Episcopal evil
The ACLU letter to the administrators of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says something I hadn’t known, something quite staggering. The trouble is, I haven’t been able to find it anywhere else, so I can’t be sure it’s accurate. I would email the ACLU to ask, but they say they get too much mail to answer.
…just last week it was revealed that the Bishop of Phoenix threatened to remove his endorsement of St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center – where, as discussed in our previous letter, doctors provided a life-saving abortion to a young mother of four in November 2009 – unless the hospital signed a written pledge that it would never again provide emergency abortion care, even where necessary to save a woman’s life.
You see why that’s staggering. It says that the bishop demanded that the hospital sign a written pledge not to do an abortion even where necessary to save a woman’s life – the bishop explicitly demanded that the hospital let a woman die rather than do an abortion. I knew he’d been saying that in effect all along, but I didn’t know he’d been willing to spell it out himself.
[pause to say – fuck I hate these bastards. I hate them I hate them I hate them.]
At any rate, even without confirmation of that part, he said way more than enough. The Phoenix diocese kindly makes his saying available to us. It’s disgusting.
…earlier this year, it was brought to my attention that an abortion had taken place at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix. When I met with officials of the hospital to learn more of the details of what had occurred, it became clear that, in the decision to abort, the equal dignity of mother and her baby were not both upheld; but that the baby was directly killed, which is a clear violation of ERD #45.
There was no baby. There was a future baby inside the body of the woman who was on the point of death. It wasn’t possible to uphold “the equal dignity of mother and her baby” because the mother had fatally high blood pressure.
In this case, the baby was healthy and there were no problems with the pregnancy; rather, the mother had a disease that needed to be treated. But instead of treating the disease, St. Joseph’s medical staff and ethics committee decided that the healthy, 11-week-old baby should be directly killed. This is contrary to the teaching of the Church (Cf. Evangelium Vitae, #62).
That’s just outright dishonest. A healthy 11-week-old baby is just that, it’s not a fetus of 11 weeks. Does the bishop consider a newborn infant a 9-month-old baby?
Not to mention of course that treating the disease without killing the fetus wasn’t an option, so it’s dishonest of this reactionary woman-hating theocrat to imply that it was.
The president of St Joseph’s hospital, Linda Hunt, pointed out that it wasn’t an option.
“If we are presented with a situation in which a pregnancy threatens a woman’s life, our first priority is to save both patients. If that is not possible, we will always save the life we can save, and that is what we did in this case,” Hunt said. “Morally, ethically, and legally, we simply cannot stand by and let someone die whose life we might be able to save.”
But that is exactly what the bishop is demanding that they do, and exactly what he is making a condition of the hospital’s “Catholic” status. You don’t get to call yourself “Catholic” unless you’re willing to let a woman die along with her fetus rather than kill the fetus to save the woman. (Notice that the bishop neglects to mention that the fetus dies either way. He’s not even demanding that they let the woman die to save the fetus, he’s demanding that they let her die to make a point.)
Dr. Charles Alfano, chief medical officer at the hospital and an obstetrician there, said Olmsted was asking the impossible from the hospital.
“Specifically the fact that he requested we admit the procedure performed was an abortion and that it was a violation of the ethical and religious directives and that we would not perform such a procedure in the future,” he said. “We could not agree to that. We acted appropriately.”
That’s close to a confirmation of the ACLU item. I don’t doubt the ACLU item, I just would like to see it in writing somewhere else.
Catholic News Service gives a slightly evasive account.
Amen.
Once again…
Church= It’s most important
Individuals=Screw you
Disgusting beyond endurance.
This fantastically immoral behavior by the man from Phoenix with the elaborate hat is actually worse than it appears, as it is crystal clear that this shaman,like the rest of the members from his bizarre cult, couldn’t care less about this fetus or any other. Now that the good Bishop and his band of morose pederasts has been proven wrong by science on every single issue, from astronomy to biology, they cling with much sanctimony and bombast to their last bastion, that of moral superiority.
Anyone who has been even remotely alert in the last 20 centuries will not know whether to laugh or cry when confronted with this absurd claim.
It seems to me that even the insane Doctrine of Double Effect gives them an out here, should they wish to use it, even if one were to massively over-generously grant fetal personhood for the sake of argument. The placenta is what’s causing the pulmonary hypertension, not the fetus; the intent of the doctors is to remove the placenta that’s causing the mother’s illness, not to kill the fetus directly.
Removing the placenta does rather necessitate immediate delivery of the fetus, who then won’t survive. And the tools aren’t so precise as to allow for one and not the other. But that’s surely a reason to invest in developing more specific tools and surgical techniques on the part of the Catholic church, right? They’re required — by their own ethics — to minimize harmful side effects…
I’d been inclined to to sympathize with the hospital, but now I see that they’ve been affiliated with people eager to kill your baby even if all that’s happened is that you’ve been raped by your father.
Could RCC Inc. possibly give a clearer example of its own irrelevance? I doubt it. The intellectual arrogance, coupled with the stupidity that makes the bishop too blind to see that his position is untenable, is breathtaking. The fact that letting the mother die would result in the death of the foetus anyway, completely destroys any possible rationale for his case but he’s too dumb to see it.
I guess the written pledge is demanded in this letter, isn’t it? Although not in quite the way that the ACLU state it, though that is the consequence:
here is a discussion
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=195640
referencing a link in USA today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2010-12-21-phoenix-catholic-hospital_N.htm
Ah! That’s what I was looking for but didn’t find; thanks, Mark.
And oh god what a disgusting experience it is to read it. What a piece of dung that man is. He’s all worked up about his fucking authority – and pissing all over himself in his hurry to force hospitals to stop saving the lives of pregnant women.
Ophelia
Absolutely; that authority he claims has worked me up to a short blog on its unacceptability.
This case highlights the fundamental dangers of any faith, but I think also points us to a day when the Bishop’s claims can be made, but will carry no undue weight.
The fact that this man has not already been arrested and charged with attempted murder is a clear indication of something deeply wrong in our society. What would happen if the Mayor of Phoenix attempted to use his authority to deny life-saving medical care to a woman in need?
Really. He’s suborning premeditated negligent homicide – which there probably isn’t such a thing, but that’s what he’s doing. He’s doing his utmost to stop medical professionals from preventing a woman’s death.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Skeptic South Africa, Camus Dude. Camus Dude said: Episcopal evil @opheliabenson http://t.co/xZcwvO8 […]
[…] Mark Jones found the confirmation I was looking for, in the shape of the letter the bishop of Phoenix wrote to the president of Catholic Healthcare West. It is unbelievably disgusting. […]
Why is this article labeled “Episcopal” when it should be labeled “Catholic”? Making a big mistake like this no doubt undermines the seriousness with which readers take this article.
Because “episcopal” and “bishop” are synonyms.
episcopal
Sometimes it also refers to Joe Episcopal, of Saturday Night Live fame.
This is the same church & her bishops and religious, whose responsibility it was to care for children in their charge in industrial schools and churches and who failed abominably towards them in their moral and guardianship duties. They spout out about caring for the unborn, but did not give a damn about infants and children who were fully alive. They never actively engaged in trying to better the lives of these children.
They poke their noses into everything; schools, hospitals, anywhere, where they can heighten their so-called responsibilities.
They should be flushed out of the hospitals in the same way that they are being forced out of education in Ireland.
St Joseph’s, was the name of the infant dormitory in Goldenbridge where toddlers and infants slept in their own excrement, every day of their lives.. There were no discussions and debates held about their livelihood, and the religious who should have been caring for them were up in the convent worshipping their GOD. ‘Suffer little children to come unto me for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’ was a whole load of codswallop. They should get their priorities right. WHO IS THE CHURCH TO TALK ABOUT THE UNBORN – WHEN IT NEVER GAVE A HOOT ABOUT THE LIVING? They are in my estimation, morally bankrupt. They have for generations protected their own abusers of children, with even the last pope sending the perpetrators to monasteries for their own good, while the victims were shunned and torn apart, to the extent, that some of them committed suicide.
I was listening to mid-night Xmas mass on the radio and a Jesuit priest was telling the congregation that the second collection would be going to pay for a Jesuit school in one of their third world countries. The church uses emotional times of the year to seek funding for their own proselytization purposes. People mostly feel compelled to be generous, because they are so heightened up emotionally. at that time of year.
The church needs the hospital chapel services more than more than the hospital needs it, at the end of the day. So its cutting off its nose to spite its face. Affiliation my foot!
Exactly. The church really doesn’t give a hoot about actual living children. This isn’t just a past thing that’s now been fixed – it’s entirely current. The woman whose life was saved had four young children, don’t forget – the church in its wisdom doesn’t give a hoot about their well-being. The religious are always up in the chapel worshipping their GOD and ignoring or actively destroying human well-being.
If it was the past, one would know exactly where the children would end up, especially if the church allowed the abortion to happen in Ireland. It would be an industrial school, like, Goldenbridge.
The church would see to it that the children were brought up in the ‘Faith’ under the guise of protecting them in the future.
The church sees those who mostly have abortions as being nothing more than mere murderers. Period. So with this mentality in mind, there is nothing one can say or do to change its mind. There are films out that that are specifically used to ward off good Catholics from having abortions.
The evil-doers, from its perspective, are people, like the good nun, who did not allow religion to get in the way of her conscience, when push came to shove. The excommunication of this nun, (who would in all likelihood have devoted her life to God and the service of the church) is in itself an indictment of how cruel the church is – even to its own. It manipulates religious women of her ilk, all the time. (She should sue the church for back pay, as her wages would have gone directly into her community.) She is being used as a scapegoat, and what a splendid one she will be for the church. She’ll be the perfect example, employed by it, as a warning to all devout, good Catholics, who will doubtless be in total shock that a nun was excommunicated. It will send shock-waves around the Roman Catholic religious world.
“CHW authorizes sterilizations and I know not what other immoral acts”
Interesting, I did not know that this was forbidden.
[…] Reposted from last year. […]
[…] Mark Jones found the confirmation I was looking for, in the shape of the letter the bishop of Phoenix wrote to the president of Catholic Healthcare West. It is unbelievably disgusting. […]
[…] the December 2010 post in which I became aware that it’s explicit Catholic church policy that women should be allowed to die rather than have a life-saving […]