Save a Life, Get Excommunicated.

This story begins late last year when a 27-year-old mother of four arrived critically ill with pulmonary hypertension at a hospital in Phoenix.  She was eleven weeks pregnant, had "right heart failure" and was told that if she continued her pregnancy, her chances of mortality was "close to 100%".  The patient was too gravely ill to be moved to an operating room much less another hospital.  After consulting the patient, her family, her doctors and even the hospital ethics committee, it was determined that she would undergo a first trimester abortion in order to save her life.

Problem was, she was in a Catholic hospital.

A Catholic nun, Sister Margaret McBride, had been a longtime administrator at St. Joseph's Hospital and had been vice president of mission integration at the hospital.  She was on call at the hospital's ethics committee when the surgery took place.  She was part of a group, including the patient and the physicians, who decided upon the abortion to save the patient's life.  Her career as a nun came to an abrupt end when Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted, head of the Phoenix Diocese, indicated the nun was "automatically excommunicated" because of this action.

No other alternatives? 

This is the most serious action the Catholic Church can take, refusing to excommunicate even pedophile priests, who are often protected by their bishops and transferred to different parishes.  The most infamous parish priests, including Father John Geoghan, were defrocked but never excommunicated. 

Rev. Thomas Doyle, a canon lawyer, said that Bishop Olmsted, "clearly had other alternatives than to declare her excommunicated."  Doyle stated that the Bishop could have chosen to show some mercy and admitted that she faced an agonizing choice.  He added that this case shows a "gross inequity" in how the church handles scandal.  Doyle went on to say that no pedophile priests have ever been excommunicated.  Instead, they have the protection of their bishops and it has taken years to defrock them, if ever.

"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.

Concerns Over Catholic Hospitals

This situation extends well beyond American Catholics. Between one fifth and one third of all hospital beds within this country are administered by the Catholic Church. Catholic hospitals receive public funding to provide health care to the larger community yet they are not required to offer treatments which conflict with their religious teachings.

"We always must remember that when a difficult medical situation involves a pregnant woman, there are two patients in need of treatment and care; not merely one. The unborn child's life is just as sacred as the mother's life, and neither life can be preferred over the other," the bishop wrote.

Olmsted went on to say:

"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."

Of course, this was not a choice between the life of the mother and the life of her fetus.  The fetus would not have been viable outside of the womb during the first trimester.  If the mother had died, the fetus would have died as well.  Not to mention, if this patient had died, four children would no longer have a mother.  Bishop Olmsted also stated that if a Catholic "formally cooperates" in an abortion, he or she is automatically excommunicated.

James J. Walter, professor of bioethics at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, a Catholic university, was asked if the Church prefers that both the mother and child die rather than sacrifice the one to save the other.  His response was that the "hope" would be that both would survive.

Is it time for the Catholic Church to stop providing health care?

In a country where Catholic hospitals make up approximately one third of all medical services, that is no easy question.

Should they quit receiving public funding in order to provide these services, while still maintaining the right to impose their religious doctrine on the general public?  That question might be a bit easier.  Our First Amendment usually prevents taxpayer money going toward religious services while religious organizations are exempt from taxes.  Even religious institutions with noted political agendas, such as Focus on the Family, are tax-exempt.  They will not receive public funding unless they provide community services, within certain structural guidelines and without religious coercion.  Certainly a medical institution which forces a woman to remain pregnant in spite of almost certain death due to its religious dogma would be considered "religious coercion," especially if the woman in physically unable to travel to another hospital. 

In the case of the Catholic Church, this is hardly the only dogma it forces upon women.  The Catholic Church has refused to address "marital rape", instead stating that while violence is wrong, there is no such thing as "marital rape" because the wife must respect the "marital rights" of her husband and be submissive to him.

Not only might a woman be raped by her husband, the Catholic Church refuses to allow her to partake in any form of birth control.  As stated by Pope Paul VI in 1968:

Contraception is "any action which, either in anticipation of the conjugal act [sexual intercourse], or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible" (Humanae Vitae 14). This includes sterilization, condoms and other barrier methods, spermicides, coitus interruptus (withdrawal method), the Pill, and all other such methods.

So not only may a woman be forced into sex with her husband, she can also be forced into pregnancy.
Not only can she be forced into pregnancy, she may not have an abortion even if both she and her baby would otherwise die.

This is the Catholic Church's "Pro-life" stance.

But is this really the organization we want to trump all other rights, including the rights of the woman, her family and the advice of physicians, regardless of the religious leanings of the patients?  If you live in an area which is only served by a Catholic hospital, the choice will not be yours to make.