Nun Automatically Excommunicated For Approving Abortion

[doughnut]

Let me help you out as it was something that I wondered. Let me give you a hypothetical scenario to understand why the Church says what it does about this.

Let say you are driving along a bridge in your car and below the bridge is an large body of water. You begin to slow down but realize the brakes are shot. You have no brakes (disease/immunology), however you realize that when you cross the bridge there is drive off space so you know you can drive into it and not worry too much about your safety. As you drive along, you see a road blockade with a 6 year old child strapped to it. There is no way you can drive around it and if you go off the bridge you will die. If you hit the road blockade the child will surely die and since you are driving a large vehicle, you will survive (abortion), however the child is innocent too and you prefer not to do that. You then realize (similar to ectopic pregnancy) that if you throw a grenade at the one end of the road blockade, it will lift the blockade into the air and you can drive under it. There is a risk that the child could die but that isn’t your intent (direct abortion).

Hope that helps.

this scenario was kinda different. ur dragging an ‘innocent’ and otherwise, would survive child into the picture. with the analogy i suggested above, im saying that the child WILL die anyway, becos it cannot survive without da mommy - its different in cases whereby caesarian might have a chance of preserving both (in my brother’s case, it was so) but when its like a months’ old fetes, and zero chance of saving the baby, but some chance to save da mommy.

as to answer your analogy of the car…even if the child is probably gonna die, i wont do it (because i dont know for sure)

but in the mother’s case…i dont know if its possible to preserve such a young fetes, without the mother’s survival.

then again, i noticed the hostility of people who will be ready to ‘condemn’ because we make a wrong choice, than to at least understand, why people did what they do.

 

[catharina]

this scenario was kinda different. ur dragging an ‘innocent’ and otherwise, would survive child into the picture. with the analogy i suggested above, im saying that the child WILL die anyway, becos it cannot survive without da mommy - its different in cases whereby caesarian might have a chance of preserving both (in my brother’s case, it was so) but when its like a months’ old fetes, and zero chance of saving the baby, but some chance to save da mommy.

as to answer your analogy of the car…even if the child is probably gonna die, i wont do it (because i dont know for sure)

but in the mother’s case…i dont know if its possible to preserve such a young fetes, without the mother’s survival.

then again, i noticed the hostility of people who will be ready to ‘condemn’ because we make a wrong choice, than to at least understand, why people did what they do.

For Catholics, there is no “choice.”
There is only the teaching “thou shalt not kill.”
That should be true for other Christians too and for Jews and for … ?
Yet only the Catholic Church insists (publicly) on this teaching with no exceptions.

 

[doughnut]

For Catholics, there is no “choice.”
There is only the teaching “thou shalt not kill.”
That should be true for other Christians too and for Jews and for … ?
Yet only the Catholic Church insists (publicly) on this teaching with no exceptions.

true, thou shalt not kill.

you sound as if letting the mother die isn’t killing.

oh right, it isn’t. i forgot…its not killing, its just ‘not saving’, which becomes acceptable maybe, with the laws.

 

[catharina]

true, thou shalt not kill.

you sound as if letting the mother die isn’t killing.

oh right, it isn’t. i forgot…its not killing, its just ‘not saving’, which becomes acceptable maybe, with the laws.

yep.

 

[doughnut]

yep.

im just curious, if someone, say somebody close to you, opt for abortion, precisely for the same reasons (the child has no chance of survival, but the mother has), will you go and tell her that shes wrong to ‘murder’ her child (nevermind that shes already very sad to lose the kid) or are you going to console her?

 

[catharina]

im just curious, if someone, say somebody close to you, opt for abortion, precisely for the same reasons (the child has no chance of survival, but the mother has), will you go and tell her that shes wrong to ‘murder’ her child (nevermind that shes already very sad to lose the kid) or are you going to console her?

It’s happened and more than once.

My option has ALWAYS been to plead for the life of the child.
Totally NOT rocket science for me.

(Incidentally, not every mother is “already very sad to lose the kid.” Don’t you know that?)

 

[doughnut]

It’s happened and more than once.

My option has ALWAYS been to plead for the life of the child.
Totally NOT rocket science for me.

(Incidentally, not every mother is “already very sad to lose the kid.” Don’t you know that?)

im posting for a specific concern, but you dont seemed to notice. nevermind that.

i asked this question because, i do wonder if you have the capacity to empathize.

i apologize if thats a rude assumption.

 

[catharina]

im posting for a specific concern, but you dont seemed to notice. nevermind that.

i asked this question because, i do wonder if you have the capacity to empathize.

i apologize if thats a rude assumption.

My empathy is always directed, in the first place, to the one who is without any power,
First, that is the living child in the womb.
Second, that is the living siblings who are also being deprived of an added good.
Unless you believe that siblings are inconsequential to one’s state of life? Maybe you do.

 

[catharina]

im posting for a specific concern, but you dont seemed to notice. nevermind that.

i asked this question because, i do wonder if you have the capacity to empathize.

i apologize if thats a rude assumption.

Perhaps you can state your specific concern?

 

[Friar_David_O.Carm]

im just curious, if someone, say somebody close to you, opt for abortion, precisely for the same reasons (the child has no chance of survival, but the mother has), will you go and tell her that shes wrong to ‘murder’ her child (nevermind that shes already very sad to lose the kid) or are you going to console her?

Both.

It is wrong to murder but if she chose to do so I would not turn away from her, I would explain to her what she did and help her work through it and return to the Church.

If she refused this then it would be her who turned away, not me.

 

[Alan55]

No. We don’t agree on this.
An apple is NOT an orange.

The Church never allows abortion, that is, abortion performed with intent to abort.
Your insistence is a point that can lead to misunderstanding among many people.

Ok, we don’t agree. You’ve mistakenly collapsed all abortions into one category, which is direct abortion, which you correctly state is never permissible. What I insist upon, and which you seem to deny, is that indirect abortion, in which the intent is to save the life of the mother, is permissible under the right circumstances. The question in this case is whether the hospital approved a direct abortion (never permissible) or indirect abortion (possibly permissible).

In other words, those who state that the Church never allows abortion of any kind, even to save the life of the mother, are incorrect. Under certain circumstances, such abortions, while tragic, are morally permissible.

 

[Corki]

Ok, we don’t agree. You’ve mistakenly collapsed all abortions into one category, which is direct abortion, which you correctly state is never permissible. What I insist upon, and which you seem to deny, is that indirect abortion, in which the intent is to save the life of the mother, is permissible under the right circumstances. The question in this case is whether the hospital approved a direct abortion (never permissible) or indirect abortion (possibly permissible).

In other words, those who state that the Church never allows abortion of any kind, even to save the life of the mother, are incorrect. Under certain circumstances, such abortions, while tragic, are morally permissible.

Alan,

The hospital could not give permission for an indirect abortion. An indirect abortion is a consequence, not something that is allowed or disallowed. The hospital committee could, for example, see no conflict in allowing surgery to stop bleeding even if the unintended consequence is harm or death to the baby. That’s not “allowing” an indirect abortion. That’s “allowing” a surgery that may cause an indirect abortion. The surgury being allowed must be morally neutral.

Abortion as an act is never permissable.
Abortion as a consequence is, in very narrow circumstances.
Abortion as a consequence is also what happens in a miscarriage.

 

[perfectpeach]

I could not imagine for a SECOND that a mother who was holding her newborn baby as a gunman walked in told the gunman, “Here shoot the baby instead.” It is CONTRARY to what being a mother is to sacrifice your child for your own health…

 

[distracted]

.

.

***Why wasn’t she FIRED??? ***

 

[doughnut]

I could not imagine for a SECOND that a mother who was holding her newborn baby as a gunman walked in told the gunman, “Here shoot the baby instead.” It is CONTRARY to what being a mother is to sacrifice your child for your own health…

its not the same. the baby is perfectly healthy, and the mother might want to protect.

but again, any doctors around here? can anyone attest that a fetes too young to be born can actually survive if his/her mother dies?

i dont know, maybe my idea of ‘abortion’ is different from those who kept going in loops and arguing maybe.

by causing the mother’s death, perhaps the unborn child might be submitted to death as well. so it sounded more to me as “choose 1 death, or 2”.

 

[catharina]

Alan,

The hospital could not give permission for an indirect abortion. An indirect abortion is a consequence, not something that is allowed or disallowed. The hospital committee could, for example, see no conflict in allowing surgery to stop bleeding even if the unintended consequence is harm or death to the baby. That’s not “allowing” an indirect abortion. That’s “allowing” a surgery that may cause an indirect abortion. The surgury being allowed must be morally neutral.

Abortion as an act is never permissable.
Abortion as a consequence is, in very narrow circumstances.
Abortion as a consequence is also what happens in a miscarriage.

Corki - Thank you so much for answering Alan. I left home for work.
Plus I find it very difficult to respond to anyone who uses terms that can and do confuse.

A hospital that oks an abortion is saying ok to an abortion.

A hospital that oks surgical removal of a ruptured tube is saying OK to a surgery
that will also result in damages to fetal body, a fetus that is already most likely DEAD.

 

[catharina]

**It is not the case that abortion is always impermissible. **

It is the use of the above sentence that is wildly and terribly misleading to all.
Yes, you follow up with an explanation of what you INTEND to say but the sentence ALONE is simply rabid. It is guaranteed to confuse some people. I HATE that.
Please be much more precise when you “declare” something.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement in 2001 entitled Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, Fourth Edition. In this they state: “Operations, treatments, and medications that have as their direct purpose the cure of a proportionately serious pathological condition of a pregnant woman are permitted when they cannot be safely postponed until the unborn child is viable, even if they will result in the death of the unborn child (no. 47).”

What is not permitted is so-called “direct abortion,” which has as its intended purpose terminating a pregnancy, as contrasted with “indirect abortion” in which the death of the fetus is not directly sought but is an indirect result of, for example, an attempt to save the life of the mother, as in terminating an ectopic pregnancy.

What is so disturbing in the posts in this thread is the desire to paint the hospital, the doctors, and the nun who is the focus of the bishops statement as not caring about the unborn child or being unaware of, or worse rejecting, Church teaching. There are far too many people, including not a few bishops, who sin against charity and show no regard for the truth (through unwarranted assumptions and a failure to fully understand through investigating the facts) in their defense of Church teaching. The fact is that in health care there are lots of situations that don’t fit into our neat categories. I’d be willing to bet that the ethics committee, the doctors, and the nun involved in this story agonized over this decision and attempted to follow Church teaching.

 

[catharina]

More news:

Phoenix Catholic doctors back bishop’s stand on Catholic hospital abortion

May 19, 2010

The Catholic Physicians Guild of Phoenix has issued a statement in support of Bishop Thomas Olmsted, who condemned an abortion that took place at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix. Medical staff killed the unborn child after a hospital ethics committee deemed the abortion necessary to save the mother’s life.

“The Catholic Physicians Guild of Phoenix fully supports the Most Rev. Thomas J. Olmsted with respect to matters of life of a mother pregnant with a child in her womb,” says Dr. William Brophy, the guild’s president. “An action which is in and of itself wrong, in that it lacks goodness as discerned by the light of human reason, is never justified by circumstances or intended end. Such is the case of abortion.”

catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=6372

 

[ryecroft]

I really didn’t think I"d ever jump into another one of these, but people are being way to quick to condem! Doesn’t the Bible mention something about looking to ourselves before making a judgement on someone else??? Having been in a situation (which was NOT an ectopic pregnancy) - I KNOW that there are situations where continuing the pregnancy can kill the mother and there by kill the inutero fetus. It may seem like a wonderful idea to say “if you’d just waited, God might have performed a miracle and (said mother) might not have died and both would be happily at home”. I see no good coming from two deaths. At least this woman has a fighting chance now - and I may just be in nursing school, but I’ve seen enough pulmonary hypertension to know that this can span the gammit of annoying (you have to stay still and probably on one side or the other in bed for weeks or months) to ready to take your life if any more SLIGHT stress is put on the bod (with this and pre eclampsia it is VERY simple with ANY extra stress like say getting up from bed or a c-section for the uterus to seperate and cause MASSIVE bleeding. )From what I’ve read about this situation, and yes this is just my opinion based on my limited medical knowledge but a c-section would have almost deffinately killed the mother due to the extra stress put on her. Waiting too much longer more than likely would have killed her. WIth this situation, you have to remember that this isn’t just someone kind of sick - this is someone who’s diaphram had moved (due to the enlarging size of the fetus) up to 4 cm - (making it harder to breath- the hormones (which after the pregnancy ended would have stopped causing problems) can cause (and it sounds like they did) hyperemia and mucosal edemia as well as tissue edema and capillary congestion. This isn’t just slight swelling or a little cough - this can be a fight for your life (in this case). There are many other things that occur that was giving this mother major problems that ending the pregnancy would have helped and in some cases fixed. It seems simple to say “just do an emergency c-section…” - that c-section, ESPECIALLY in cases with sever pulmonary hypertension and pre eclampsia will often likely be fatal to the mother. It’s very easy to sit there and throwout opinions and say “just do an emergency c-section and save the baby…” but this will likely kill a mother who has been doing all that she can to extend a pregnancy in order to have a viable pregnancy. It’s as though you have no compassion for the mother in these situations-as if the fetus/baby is the only important thing. Once you’ve been in the situation I and many other women have been in, or had a daughter or other relative deal with this, I don’t believe you have the understanding what a situation like this is truely like nor do you have the right to condem - that is left to God to do or not do. Personally, I hope if God forbid, I’m ever in a situation similar to this mother, I PRAY to GOD that I have someone like this Nun to stand up for me. It’s wonderful IF both the baby and mother can be saved, but it’s not always the case. No one seems to care about the “right to life” of the mother. It isn’t always just black and white - there are grey areas. Truely, I don’t agree with abortion in almost every case - but in a case where the fetus is too young to be viable or where attempting delivery (in whatever form) is likely to kill both, I don’t and likely will never see the positive side of continuing such a pregnancy. I am prolife in this situation - pro life for the mother.
God Bless
Rye

 

[catharina]

I really didn’t think I"d ever jump into another one of these, but people are being way to quick to condem! Doesn’t the Bible mention something about looking to ourselves before making a judgement on someone else??? Having been in a situation (which was NOT an ectopic pregnancy) - I KNOW that there are situations where continuing the pregnancy can kill the mother and there by kill the inutero fetus. It may seem like a wonderful idea to say “if you’d just waited, God might have performed a miracle and (said mother) might not have died and both would be happily at home”. I see no good coming from two deaths. At least this woman has a fighting chance now - and I may just be in nursing school, but I’ve seen enough pulmonary hypertension to know that this can span the gammit of annoying (you have to stay still and probably on one side or the other in bed for weeks or months) to ready to take your life if any more SLIGHT stress is put on the bod (with this and pre eclampsia it is VERY simple with ANY extra stress like say getting up from bed or a c-section for the uterus to seperate and cause MASSIVE bleeding. )From what I’ve read about this situation, and yes this is just my opinion based on my limited medical knowledge but a c-section would have almost deffinately killed the mother due to the extra stress put on her. Waiting too much longer more than likely would have killed her. WIth this situation, you have to remember that this isn’t just someone kind of sick - this is someone who’s diaphram had moved (due to the enlarging size of the fetus) up to 4 cm - (making it harder to breath- the hormones (which after the pregnancy ended would have stopped causing problems) can cause (and it sounds like they did) hyperemia and mucosal edemia as well as tissue edema and capillary congestion. This isn’t just slight swelling or a little cough - this can be a fight for your life (in this case). There are many other things that occur that was giving this mother major problems that ending the pregnancy would have helped and in some cases fixed. It seems simple to say “just do an emergency c-section…” - that c-section, ESPECIALLY in cases with sever pulmonary hypertension and pre eclampsia will often likely be fatal to the mother. It’s very easy to sit there and throwout opinions and say “just do an emergency c-section and save the baby…” but this will likely kill a mother who has been doing all that she can to extend a pregnancy in order to have a viable pregnancy. It’s as though you have no compassion for the mother in these situations-as if the fetus/baby is the only important thing. Once you’ve been in the situation I and many other women have been in, or had a daughter or other relative deal with this, I don’t believe you have the understanding what a situation like this is truely like nor do you have the right to condem - that is left to God to do or not do. Personally, I hope if God forbid, I’m ever in a situation similar to this mother, I PRAY to GOD that I have someone like this Nun to stand up for me. It’s wonderful IF both the baby and mother can be saved, but it’s not always the case. No one seems to care about the “right to life” of the mother. It isn’t always just black and white - there are grey areas. Truely, I don’t agree with abortion in almost every case - but in a case where the fetus is too young to be viable or where attempting delivery (in whatever form) is likely to kill both, I don’t and likely will never see the positive side of continuing such a pregnancy. I am prolife in this situation - pro life for the mother.
God Bless
Rye

I don’t see condemnation of anything except abortion.
The bishop learned of the abortion and he acted on that knowledge AS HE MUST.

Truly, you cannot call yourself prolife or believe yourself to be prolife
if in fact, you are really OK with abortion given a circumsatnce that makes sense to you.

We are not to “make sense” of what’s OK or not OK.
We are to obey GOD and the law of the Church.
Seeking exceptions for the use of abortion is completely against Church teaching.