Basically these jokers are opposed to any type of contraception, or limits to fertility, or even the concept that women should do anything except bear children. They think women should just reproduce like rabbits, like the good ole days. :rolleyes:
I had one. We thought our finances would let us start a family by the time the birth control wore off. We were wrong. I had the abortion and lost 30 pounds that summer because we couldn’t afford to eat.
My mom had one. And if she hadn’t, I wouldn’t exist now because there is no way my dad would have pursued a single mother.
My friend had one, an educated woman with a wonderful husband and beautiful son now.
The day I went into the clinic, there was another multi-college degree woman there, like me, who just found out that she was pregnant with her fourth and she and her husband knew there was no way they could afford it.
Hell yes! Conservatives are completely forgetting that in some cases termination of a pregnancy SAVES the life of a mom. I also think that many of them don’t realize that theraputic abortions (late term) are done in cases where the pregnancy is wanted but has an extreme profound disabilty. Meaning the kind where the baby will die at or soon after birth.
The anti abortionists also don’t realize that most abortions are performed so early that even conditions that cause miscarriage nautrally haven’t had time to effect the pregnancy. Honestly if we could just mandate insurance companies covering birth control, and the morning after pill being sold over the counter, we could get rid of 90% of all abortions in one fell swoop.
No. You’re forgetting that babies are cute and innocent and kissing them gets you votes. Women are often harlots. Especially the ones that rat you out to the cops, your wife, or the media. Kissing too many women can cost you votes.
I’m just glad that the republicans are taking the budget crisis seriously and not just using it to go after their favorite boogeymen like the EPA, NPR, PBS, Planned Parenthood, and those ultra scary czars. Yep. I’m glad one party is behaving like rational adults.
Amen!
Now go and convince them to do it.
I managed to live in the US for five years (4+1) without hearing of PP. For the fourth year, there was an ad for them near my house, but it looked like it could have been about the RCC’s concept of “responsible parenthood” - nothing about it said “hi, we’re a chain of cheap clinics focusing mostly but not only on women’s medicine,” it was just something like “children are a great thing, but space them properly and make sure you can take care of them.” If we’d known about PP, my just-married friend whose refill on the Pill was rejected by the university’s clinic would have been able to get a refill; if she’d still managed to get pregnant before having the refill, she would have been able to get gynecological care for decent prices in the period between the insurance for her first year ending and the insurance for the second year accepting that, ok, a pregnancy doesn’t count as a preexisting condition (at least when you have to get insurance in order to be able to register at uni, when the doctors who refused to refill your prescription on account of not trusting your personal obgyn cos he’s a foreigner from what you call “back home” are the uni’s, and when it’s the uni that chooses a different provider for its foreign students every year); I would have been able to see someone with a degree somewhat related to breasts about that lump in mine…
Please if you can, spread the word to immigrants and others who may not know they exist and what they do. Thanks!
We would love to, but HR Bill 3476269 prohibits the public discussion of PP activities with anyone outside of PP itself…
I don’t think anybody is saying that abortion should be illegal even if necessary to save the life of the mother.
Well, actually, yes. Some people do say exactly that. They say that women should die, rather than have an abortion, and they say that doctors should not have the option of discussing abortions with women, even if it’s to save a woman’s life.
I realize I’m always going out on a limb whenever I use the terms “everybody” or “nobody”, but let me amend my previous “nobody” to “no more than a negligable segment of the population”.
While there may be some fanatics out there who call themselves “Catholic” and truly believe that abortion should be illegal in all cases, even in instances of ectopic pregnancies, where the life of the mother is in danger, that’s plainly not the position of the Catholic Church. The position of the Church is that, if it is necessary to perform a procedure that will save the life of the mother but result in the death of the child, that procedure is permissible. It is known, theologically, as the law of “double effect”. I don’t have a cite, but ask Bricker. ;).
The Church in America (UCSSB) has publically come out in favor of universal health care for everybody, especially low-income women. Put those government dollars into subsidizing low-cost or no-cost neighborhood clinics for women that don’t include taking taxpayer money to fund (directly or indirectly) abortions, and you won’t hear a peep out of the Magesterium. Honest.
ETA: Question of voting. Regarding your quote, the touchstone is “intent”. A Catholic politician is only morally culpable for voting for any particular law if it is the politician’s intent to support abortion. To take a ridiculous but illustrative example, a Catholic politician could vote for a bill that allocates milliions of dollars per year to faith-based initiatives, and includes a rider that increases funding for Planned Parenthood by $5 annually as long the politician voted in spite of, not because of, the latter allocation.
I’ll sneak Bugs Bunny in a baby carrier into a GOP candidate’s rally:
“The bad man bit my widdle nose!”
Yeah, except no. You’re wrong.
Less than a year ago, a woman at the Catholic hospital of St. Joseph’s in Phoenix presented with a rare heart condition. The strain of pregnancy was threatening her life. Her doctors agreed that her chance of death was 100% if she continued the pregnancy. The hospital ethics commitee met with the doctors and patient and then agreed to authorize the abortion.
The nun who had been the on-call administrator for the ethics committe, Sister Margaret Macbride, reprimanded, removed from her position, and subject to an automatic excommunication by her Bishop, Thomas Olmsted. Olmested released the following statement:
So yes. This Catholic official was in fact willing to let the woman die, since in his “medical” opinion, an unborn child can’t be a problem. Removing the child removed the burden on her heart condition and allowed her to survive - but in this Catholic official’s pronouncement, that end wasn’t justified. This Catholic official then used his position to punish the nun who was involved in the decision.
Catholic officials might talk a good game about caring for the mother’s life, but in this episode, their actions speak louder than their words.
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2010/05/15/20100515phoenix-catholic-nun-abortion.html
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126985072
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37171656/ns/health-health_care/
NM -0 Lynn already dealt with it, at length
I remember this incident. I don’t think it was the Bishop’s position that the procedure should not have been performed, but that (1) it had been deliberately concealed for over 3 months; and (2) there had been similar incidents at the same hospital, where doctors misrepresented the gravity of a mother’s condition (I think the hospital was eventually decertified as a “Catholic” hospital IIRC).
In short, I don’t think anybody really knows what the mother’s condition really was or its severity, after-the-fact pronouncements from the hospital notwithstanding.
As far as the nun being “punished” by the Bishop – the Bishop did not excommunicate her (or even demote her; she still runs the hospital); he sent a private letter to the hospital, stating that anyone procuring an abortion incurred an “automatic excommunication”, that is, independent of any formal action by the Magesterium. For all we know, she made confession and is now receiving the Sacrament.
Maybe the Sister made the right decision, maybe it was too hasty; Maybe the Bishop rightly condemned the action, maybe he spoke too soon – we may never know, no “official” action was taken, and medical records are private, so…
IMHO, if the decision had been made in a more straightforward manner, with more transparency, maybe there wouldn’t have been this big blowup, but from what I recall, there were other problems with this particular hospital.
Life and death decisions are difficult, and polemicists on both sides of the issue, I’m sure, use both extreme cases and close cases to make their points, not always in good faith. But the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, developed by the Committee on Doctrine of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops are clear:
http://www.usccb.org/bishops/directives.shtml#partfour
tl;dr – Catholic nuns, bishops, and (hopefully) laity do not require mothers to emperil their lives in the hope that their unborn children may be saved thereby.
Beniamino, what you’re missing is that they did the *abortion *to save the life of the mother. That’s not allowed in the Catholic church. You can perform treatments which will cure the mother but inadvertently, unavoidably, kill the fetus, but you cannot abort the fetus *as *treatment.
If the mother had a heart condition which could only be treated with a cardiac drug which would cause a miscarriage, then you could give it. If there was another drug which was less likely to cause a miscarriage, you would have to give that one, instead.
If, as sometimes happens, a woman has an ectopic pregnancy, you can remove the tube, and if the fetus (well, zygote, really) comes out with it, then that’s okay. But you can’t remove the fetus and leave the tube.
By official Catholic doctrine, if a treatment will cause fetal death but save the mother, and it’s the only treatment which will save her, you can do it. But if the removal of the fetus from the mother IS the treatment which will save her life, you can’t do it.
But frankly, I’m even more pissed off that when I work at Catholic hospitals, I’m not allowed to talk about contraception. Even in the maternity to ward to a 14 year old girl (who isn’t Catholic) with four boyfriends who delivered an infant of unknown paternity. Even if she asks me about it. Not even NFP, which is acceptable to the Church. All I can tell her is to talk to her doctor about it. Right, like a 14 year old babymama is going to ask a 64 year old male OB she met on her way up from the ER about contraception. :rolleyes:
Really? So, let’s say that a mother comes into a Catholic hospital, and the cardiologist says, “without removal of this fetus/zygote”, this woman’s heart will not last long enought to carry it to term." They simply discharge her and say “lotsa luck?” Or is it the case that there’s always some other “indirect” method? If there is no such indirect method, that presents a serious problem. I would hope it’s not the case. Has this ever happened, to your knowledge? You go ask your hospital administrator, and I’ll ask a priest next Sunday, and we’ll touch base next Monday. If the priest tells me that the mother must die, I’ll give some serious thought to changing parishes.
Well, in the eyes of the church, sex is only for married people. You don’t have to agree, but if you work at a Catholic hospital, you can’t expect to be permitted to contravene Church teaching on the clock, can you? Personally, even if more unmarried people used NFP, I think there’d be far fewer abortions, because women would be much more familiar with their fertility cycles. So, do you teach unmarried people NFP to avoid the greater evil of abortion? – I dunno, I’m not a theologian, and I’m glad it’s not up to me to decide those difficult questions.
Yes, really. We’d say the same thing we say to patients for whom there really is no treatment: “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Smith, but there’s simply nothing more we can do but pray and hope for the best.”
It happened in the case **Merneith **brought up. Or rather, according to church officials, it *should *have gone that way, and the nun responsible for the decision not to follow the Church’s guidelines was excommunicated (latae sententiae, which means there’s no grounds for appeal, it’s an automatic done deal between her and God) *and *professionally reprimanded *and *the hospital stripped of its Catholic affiliation.
I hope that you do. And I hope that your priest knows his own religion’s stance on the issue, although I don’t hold out a lot of hope on that account.
I’ve already had this conversation with the head of the Mother and Infant (what they call Maternal Medicine) ward; I don’t have access to an administrator. We agreed that I probably shouldn’t apply for a job there. 
Sure fair enough, and it is their playground, so their rules apply. So why am I not allowed to speak to *married *women about NFP - which is allowed by the church - for contraception? Why do they allow non-Catholic women to seek health care there, and don’t clearly communicate that they’re following Catholic ideals and giving out only partial information and offering only some of the standard of care medical treatments? (I don’t really expect you to have a good answer for this, by the way, as the head of the department couldn’t come up with anything other than, “it’s policy.”)
They might not discharge her, they might give her palliative care, but yeah, it’s basically her bad luck to be pregnant with a heart condition (or whatever). We don’t have to ask anyone. We already have past cases where treatment is refused.
And if it comes down to treating a problem that already exists (a promiscuous 14 year old) or simply mouthing doctrine, let’s go with treating the problem, so she doesn’t have half a dozen kids before she’s 21.
Dude, I quoted the bishop. His exact words were “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.”
In other words, the Bishop said specifically that they should not have performed the life-saving procedure.
You are entirely incorrect.
She had pulmonary hypertension. It was right there in the article I cited. Here, I’ll cite it again:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37171656/ns/health-health_care/
“The patient, who hasn’t been identified, was seriously ill with pulmonary hypertension. The condition limits the ability of the heart and lungs to function and is made worse, possibly even fatal, by pregnancy.”
Here’s the wiki article for more info -
You didn’t read a damn thing I posted, did you?
All three articles I originally cited state that the nun in question, Sister Margaret Macbride, was told by Bishop Olmsted that she had incurred an automatic excommunication.
From the AZ Central - http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2010/05/15/20100515phoenix-catholic-nun-abortion.html
"Catholic nun and longtime administrator of St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix was reassigned in the wake of a decision to allow a pregnancy to be ended in order to save the life of a critically ill patient.
The decision also drew a sharp rebuke from Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted, head of the Phoenix Diocese, who indicated the woman was “automatically excommunicated” because of the action."
From the NPR story - Nun Excommunicated For Allowing Abortion : NPR
"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. "
**
From the MSNBS article** - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37171656/ns/health-health_care/
"‘Automatically excommunicated’
Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted, head of the Phoenix Diocese, indicated in a statement that the Roman Catholic involved was “automatically excommunicated” because of the action. The Catholic Church allows the termination of a pregnancy only as a secondary effect of other treatments, such as radiation of a cancerous uterus.
“I am gravely concerned by the fact that an abortion was performed several months ago in a Catholic hospital in this diocese,” Olmsted said in a statement sent to The Arizona Republic. "I am further concerned by the hospital’s statement that the termination of a human life was necessary to treat the mother’s underlying medical condition.
“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.”
Olmsted added that if a Catholic “formally cooperates” in an abortion, he or she is automatically excommunicated.
**
Bonus cite:** Wikipedia has an article about the matter
There are numerous further cites listed on the wiki page
You are, on the subject of Sister Margaret’s excommunication, simply wrong.
Furthermore, all of those articles indicate that Macbride was removed from her position at the hospital. You’re wrong about that too.
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The sister didn’t make the situation in a vacuum. She was a member of the hospital ethics board, which weighed in on this, and she, the doctors, and the patient were all in agreement that this was necessary.
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This was a private medical decision between the doctor and the patient - the bishop had no business butting in. Less transparency? No patient should be required to run their medical problems past random outsiders, including - maybe especially - priests.
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We know it was the right decision because the doctors said so. This was a medical problem. If the doctors all agreed that this was necessary to save the mother’s life, no one - not the Bishop, not the nun, not the even the patient’s husband - had any business substituting their personal opinions for actual medical science.
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As demonstrated twice now, you are incorrect (or maybe just flat out lying) about the nun receiving official punishment. She did.
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You attempts to obfuscate about “other problems” are lame misdirections. I’m talking about this one specific incident and the specific statements from the dioceses and its bishop, Thomas Olmsted.
If you’d bothered to read the articles I’d cited, you’d see that Bishop Olmsted, and a Father John Ehrich, who is the medical ethics director for the Dioceses of Phoenix, both state that this case falls outside that doctrine because the treatment which killed the child was not a side effect of a different treatment (like say, a side effect of chemotherapy) but a single treatment that had no other part but the removal of the fetus.
Thus, Bishop Olmsted and Father Ehrich absolutely would have denied this patient the abortion even if it killed her.
Furthermore, Olmsted went on to strip Catholic recognition from the hospital late last year
At that time, Olmsted said
So Olmsted continues to think that the pregnancy should have been preserved, with some magic “treatment” which his copious medical knowledge tells him would have been just fine.
Olmsted, in stripping the hospital of its Catholic endorsement, also cited the fact that the healthcare system provides counseling on contraception and sterilization and such.
tl;dr version
Bishop Olmsted is a fucking menace who thinks Church rules are an adequate substitute for medical training and women in the Phoenix dioceses should avoid Catholic hospitals if they want reliable information and healthcare on reproductive issues.
That is some fucked up shit. I’m very, very glad I’m no longer associated with that church.
Yes. From what I’ve read, not all available options were considered before a direct abortion was performed. Maybe the procedure they performed would ultimately have been the appropriate one, but not as a first resort.
Again, this was a statement made months after the fact, and nobody knows what her chances of survival actually were because of confidentiality issues. The doctors might have opined later that she had a 0% chance of binging the child to term safely, but nobody knows what the diagnosis was before the hospital lept into damage-control mode.
Please play nice. I know this is “the pit”, but we’re all mature adults here, and getting all hot and bothered about what strangers say on the internet is not a productive enterprise.
Right, the key word is “automatic”. That is, by permitting the direct abortion, she automatically excommunicated herself. The private letter from the Bishop to the hospital declaring that fact is not a legal “act”. The Bishop didn’t do anything.
Maybe she was reassigned, but when I heard about this story last year, I seem to recall that she ended up back at the hospital eventually. I could be wrong, and if I am, mea culpa.
The canon law expert at NPR appears to be mistaken. As I stated before, excommunication laetae sententiae (or something like that) is not an act of the Bishop, but of the actor.
Respectfully, I am not. Consult a Canon Law expert if you like, but I’m pretty sure about this one.
…and there’s a good chance they were wrong. As I said, if all available options had been considered, and if they hadn’t hid the fact that the hospital had performed an abortion for several months, none of this would have ever happened. Now, the Bishop should have known that his letter to the hospital would have been made public, so perhaps his admonition should have been made between he and the Sister privately but Bishops are people too – some are rash, others are more prudent, such is life.
Whenever there’s an interested third party involved (the baby), the medical decision involves more than just the doctor and the patient. In a Catholic hospital, where a decision is to be made to end a life, that decision cannot be made in a vacuum.
Maybe it was the right decision, but maybe there were other options that they had not considered. That’s really the point, isn’t it? I can’t give much credence to statements made by hospital staff after the investigation had already commenced, as any such statements would necessarily be self-serving and of limited validity. I doubt we’ll ever have all the facts to be able to say one way or another.
Maybe she was transferred, but my recollection was that she ended up resuming her former position. Now, the hospital itself, I believe, was decertified as a “Catholic hospital”; maybe that’s what you’re thinking of. But as far as the “excommunication” goes, that was not a punishment imposed from without.
If you’d like to continue this conversation, why not start a new thread outside the pit? I don’t really see the point in hurtling ad hominems back and forth. you and I are strangers to each other, and to accuse me of “lying” is a bit uncharitable, don’t you think?
This is not the case. It is not “misdirection” to contextualize the situation for the purpose of clarifying why the Bishop was particularly bothered by this incident. The difference between an isolated incident and a pattern of past practice is a big one.
Again, I don’t think that’s the case. It appears, rather, that other options were not considered. I do not believe that it is Church doctrine that, given the option of two lives ending and one life being saved, a Catholic hospital would choose the former. Now, we’ve heard from an employee of a Catholic hospital that this might be the case, which is why I’d like to consult with a knowledgable priest. Once I’ve done so, I’ll report back, I promise! (thought not likely in the pit), but until then, unless somebody else has firsthand authority from a Bishop, we’re just going to go around in circles.
Right, that’s what I recall as well.
No, just that other options should have been investigated more thoroughly.
Right. Contraception and sterilization have no place in a Catholic hospital. These, and other “problems” indicate that this was not an isolated incident. I wonder if there were other unreported cases where abortion was used as a “first response” rather than as a “last resort”.
Does this add anything to the discussion? Also, your statement puts the bunny in the hat, so to speak. Catholic doctrine does not hold that abortion, sterilization, and artificial birth control constitute “healthcare on reproductive issues”. You may disagree, and if you do, don’t go to a Catholic hospital.
As for me, I’m glad that my children were born in a Catholic hospital, because to think that the same doctor might, on one floor, be bringing a child into the world and, on another floor, taking a child out of it is, at the very least, unsettling.