Catholic Church says Woman should have died with foetus

[plekhanov]

Instead of having an abortion which saved her life.

 

Nun Excommunicated For Allowing Abortion

 

Last November, a 27-year-old woman was admitted to St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix. She was 11 weeks pregnant with her fifth child, and she was gravely ill. According to a hospital document, she had "right heart failure," and her doctors told her that if she continued with the pregnancy, her risk of mortality was "close to 100 percent."

 

The patient, who was too ill to be moved to the operating room much less another hospital, agreed to an abortion. But there was a complication: She was at a Catholic hospital.

 

"They were in quite a dilemma," says Lisa Sowle Cahill, who teaches Catholic theology at Boston College. "There was no good way out of it. The official church position would mandate that the correct solution would be to let both the mother and the child die. I think in the practical situation that would be a very hard choice to make."

 

But the hospital felt it could proceed because of an exception — called Directive 47 in the U.S. Catholic Church's ethical guidelines for health care providers — that allows, in some circumstance, procedures that could kill the fetus to save the mother. Sister Margaret McBride, who was an administrator at the hospital as well as its liaison to the diocese, gave her approval.

 

The woman survived. When Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted heard about the abortion, he declared that McBride was automatically excommunicated — the most serious penalty the church can levy.

 

"She consented in the murder of an unborn child," says the Rev. John Ehrich, the medical ethics director for the Diocese of Phoenix. "There are some situations where the mother may in fact die along with her child. But — and this is the Catholic perspective — you can't do evil to bring about good. The end does not justify the means."

 

Ehrich adds that under canon or church law, the nun should be expelled from her order, the Sisters of Mercy, unless the order can find an alternative penalty. Ehrich concedes that the circumstances of this case were "hard."

 

"But there are certain things that we don't really have a choice" about, he says. "You know, if it's been done and there's public scandal, the bishop has to take care of that, because he has to say, 'Look, this can't happen.' "

 

A Double Standard?

 

But according to the Rev. Thomas Doyle, a canon lawyer, the bishop "clearly had other alternatives than to declare her excommunicated." Doyle says Olmsted could have looked at the situation, realized that the nun faced an agonizing choice and shown her some mercy. He adds that this case highlights a "gross inequity" in how the church chooses to handle scandal.

 

"In the case of priests who are credibly accused and known to be guilty of sexually abusing children, they are in a sense let off the hook," Doyle says.

 

Doyle says no pedophile priests have been excommunicated. When priests have been caught, he says, their bishops have protected them, and it has taken years or decades to defrock them, if ever.

 

"Yet in this instance we have a sister who was trying to save the life of a woman, and what happens to her? The bishop swoops down [and] declares her excommunicated before he even looks at all the facts of the case," Doyle says.

 

Ehrich agrees that sexual abuse can't be tolerated. But he says neither can McBride's actions.

 

"She said, 'Yes, you can kill that unborn child.' That's a heinous act. And I'm not going to make a distinction between what's worse. They're both abhorrent," Ehrich says.

 

Ehrich says the nun can be admitted back into the Catholic community by going to confession and repenting. McBride still works at the hospital in another position. Whether she is allowed to remain in her religious order, Erich says that is up to the Sisters of Mercy.

There's just so much wrong about this.

 

How can it conceivably be preferable that a woman (and mother of 4) die thus inevitably causing the death of the foetus than she survive & the foetus die?

 

Then of course there's the whole save a life get fired & condemned to eternal torture*, rape a series of children and get shielded fro the authorities, reassigned to a new job with a fresh bunch of children to rape safe in the knowledge that the Church is doing everything possible to silence your victims and keep your crimes secret thing.

 

 

*as the church regards itself as the one true church & intermediary between people & god being excommunicated means you are going to hell.

[gabby]

The Catholic church in the wrong, eh? Who'd have thought it?

[Vague_Boy]

What a jolly bunch.

[CottonTop]

Sick and twisted, that is what the Catholic Church is. Stand by their rules regardless of the cost. Its OK to protect their kiddie fiddling brothers but a nun makes a decision to save someone's life and she's damned.

 

Disgusting.

[Number Six]

If they hadn't aborted the foetus is would have died.

 

They aborted it, it died.

 

Was there a course of action they could have taken where the foetus lived?

[Bozo]

Actually this raises a massive concern about Catholics being in a position of control over medical decisions. The nun in question has made the only sensible decision she could, she has had to put her faith to one side and do what is best for all concerned. I have no doubt this would have been a very difficult and traumatic decision for her. But what would happen next time at the same hospital when presumably she is replaced by someone appointed in the bishop's own image and who lacks her moral courage and integrity. One can only fear for the next woman admitted in the same or similar condition to that particular hospital.

[plekhanov]

If they hadn't aborted the foetus is would have died.

 

They aborted it, it died.

 

Was there a course of action they could have taken where the foetus lived?

No.

 

There were two possible courses of action

1. Do nothing and let the women die taking the foetus with her in one of the many natural forms of abortion.
   
2. Perform a medical abortion and save the woman's life allowing her to continue to be a mother to her 4 existing children.
   

The Church is upset because the Nun chose the latter option

[Bloomdido]

You couldn't make it up. Do you know who it was that excommunicated her? I feel like going to my local catherlic church and asking the priest to explain during his sermon.

[Plain Talker]

Actually this raises a massive concern about Catholics being in a position of control over medical decisions. The nun in question has made the only sensible decision she could, she has had to put her faith to one side and do what is best for all concerned. I have no doubt this would have been a very difficult and traumatic decision for her. But what would happen next time at the same hospital when presumably she is replaced by someone appointed in the bishop's own image and who lacks her moral courage and integrity. One can only fear for the next woman admitted in the same or similar condition to that particular hospital.

 

the voice of sense and reason.

[Grahame]

But the hospital felt it could proceed because of an exception — called Directive 47 in the U.S. Catholic Church's ethical guidelines for health care providers — that allows, in some circumstance, procedures that could kill the fetus to save the mother. Sister Margaret McBride, who was an administrator at the hospital as well as its liaison to the diocese, gave her approval.