Excommunicated Over Abortion

[marmar]

from In These Times:




Excommunicated Over Abortion
A nun’s decision to save a life ends her Catholic career.

By Robin Peterson


The swift excommunication of a nun for approving an abortion has triggered a debate over church doctrine—and raised questions about whether Catholic hospitals routinely break federal law.

Earlier this year, Sister Margaret McBride was excommunicated from the Catholic Church for approving an abortion needed to save a woman’s life. An administrator at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix, McBride was part of the hospital’s ethics committee that decided in November 2009 to allow a 27-year-old woman with pulmonary hypertension, or high blood pressure in the arteries that supply blood to the lungs, to terminate her 11-week pregnancy. Due to her condition, the woman would almost certainly have died without the abortion.

After learning of McBride’s decision, Diocese of Phoenix bishop Thomas J. Olmsted declared in May that she was “automatically excommunicated” and asked her to resign her post as vice-president of mission integration at St. Joseph’s. Olmsted, who is responsible for three of the ten church excommunications ordered this century, said in a statement, “An unborn child is not a disease. While medical professionals should certainly try to save a pregnant mother’s life, the means by which they do it can never be by directly killing her unborn child. The end does not justify the means.”

McBride’s excommunication has raised questions about the quality of reproductive care women receive at Catholic healthcare facilities. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) cited the case in a July 1 letter requesting an investigation by the federal Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services (CMS) into whether religiously affiliated hospitals provide adequate emergency reproductive care. “Sister McBride’s subsequent treatment and the diocese’s unambiguous statement sends the message to other hospital employees, at St. Joseph’s and at other Catholic hospitals around the country, that they risk punishment if they provide life-saving pregnancy terminations in the future,” ACLU attorneys wrote. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/6541/excommunicated_over_abortion

[connecticut yankee]

1. An old bumper sticker said --

"If men got pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament."

[ZombieHorde]

2. Very likely. nt

[AndyTiedye]

3. They Want to Force You To Bear That Child Even if It Kills You

It has long been the doctrine of the Catholic church that the life of the fetus is infinitely more valuable than that of its mother.

[Warpy]

12. They'd have killed both of them in this case

because there's no way she could have carried a pregnancy to viability, let alone term.

Rome should stop trying to practice medicine and influence civil law. If they can't manage to do either, then they need a visit from the IRS, to be taxed just like any other political organization.

I'm sick of those celibate old fools in dresses trying to tell us what to do with our laws, our lives, and our bodies. They're ignorant of all of them.

[marmar]

21. Don't blame Rome.....Vatican City is its own deluded entity.

[Warpy]

25. True, most Romans are more sensible these days

but the attitudes within the deluded city were all inherited from imperial Rome.

[MadMaddie]

This woman should be honored! The woman would have

died without the intervention. These religious run hospitals are in fact "Death Panels"! They determine if a woman lives or dies.

[drm604]

7. I like that.

"Religious Death Panels"

[MadMaddie]

9. Feel free to use it!

No one will say it out loud and they have been doing it for years in this country! I for one am sick of it.

[Solly Mack]

4. Try to save the mother's life....but don't do what is necessary to save the woman's life

Such concern!

[Betty]

5. I guess right to life doesn't apply to the mother

and it seems in this case, if she was only pregnant for 11 weeks, there's no way the fetus could have survived outside the womb, so the baby was going to die either way. I see the church prefers the mother die if she has the audacity to get sick while pregnant.

[Arugula Latte]

14. A large part of the Catholic Church's reason for being is to put the boot on women's throats.

They're all about empowering men and keeping the wimminfolks down. It's patently clear, and has been for centuries.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

18. Not only that, there isn't nearly enough neuronal tissue to develop a "self". -nt

[drm604]

6. What happens when the only hospital nearby is a Catholic hospital?

What does a desperately ill or injured pregnant woman do? What if she's rushed unconscious to that hospital. She should not have to have someone else's religious beliefs interfering with any life and death decisions she (or her family) may have to make.

Would we allow Jehovah's Witness hospitals that refuse necessary transfusions to accident victims? This should be no different.

[wmbrew0206]

27. The worry is that if Catholic hospitals are faced with either shutting down or providing medical

practices that go against their beliefs, they will shut down their hospitals. I heard that they would shut them down and just close the doors and wait. No selling the building and equipment, just close the door and turn out the lights.

I guess the idea is that it is better to have a hospital than no hospital at all.

[drm604]

28. Eminent domain.

The government can exercise eminent domain, buy it, and either operate it or sell it to someone who will.

[wmbrew0206]

29. Good luck with that one.

The Catholic Church will sue against it, will likely be given a stay, and will have no problem paying for it to go all the way to the SOTUS on appeal. It will be in litigation for years, during that whole time, the hospital will remain closed. Making the elected officials who decided to try and declare ED, very unpopular.

There is also the legal argument that the government cannot declare eminent domain against a Catholic Church hospital since it is a private business run in accordance with their religious beliefs. There is no law that requires a hospital must preform abortions, so based on what will the government be able to exercise eminent domain?

[drm604]

30. The government can use eminent domain against private businesses.

They can use it anytime they feel it would be better for the community. The property owner does not have to have done anything illegal.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London

Whether or not it would be popular is a different argument.

[rurallib]

8. being excommunicated from the catholic church can be one of

the most life affirming experiences ever.

[dimbear]

13. So true.

There should be a Hallmark card.

[Old and In the Way]

10. The Catholic Republican Church

Been years since I've been in one...doubt this Jesuit-educated heretic will be attending anytime soon.

[Arugula Latte]

15. I wish more people would stop supporting this institution, like you did.

Even being a liberal Catholic and attending a liberal parish is still ultimately supporting the ass-backwards medieval institution/corporation headquartered in Rome. Asses in the pews keep 'em in power.

And that applies to many other churches and religions.

[HelenWheels]

11. Contraception

Maybe if the Catholic Church allowed contraception the woman wouldn't have needed an abortion. But than many cafeteria Catholics practice contraception and stay in the church because they don't admit they do it. Leaving the Catholic church is no big deal, and I should know.

[BadgerKid]

16. If the woman lives, she could possibly get pregnant again.

Seems logical to me, but I doubt the Catholic Church could see past its rigid view.

[TroglodyteScholar]

17. I knew I guy in college...

...who was older than most of us other students. He was a bit weird, but not a lot of people knew why. It turns out that several years earlier he and his new wife (who were both big into the Catholic church) got pregnant for the first time. Long story short, she had pretty serious complications late in the pregnancy and he had to make a medical decision on her behalf. He chose to try to save her life.

She and the baby both died, and the church excommunicated him for the choice he made.

[backscatter712]

19. Excommunication is something to be celebrated.

Who wants to have anything to do with that authoritarian, bass-ackwards, medieval, barbaric institution anyways?

[HEyHEY]

20. All religions have their martyrs

[uncommon]

22. Unformed "babies" are more important than women. I mean geez, that "baby" might have been a boy.

Thank the patriarchy for bullshit like this.

[hendo]

23. Sad times we live in.

[elehhhhna]

24. Yeah. A mangement-level church employee can actually send your soul to hell

for eternity. oooooh scary.

[lapislzi]

26. Why was the sister singled out?

She was only one member of the ethics committee, which voted AS A COMMITTEE. Why should she bear the brunt of the church's wrath? Surely every person on that committee of that Catholic Hospital should suffer some sort of censure for permitting the procedure to take place at a Catholic facility.

Damn, I despise that institution.

[NMMNG]

31. Yet another reason I detest the "faith based intiative"

and all religion run hospitals. Nobody should be denied legitimate health care because they end up in a hospital where dogma trumps medicine. No employee should risk losing their job because they put life over fairy tales. It's appalling the way the "pro-life" crowd considers women mere incubators, and can't grasp that if the worthless-except-as-a-womb woman dies, so does that fetus they spray their panties over.