnant went to the hospital in extreme pain but, though the hospital knew the woman was having a miscarriage, they did not intervene until the fetus had died. Shortly thereafter, the mother died of an infection. Then there was a case in the Dominican Republic where a pregnant teenager with cancer was denied treatment because it would likely terminate her pregnancy. Again, both mother and child died.
http://www.uscatholic.org/blog/201312/when-catholic-hospitals-turn-away-pregnant-women-distress-we-need-start-asking-some-new
Of interest is who is now asking these questions.
U.S. Catholic magazine is published by the Claretians. Following in the footsteps of St. Anthony Claret—a prolific writer and publisher whom Pope Pius XI called the "Modern Apostle of the Good Press"—the Claretians in the United States began their publishing ministry in 1935 with the first edition of the magazine The Voice of St. Jude. In 1963, during the Second Vatican Council, The Voice of St. Jude transformed into U.S. Catholic magazine. Today Claretian Publications in Chicago is one of the country's most respected Catholic publishers of magazines and newsletters.
Who are The Claretians?
The Claretian Missionaries are a Roman Catholic religious community of priests and brothers. We are dedicated to the mission of living and spreading the Gospel of Jesus. For more information, visit www.claretians.org.
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IrishAyes
(6,151 posts)I seem to recall. Might have it wrong. I knew a Claretian Fr. Fred LeClaire, and he was terribly fond of them. He's the one who gave me the church's official JPII portrait when Benedict came in.
He's also the one who got so tired of fussy plutocrats at the big church in the main town, and he quit and went to one of the smaller missions. Very poor people there. But when they needed something like office or sacrament supplies and couldn't afford them, he'd go back to the big church, let himself in the supply room, and take whatever the poor church needed. The new priest threatened to have him arrested, and he just said go ahead and try. It didn't stop Jesus and it won't stop me. That man had a fine temper, I'm telling you!
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(82,333 posts)IrishAyes
(6,151 posts)about a man I admired very much. Somehow he always managed to have donuts for us after Sunday Mass. When we gathered in the social hall, first he'd bless the deserts and then turn to us and say w/o the hint of a smile, "I promise you, there are no more calories left in these donuts now. I banished every one."
Would you believe that sort of thing made some people at the big church furious? A priest is NOT supposed to lie! Well, I guess he wasn't supposed to joke either, and he was good at that too.
rug
(82,333 posts)Looks like he's in Arizona now.
Auxiliary Bishop Eduardo A. Nevares installed Claretian Father Fred LeClaire as the pastor of the newly elevated parish, St. Catherine Laboure. (Ambria Hammel/CATHOLIC SUN)
http://www.catholicsun.org/2012/09/06/st-catherine-laboure-in-chino-valley-becomes-a-parish/
IrishAyes
(6,151 posts)I'm not surprised St. Catherine's has grown. Before I left a town a few miles north was about to have a huge tomato packing plant built, and they would've used a lot of migrant workers, many of whom could've been expected to be Catholic. The town of Chino Valley itself had a huge residential development in the works also. I'm glad to see Fr. Fred's still busy. He's legally blind but never let that slow him down.
Although I am not Catholic, I know and am very fond of Father Fred. He is a wonderful human being. I Googled his name just for fun, and it turned up this thread. I live in the Prescott AZ area.
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(82,333 posts)
Fortinbras Armstrong
(4,473 posts)A dead woman and a dead fetus is morally superior to a dead fetus alone. I asked a bishop I used to know to explain this, and he could not.
There are examples where absolutist moral precepts hold. There is no possible realistic scenario where torture is morally permissible -- the fabled "what if a terrorist has hidden a nuclear bomb in the city and the only way to discover it is by torturing him" scenario is so far-fetched as to be easily dismissed. But the need for an abortion to save the life of the mother? That can and does happen in real life. The sages of the Jewish Talmud allow abortion to save the life of the mother under self-defense grounds.
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(82,333 posts)Fortinbras Armstrong
(4,473 posts)For those one or two of you asking "what is double effect?", it is a moral principle saying that one can act in such a way as to do something morally acceptable which also has an effect which would not ordinarily be morally acceptable. In the Summa Theologica, II-II, question 64, article 7, Thomas Aquinas gives the example of killing someone in self-defense. Ordinarily, killing someone is morally wrong; but in self-defense, the primary effect is preserving one's own life, and killing the one attacking you is a secondary consideration.
Thus, acting to preserve a woman's life by aborting a fetus in a case where the pregnancy would kill her would appear to me to be morally acceptable as a case of self-defense, which is the reasoning that the Talmud takes in this case.
And the Catholic Church comes within an ace of accepting it as well. In the case of an aggressive uterine cancer, the official Catholic stance is that removing the uterus, even if there is a fetus within it, is morally acceptable since the primary object is saving the woman's life. However, if it is not necessary to actually remove the uterus, it still must be removed in order to make what is actually an abortion morally licit. This seems, well, sleazy reasoning, and is the sort of thing which gives double effect a bad name.
