ALL,

The Catholic Bishop here has stripped St. Joseph Hospital of its Catholic status. A pregnancy was terminated to save the life of the mother. The article has more.

Hospital Stripped

quote:

The hospital's ethics team concluded the pregnancy could be ended under the church's ethical directives because "the goal was not to end the pregnancy but save the mother's life," hospital officials stated.

“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," stated Hunt.

“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," Olmsted rebutted.

So, doctors decided that saving the mother's life required the abortion of the fetus. And an 11-week-old fetus cannot survive outside of the womb. (I looked it up--the youngest premature infant that is known to have survived was 21 weeks 6 days old.)

Apparently, in order to stay a Catholic hospital in a situation like this you have to let the mother and fetus both die.

How can anyone with an ounce of human feeling or caring or decency stomach these idiocies?

Jeff

Jeff, you said,

quote:

How can anyone with an ounce of human feeling or caring or decency stomach these idiocies?

This board in the past had some staunch Catholics and I wish one of them would answer the question you pose. I reasoned the same way that the fetus was doomed if the mother were to die. The only way any life could be saved is to do what they did.

I have no problem with a hospital or other institution simply saying that they will not perform certain elective procedures. They might say, for example, that they do not do sex change operations. Or say they do not do elective abortions.

But when a medical emergency is involved and human life is at stake we have a much different thing. Bishop Olmsted had no business trying to play doctor and play at practicing medicine.

My opinion of the RCC has definitely gone down.

With Ratzinger as Pope, the RCC will get worse before it gets better.