tomndebb:
Are you looking to empty your barn of all that straw with which you are building your straw men?
I never said that this was the only time that a Catholic has gotten in trouble with a bishop for making a particular medical decision. I note only that the situation was sufficiently rare that no general practices–no “chilling effect”–is liable to result.
That the woman and baby would both be dead is speculation. That the woman would have died, at all, is speculation.
Your claim that the bishop was “rogue” is in your imagination. Probably many bishops would have reacted in the same way to this peculiar event. I note two things:
That an increase of Catholic hospital corporations might begin to impinge on the ability of women in remote locations to obtain Constitutionally permitted abortions, tubal ligations, etc. would seem to be a legitimate concern for people who want those procedures available.
Please read my previous cite, the problem is not nearly as rare as you infer.
Or a political organization with an agenda is trying to make it seem larger than it is.
Ok i’m done, you will hand wave away anything I provide
You have admitted a lack of medical knowledge yet you know enough to know it never happens.
In some of the miscarriage cases described in the Ibis Study, the standard of care also required immediate treatment. Yet doctors practicing at Catholic-affiliated hospitals were forced to delay treatment while performing medically unnecessary tests. Even though these miscarriages were inevitable, and no medical treatment was available to save the fetus, some patients were transferred because doctors were required to wait until there was no longer a fetal heartbeat to provide the needed medical care. This delay subjected these patients to further risks of hemorrhage and infection and could have violated their right to receive emergency medical treatment under federal law.
Abortion (that is, the directly intended termination of pregnancy before viability or
http://www.ncbcenter.org/document.doc?id=147
Direct from the Church’s own documentation stating abortion is never acceptable. Which should have never been in question.
rat_avatar:
Ok i’m done, you will hand wave away anything I provide
You have admitted a lack of medical knowledge yet you know enough to know it never happens.
I am open to persuasion.
I am sure that you will find many to agree with you. I ask only that you stick to the facts.
You are repeating what is already known and not contradicting anything in this thread. So what was your point, here?
In case of extrauterine pregnancy, no intervention is morally licit which constitutes a
Ectopic pregnancies can cause serious health risks, are directly addressed.
Because you claimed that doctors were free to ignore the rules, they are not.
Except for non-expert opinion you have provided no information to show that it is acceptable.
You are desperate to have a fight, so you are now accusing me of things I never said.
If that is how you want to proceed, I would prefer that you go back to being done with me.
Locrian
February 21, 2012, 7:52am
50
I can remember back to catholic school in 8th grade where the head priest basically told us that a pregnant girl is a blessing, but it’s better to abstain or wear a condom. He explained how to use a condom, also a diaphragm.
No, of course I can’t cite this. But from the posts I look at on SDMB and other places it’s pretty obvious that it depends where and when you are in the whole catholic/contraception bullshit. One priest here, one priest there, a nun here, a bishop there; all speak for or against contraception-- anyone remember the catholic church that passed out free condoms at masses a few times? They haven’t been excommunicated AFAIK…
Point is, there is no reasonable way to blanket statement about contraception if you are the RCC. Part of that political power people are referring to is, “Hey, we’re not Fundies! We’ve actually got a vatican!”
To put it another way, if the pope starts to look like Santorum on contraception, the “faithful” may decide to go to (gasp!) secular college!!
tomndebb:
“Intentionally letting a woman die vs. performing a medically necessary abortion” is the stuff of fiction. In the Phoenix case, an extremely rare situation was decided in one direction by the medical staff (including the hospital’s ethics committee), and judged differently by the bishop.
This case was sufficiently rare, that one cannot extrapolate from it to a general situation. In general, women are not going to be left to die simply to avoid performing an abortion. It has not happened in the past, (old Tom Tryon movies notwithstanding), and it will not happen in the future. One may disagree with Bishop Olmstead’s decision, but that case is not one that allows a generalization about church practices.
It directly contradicts this statement, it also fits with the concerns expressed by several communities as reported through news stories in the “New York Time” “Guardian” and the “Seattle Times.”
You have provided not a single cite, or story where there is an exception, you have only waved away the evidence.
I assume you will ignore the Church’s word also.
monavis
February 21, 2012, 12:23pm
52
Martin_Hyde:
I think when you have “Priests for Life” saying they don’t know of any Catholic Bishop who would support outlawing contraception, I think that’s pretty solid evidence that the Church isn’t advocating contraception be illegal in the United States.
But it’s essentially a classic logical fallacy to ask someone to prove a negative. I don’t have to prove the RCC doesn’t do something, if you believe the RCC advocates for contraception to be legally prohibited you need to show some evidence for it. All you’ve shown so far are amicus curiae briefs on mostly unrelated issues, and statements from a Catholic website that just reiterate what is known doctrine as has been preached by like all the 20th century Popes: that the use of contraception is mortal sin. That is not evidence that the RCC supports outlawing contraception.
Just finding vague cites that they advocate Catholics support laws “consistent with the Catholic faith” isn’t some sort of catch all, either. Catholic faith teaches that the use of contraception is a sin, not that it has to be outlawed.
If you look at the stuff put out there by Catholic political groups on abortion, it’s really obvious the Church openly supports abortion being illegal. I suspect because for the Church they view it almost as a sin of omission to not try and fight what they view as the murder of innocent life. But for an issues of “private conscience” that does not impact other innocent life, the position I’ve always seen the Church preach is that you need to follow the will of God absolutely, not be weak, and et cetera–that you have to self-regulate.
In other words,you are saying the Church is God? It is the teachings of humans, and that can be proven. No one can say in truth that anything is of God, just the belief of what some other human stated, taught, or wrote.It is a known fact that the Bible was all written by humans, and if you believe the Bible, you are not believing in God,but the word or teaching of another human!Humans decided what was the word of God and what was inspired.
rat_avatar:
It directly contradicts this statement, it also fits with the concerns expressed by several communities as reported through news stories in the “New York Time” “Guardian” and the “Seattle Times.”
You have provided not a single cite, or story where there is an exception, you have only waved away the evidence.
I assume you will ignore the Church’s word also.
Your ability to read your own intent into a statement is remarkable.
Here is a statement from the Catholic Hospital Association, USA: (.pdf)https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:YA68eMVbVaYJ:www.chausa.org/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier%3Did%26ItemID%3D2147489384+catholic+hospitals+ectopic+pregnancy&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESixQontEPzdz3pFkY5yQDGFSx0ogRTNrWkVSP654KgdS5nt_SAkllhKo8_ZcQvvQq65Hd16D0Um0ToK6yjL7aIr5uYWrrRlOOf-bxtnePPxu8QQ0w5Mcd7kO2j_qBmDMFDPbU5s&sig=AHIEtbRbERw8iRdajkkFxhHDwZKWArySog&pli=1
It was written in response to the National Women’s Law Center article. It notes that there are four ways to treat ectopic pregnancies, two of which are clearly not abortion, but are medically undesirable, and two that are under discussion, but on which the church has not made an official pronouncement with different ethicists taking different positions. It further notes that if some hospitals have chosen to refuse the third and fourth methods, that is the result of decisions by that hospital’s staff and not as the result of a direct teaching of the church.
Thanks for the link it clears up a lot of things. Though I think a lot of people are jumping the gun a bit. The real question is, are the catholic hospitals church first or hospital first. As I was reading the article something just didn’t feel right, then I realized what it was. The idea of theologian opinions coming into the issue is just off. I just don’t see how theology is related to a decision thats made between doctors and their patients.
Thank you for the cite,
What they don’t address is how sick they make the patent get before they will accept those procedures.
It can be known that the fetus will not live, yet the ethics committee will not approve the procedure until the woman becomes gravely ill.
Why have they not issued new verbiage?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2636458/
In another case, Dr H, from the same Catholic-owned hospital in the Midwest, sent her patient by ambulance 90 miles to the nearest institution where the patient could have an abortion because the ethics committee refused to approve her case.
Dr B, an obstetrician–gynecologist working in an academic medical center, described how a Catholic-owned hospital in her western urban area asked her to accept a patient who was already septic. When she received the request, she recommended that the physician from the Catholic-owned hospital perform a uterine aspiration there and not further risk the health of the woman by delaying her care with the transport.
I’ll never forget this; it was awful—I had one of my partners accept this patient at 19 weeks. The pregnancy was in the vagina. It was over… . And so he takes this patient and transferred her to [our] tertiary medical center, which I was just livid about, and, you know, “we’re going to save the pregnancy.” So of course, I’m on call when she gets septic, and she’s septic to the point that I’m pushing pressors on labor and delivery trying to keep her blood pressure up, and I have her on a cooling blanket because she’s 106 degrees. And I needed to get everything out. And so I put the ultrasound machine on and there was still a heartbeat, and [the ethics committee] wouldn’t let me because there was still a heartbeat. This woman is dying before our eyes. I went in to examine her, and I was able to find the umbilical cord through the membranes and just snapped the umbilical cord and so that I could put the ultrasound—“Oh look. No heartbeat. Let’s go.” She was so sick she was in the [intensive care unit] for about 10 days and very nearly died… . She was in DIC [disseminated intravascular coagulopathy]… . Her bleeding was so bad that the sclera, the white of her eyes, were red, filled with blood… . And I said, “I just can’t do this. I can’t put myself behind this. This is not worth it to me.” That’s why I left.
rat avatar , please look up The Doctrine of Double Effect :
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
The doctrine (or principle) of double effect is often invoked to explain the permissibility of an action that causes a serious harm, such as the death of a human being, as a side effect of promoting some good end.
This is an important facet to the understanding of Catholic bio-ethics, and frankly I don’t think it’s terribly controversial. From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
[
An effect can be tolerated without being willed by its agent; for instance, a mother’s exhaustion from tending her sick child. A bad effect is not imputable if it was not willed either as an end or as a means of an action, e.g., a death a person incurs in aiding someone in danger. For a bad effect to be imputable it must be foreseeable and the agent must have the possibility of avoiding it, as in the case of manslaughter caused by a drunken driver.
](http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s1c1a3.htm#1737 )
The legitimate defense of persons and societies is not an exception to the prohibition against the murder of the innocent that constitutes intentional killing. "The act of self-defense can have a double effect: the preservation of one’s own life; and the killing of the aggressor. . . . The one is intended, the other is not.”
](http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s2c2a5.htm#2263 )
Catholics United for Faith puts it this way (pdf warning):
[
By the time an ectopic pregnancy is diagnosed, the life of the pregnant mother is usually already in danger. If the Fallopian Tube is not already ruptured when the pregnancy is diagnosed, a person applies the principle of double effect to make a morally acceptable course of action. In this case, a person has two legitimate options: 1. Remove the entire Fallopian Tube or 2. Remove a portion of the tube at the site of implantation.
The side effect of any of these procedures is the death of the unborn child; yet this end is not the end which the mother or physician intends or chooses.
[…]
That which is directly treated is the life-threatening damaged tissue of the tube; therefore, the child is not directly attacked. Removal of the damaged tube or a portion of the tube that contains the child is morally permissible, because the death of the child is an effect which may be foreseen, but it is unintentional.
](http://www.cuf.org/FileDownloads/doubleeffect.pdf )
It’s unfortunate whenever a person doesn’t receive due care due to backwards ideology, but I think you’re misrepresenting Catholic teaching on this point.
Paranoid_Randroid:
rat avatar , please look up The Doctrine of Double Effect :
This is an important facet to the understanding of Catholic bio-ethics, and frankly I don’t think it’s terribly controversial. From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
Catholics United for Faith puts it this way (pdf warning):
It’s unfortunate whenever a person doesn’t receive due care due to backwards ideology, but I think you’re misrepresenting Catholic teaching on this point.
I actually don’t care about their teaching, I care about the effect.
The problem is when they can’t use mental tricks to say “hey we didn’t mean to abort the baby it just happened but we didn’t mean to abort”
E.G. the example I provided where there was a vaginal pregnancy, There was no a “tube” that could be removed in order to save the woman’s health, the way to protect the woman’s health was to directly terminate the pregnancy.
Directly ending the pregnancy as your cite confirms is counter to their theology.
Just for the record, here’s a case from 1940 in which the RCC actively opposed a speaking engagement by Margaret Sanger in Holyoke, MA:
http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/secure/newsletter/articles/countdown_in_holyoke.html
It got pretty ugly, with the RCC threatening a boycott of Catholic laity against the businesses of Protestants who supported/arranged for Sanger’s visit. The RCC’s militancy in this era regarding contraception, film censorship and public funding of Catholic schools (especially the latter) led to a notable backlash by the late 40s, including the formation of Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State as well as a series of articles by Paul Blanshard in The Nation criticizing the Church’s positions and his book American Freedom and Catholic Power . And a public spat between Cardinal Spellman and Eleanor Roosevelt.
One might well claim that the RCC is a lot more pluralistic and less militant than in 1940, but that isn’t true for all areas of the Church–if EWTN or Catholic Answers somehow attained the power to ban contraceptives for everyone, they’d certainly do so.
Bricker
February 22, 2012, 8:34pm
60
lew_cody:
Just for the record, here’s a case from 1940 in which the RCC actively opposed a speaking engagement by Margaret Sanger in Holyoke, MA:
http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/secure/newsletter/articles/countdown_in_holyoke.html
It got pretty ugly, with the RCC threatening a boycott of Catholic laity against the businesses of Protestants who supported/arranged for Sanger’s visit. The RCC’s militancy in this era regarding contraception, film censorship and public funding of Catholic schools (especially the latter) led to a notable backlash by the late 40s, including the formation of Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State as well as a series of articles by Paul Blanshard in The Nation criticizing the Church’s positions and his book American Freedom and Catholic Power . And a public spat between Cardinal Spellman and Eleanor Roosevelt.
One might well claim that the RCC is a lot more pluralistic and less militant than in 1940, but that isn’t true for all areas of the Church–if EWTN or Catholic Answers somehow attained the power to ban contraceptives for everyone, they’d certainly do so.
How do you feel about a speaking engagement by Margaret Sanger? Worth attending and cheering, or protesting?
Or would it depend on whether she was speaking about birth control, or compulsory sterilization?
Frankly, I don’t think showing the the Church protested a speech by Sanger is really a great example for showing how wrong the Church is.
