Dr. Gerard M. Nadal goes over the medical and ethical aspects of the abortion approved by Sister McBride at St. Joseph’s Hospital which in part led to Bishop Olmsted disallowing the use of Catholic for this hospital.
Supporters of Sister McBride have been trying to obfuscate the issue by saying the abortion was allowable under double-effect. Though you also certainly get the idea that her supporters are favorable to abortion in pretty much all circumstances.
In essence the principle states that a lifesaving procedure that cannot be delayed, such as the removal of a cancerous uterus before the baby can be taken in a Cesarean section at viability (~25 weeks gestation), is permissible so long as the death of the baby is the indirect and unintended effect. The life-saving treatment and resolution of a disease with immediate lethal consequence if no treatment is rendered is the good effect. The unintended death of the baby is the bad, or second (double) effect.
Such circumstances are extremely rare, given how early a baby can be delivered before full term at 40 weeks. The mother’s life must be in immediate danger and the treatment of her disease, which would also result in the death of the baby, cannot be forestalled. The case at Saint Joseph’s did not rise to the level of Double-Effect, as the baby was the sole target of intervention.
It does not take a Doctorate in Theology to know that you can never do a direct evil to justify some apparent good. His next paragraph really surprised me, with my emphasis.
While the assessment on the part of physicians was dire, no treatment of the disease was even attempted. There are several medications that can be employed to attempt a reduction in the severity of the disease, none of which appear to have been dispensed in this case. From that point on, the actions of the hospital and Sister McBride pointed toward more than an isolated and extreme case where the decision to abort could have been simply dismissed as one bad judgment call.
The other argument supporters of this action have taken is that to be pro-life means to save the mother. That no attempt was made to to reduce the severity of her Pulmonary hypertension is rather shocking – though not as shocking as the resulting abortion. True Catholic medicine would take a both/and approach to try to save both the mother and the child. Putting the mother versus the child is pure evil.
Sister McBride did not even resort to a wink-wink of telling the parents to go to another hospital for the abortion. She was set on St. Joseph’s hospital doing it. That recommendation would also have been an evil act, it just demonstrates the mindset behind this decision. It was not the case of a Sister making a difficult decision, but of a Catholic Religious with a Culture of Death agenda.
There are several hospitals within a three-mile radius of Saint Joseph’s, some mere blocks away, where this woman’s husband could have taken her for the recommended abortion. They were no more than ten minutes from any number of facilities that would have performed the abortion, if that was what the couple wanted. All reports of the incident indicate that at no point was the couple told that Saint Joseph’s does not target babies for death as a means of treating a disease. Again, no evidence has surfaced that the physicians attempted to treat her medically.
I would recommend you read all of Dr. Nadal’s post along with subscribing to his fine blog if you don’t already do so.
7 comments
Supporters of Sister McBride have been trying to obfuscate the issue by saying the abortion was allowable under double-effect.
What the hospital and its supporters said has been a moving target all through this fiasco. Here is a list of excuses I’ve heard off the top of my head:
No one knows the full medical details of the case which are confidential; that includes the bishop.
It wasn’t an abortion, it was something else.
It was an abortion, but double-effect applies.
And my favorite Orwellian excuse: We saved the only person that could be saved, the mother.
The saddest part of this whole thing is that the mother’s condition was treatable. Difficult, to be sure, but treatable. She would have had to be under close medical supervision, but it’s treatable. The baby did not have to die for the mother to live, as the killer-enablers claim. It was treatable. How utterly sad is that.
Pointless speculation. The specifics of this woman’s case are unknown and private and will stay taht way. The doctors were acting with actual specific information and an obligation to their patient. The world is not so black and white. The Bishop knows NOTHING specific about this case and cannot learn more – its all private and covered by HIPPA regulations. Church law had nothing to do with this and you don’teven know the faith of woman. She is not bound by church views.
dch,
Rather ironic comment, if nothing can be known then you can have no comment about this. The faith of the women does not matter in these decisions. Moral issues are not dependent on this. Could a Catholic hospital kill the elderly if the person was an atheist? It is absurd to talk about morality as being depending on the faith of the patient. A Catholic Hospital serves the patient by serving God and moral relativism only leads to deaths of patients.
It is not true that nothing is know of this case. Pulmonary hypertension is a know quantity and there is never a moral case for abortion as a result of this disease. Double effect never applies and an abortion in this circumstance is thus direct and never morally possible. It is also not the case that the hospital had made only one mistake, they have been performing sterilizations and other treatments not allowed. This hospital had simply disregarding the Catholic moral teaching.
Besides it is the Bishop who is the arbitrator of what happens in his diocese and it is the bishop’s role to make theological conclusions and not the place of nuns, priests, or laity to object to the bishop when he is performing his role. Your comment is simply wrong on multiple levels of Church teaching.
What Jeff said. You can’t have it both ways–that is, declarations from the CHA that Catholic ethical guidelines were followed, but diving down the no-one-knows escape hatch. The history demonstrates that the hospital admin thinks there is a life-of-the-mother, rape and incest exception to the prohibition on abortion (or worse, is trying to force the issue. ) I’ll grant that this is a popular view, even among pro-lifers, but it ain’t a Catholic one.
When I was going in for my third C-Section every health care worker I saw asked, at some point during our contact, if I wanted a tubal during the operation. I often brought my kids with me, so I began to wonder if the kids restlessness was irritating them and they were dropping hints.
I finally straight out asked my midwife, who is not Catholic, what was up. Turns out, the only hospital that delivered babies was the local Catholic (?) hospital. The bishop had made some kind of ruling or other that if a woman goes in for a C-Section, they are allowed to sterilize her if she requests it (or in my case an many others, I’d guess, acquiesces to it) because otherwise they would be forcing a healthy woman to go to another hospital for a second operation, which would be wrong. I think they may have used the term assault. So the practical upshot of “allowing” sterilization in the case of C-Sections was that sterilization was regularly pushed on every mother at nine months pregnancy with a complicated labor who might be of a mindset to just end it all — all fertility, that is.
She is not bound by church views.
1. You don’t know her religion either, so she may well be.
2. The view in question (intentional taking of an innocent life is not justified) applies regardless of religious view (it is an ethical view that can be reached by right reason).
3. Even if she were not bound by religious view or right reason, the Hospital certainly is if it professes to be Catholic.
4. The Bishop is well within his rights to disagree with the Hospital’s actions and remove its Catholic identification. In fact, it is his duty to do so.