Woman 'denied a termination' dies in hospital

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pepipop said:
As far as I am aware, yes it would fall within catholic ethics (although I’ve read so much these past few days, about this issue, please someone correct me if I am wrong.). As, if she does not start treatment, at any point, the mother could die before delivery and the child would too, if pregnancy was not induced before the mother’s death. Hence by trying to save the mother would in essence be saving the child too.

Here is an example of catholic ethics and the final choice made by the mother. The church allowed hysterectomy, which would have effectively resulted in the unborn child’s death.

*Final pregnancy

In 1961, Gianna was pregnant once again. During the second month, Gianna developed a fibroma on her uterus. After examination, the doctors gave her three choices: an abortion, a complete hysterectomy, or removal of only the fibroma. *The Catholic Church forbids all direct abortion even when the woman’s life is in danger, but Catholic teaching would have allowed her to undergo a hysterectomy, which would have resulted in her unborn child’s death as an unintended consequence.
**
“Abortion – that is, the directly intended termination of pregnancy before viability or the directly intended destruction of a viable fetus – is never permitted…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.” – The Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services (ERD) Directive 45

Gianna opted for the removal of the fibroma, wanting to preserve her child’s life.

After the operation, complications continued throughout her pregnancy. Gianna was quite clear about her wishes, expressing to her family, “This time it will be a difficult delivery, and they may have to save one or the other – I want them to save my baby.”

On April 21, 1962, Good Friday of that year, Gianna went to the hospital, where her fourth child, Gianna Emanuela, was successfully delivered via Caesarean section.[1] However, Gianna continued to have severe pain, and died of septic peritonitis 7 days after the birth.
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Thanks for the info! Interesting case study.

I’m certainly no expert so can’t claim to be certain of this, and there have been Catholic authorities who have said induction would not have been permissable…but from what I have read, it does appear to me that the hospital unnecessarily prevented an induction for Savita that would not have been prohibited either by Irish law or Catholic teachings. Very sad case all around.

As a health care professional, it is hard for me to comprehend the callousness of a health care provider watching a woman in agonizing pain, in the midst of certain miscarriage, begging for an induction, and denying her this…whether or not they believed her life to be in danger.
 
CrimsonThorn said:
Better a duaghters life lost than her soul. True love is caring about the daughters eternity.
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So if you don’t follow a rule that Muslims believe would condemn your daughter to Hell, that means you don’t love your daughter, because you didn’t follow the rules of a religion you don’t even believe in?

So basically, you believe everyone who is not a Catholic doesn’t love their children, because they don’t ensure the sanctity of their soul in accordance to Catholic teachings.

Again, I am horrified by your hatefullness and lack of compassion towards others, that you actually think billions of people don’t impose Catholic dogma on their children not because they simply don’t believe it is true, but because they just odn’t love their children and don’t care about their souls.

What is most tragic to me is that you would be want your wife or daughter die for the sake of revamped Egyptian mythology.

Also, the woman was a Hindu, not a Christian. Don’t you believe she was damned anyways? There certainly was no deathbed conversion.

And let me tell you Crimson, let’s say you were right, let’s say (though I absolutely believe you are not), and killing a dying fetus to save a woman would damn someone’s soul.

I would view such a deity as absolutely, intrinsically evil, and worthy of no worship at all. I would never worship such a deity. I would view worship of said deity as cowardice, the willingness to worship evil just to avoid the wrath of said deity.

If I believed that the God you describe was real, I would never worship Him, and I would never have children, because I would not want them to be faced with the choice of worshiping such a cruel deity or Hell.

For that matter, I would never worship a God that created Hell and sentenced people to it for eternity based on nothing more than their behavior or beliefs (or non beliefs) for the very few years that make up a human lifetime.

I’m sure, though, that you think that “evil” is only what God deems evil, and “good” only what God deems good, so if God came down and ordered you to rape and torture your daughter, you would do it and say it was a good for no other reason than God deemed it so. And you would call it love.
 
Code: 
   True, but the end result was that the fetus died before removal anyway, so the point was moot.
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However, if the fetus had not died, but was in the process of dying and once dead, how ever long that would take, would negatively effect the health of the mother and may even cause her death, as in the case in Ireland. This is according to the doctors. So, who has the best advice, the Church or the doctors? Wait until there is a problem or act beforehand?
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I haven’t seen a single thing that backs up your assertion that the Church would forbid delivering the child in Savita’s circumstances, on the contrary every expert who’s written about it has said that delivery could and should have occurred, and they were quite different from your daughters.

The fact that your daughter’s life and health were not in jeopardy is a huge factor, the biggest factor in fact, because the whole point of double-effect is that the good effect must be equal to or greater than the evil effect. In Savita’s case the good effect, her survival, would be equal to the evil effect, the death of the child. In your daughter’s case the good effect, getting things out of the way quicker, was no where near equal to the evil effect, the death of the child; it would have merely been a killing of convenience in your daughter’s case, but not in Savita’s.

What you were told by the Priest for Life was correct, but it doesn’t apply to the circumstances in Ireland, nor to the hypothetical situations I’ve been presenting.

Peace and God bless!
 
I will note, Crimson, that while it seems every other person on this thread has offered nothing but sympathy, prayers, and condolances to Savita’s family and mother, despite her professed different view on morality or religious beliefs, you have called her a Nazi who did not really love her daughter.

Speaking as an outside, you are a terrible representative of your faith, demonizing an obviously grieving mother in such malicious terms. You may want to take some cues from your more compassionate breathren.
 
We are getting into some very difficult territory here. I will state my personal beliefs as succinctly as possible:

If it was possible to save this woman it should have been done…the real trumps the possible…or the impossible. The child could not survive without the mother…to me it is a relatively easy choice.

John.
 
Also, crimson, good job on calling rescue workers and doctors Nazis. After all, you said anyone who choses who lives and who dies is like Hitlewr. But rescue workers and trauma or transplant doctors are put it situations in whcih they must chose to attend to one victim at the expense of another; they are forced to make value judgments on who they can most likely save, or who requires their help the most while denying immediate help or resources to another person, sometimes resulting in their death.

So I guess we should just get rid of transplants, ERs, fire departments, the coast guard…any entity in which people are required to make a decision on who they will save at the expense of another’s life. After all, a firefighter who can only save one child from a fire and makes a choice is just like Hitler!
 
MichaelNamb said:
I will note, Crimson, that while it seems every other person on this thread has offered nothing but sympathy, prayers, and condolances to Savita’s family and mother, despite her professed different view on morality or religious beliefs, you have called her a Nazi who did not really love her daughter.

Speaking as an outside, you are a terrible representative of your faith, demonizing an obviously grieving mother in such malicious terms. You may want to take some cues from your more compassionate breathren.
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Correction: Ive stated your mentality is on par with Hitlers, not the woman.

And i admit Im not the model Catholic no, but I call things as they are without sugarcoating. Look up what it means to be compassionate btw. I dont have to do things with a smile on my face, so long as I do them 🙂
 
MichaelNamb said:
Also, crimson, good job on calling rescue workers and doctors Nazis. After all, you said anyone who choses who lives and who dies is like Hitlewr. But rescue workers and trauma or transplant doctors are put it situations in whcih they must chose to attend to one victim at the expense of another; they are forced to make value judgments on who they can most likely save, or who requires their help the most while denying immediate help or resources to another person, sometimes resulting in their death.

So I guess we should just get rid of transplants, ERs, fire departments, the coast guard…any entity in which people are required to make a decision on who they will save at the expense of another’s life. After all, a firefighter who can only save one child from a fire and makes a choice is just like Hitler!
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You know full well there is a difference 🙂

Deciding who dies and who is viable is very totalitarian and Nazi. Id be scared if you were my doc.
 
Do Not Resuscitate identification. That way the medical community will know to leave your life in Gods hands, not theirs.
 
Helen31 said:
Do Not Resuscitate identification. That way the medical community will know to leave your life in Gods hands, not theirs.
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Where did you get that idea from? If anything do not euthanize me. So maybe I should wear a PRM bracelet - Please Resuscitate Me 🙂

Clearly if you are for homicide as you admitted a few posts back, you would be a big fan of DNR, which I find disturbing.

Abortion is not a case of DNR, its a case of ending life, not preserving it.
 
Helen31 said:
Justifiable Homicide = Kill or be killed. I’m not ready to go yet either Crimson.
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Homicide is homicide.

You mean you believe in Self Defense? That is something different. Homicide is Murder, I dont think that is ever justifiable.
 
MichaelNamb said:
Thanks for the info! Interesting case study.

I’m certainly no expert so can’t claim to be certain of this, and there have been Catholic authorities who have said induction would not have been permissable…but from what I have read, it does appear to me that the hospital unnecessarily prevented an induction for Savita that would not have been prohibited either by Irish law or Catholic teachings. Very sad case all around.

As a health care professional, it is hard for me to comprehend the callousness of a health care provider watching a woman in agonizing pain, in the midst of certain miscarriage, begging for an induction, and denying her this…whether or not they believed her life to be in danger.
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Unfortunately, I believe this is media spin to enforce anti-catholic hysteria. I have been treated in both the UK and Ireland for the same illness and the ‘kindness’ and compassion shown by the doctors and nurses in Ireland was second to none, quite different from my experience in the UK. I also have heard numerous women tell their miscarriage stories whilst in Irish hospitals, over the last few days on radio, and one point they were all consistent in, i.e. that the staff treated them with total compassion. I recall one lady state the doctor came in and held her hand and said ‘I am so sorry you have had to go through this miscarriage’; another stated that the sister of the ward called her several hours after she had returned home offering her help any time, she required it. So Irish medical professionals and the word ‘callous’ definitely does not compute - as far as I am concerned. I think we need to wait for the report to see what actually happened here. As I posted previously, Savita was fully healthy on presenting and the medical staff possibly assumed her miscarriage was imminent and weighed up the risks of anaesthesia and an operation, versus a natural miscarriage.
 
Ghosty said:
I haven’t seen a single thing that backs up your assertion that the Church would forbid delivering the child in Savita’s circumstances, on the contrary every expert who’s written about it has said that delivery could and should have occurred, and they were quite different from your daughters.

The fact that your daughter’s life and health were not in jeopardy is a huge factor, the biggest factor in fact, because the whole point of double-effect is that the good effect must be equal to or greater than the evil effect. In Savita’s case the good effect, her survival, would be equal to the evil effect, the death of the child. In your daughter’s case the good effect, getting things out of the way quicker, was no where near equal to the evil effect, the death of the child; it would have merely been a killing of convenience in your daughter’s case, but not in Savita’s.

What you were told by the Priest for Life was correct, but it doesn’t apply to the circumstances in Ireland, nor to the hypothetical situations I’ve been presenting.

Peace and God bless!
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But the case at St Joseph’s Hospital contradicts the position.

The mother was dying, and they could not induce labor without killing her. So, they extracted the 11 week fetus and performed a D&C. All involved were excommunicated.

Inducing labor, still kills the fetus, especially an 11 week old fetus. Either way, the end result is a dead fetus, or to do nothing a dead fetus and mother.

Jim
 
JimR-OCDS said:
But the case at St Joseph’s Hospital contradicts the position.

The mother was dying, and they could not induce labor without killing her. So, they extracted the 11 week fetus and performed a D&C. All involved were excommunicated.

Inducing labor, still kills the fetus, especially an 11 week old fetus. Either way, the end result is a dead fetus, or to do nothing a dead fetus and mother.

Jim
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IIRC, in the case of St. Joseph’s Hospital they performed a direct abortion, i.e. they killed the child and then extracted it. There is also the possibility that they made no effort to save the child once it was delivered, which would also be impermissible; delivering the child and leaving it on a cold table to die is not the same as what I’m advocating.

Finally, there’s the possibility that the Bishop simply misapplied Catholic ethics on the matter. If it was the placenta which was removed, resulting in the death of the child, then there would be no practical difference from the removal of a compromised fallopian tube in an ectopic pregnancy, which is allowed. The Bishop certainly doesn’t enjoy any kind of infallibility in his judgement of the situation, though his authority must be respected, especially within his diocese. This certainly isn’t an area in which the Catholic Church as a whole has made a firm judgement about which particular actions are permissible, and discretion is given to each jurisdiction. That said, he was within his authority to revoke the Catholic status of the hospital for whatever reason, and he cited more reasons beyond that one incident.

Peace and God bless!
 
Not all killing is murder. Homicide is murder. Murder is never justifiable.

As I said, killing in self defense or killing because you are in the army is something different. That doesn’t make you homicidal.
 
I was on duty in the ICU yesterday. I’m not an MD or an RN. I’m a licensed physical therapist, but much of our education is very similar to that of an RN. However, we (PTs) as a rule are not involved in the same sort of decision making for resource allocation and interventional treatment planning that RNs frequently have (name removed by moderator)ut. So, I decided to ask one of the RNs about this case.

She postulated that the infection could have been easily identified before becoming septicemia by a simple complete blood count, one of the most basic lab tests on anyone who presents for emergency admission. An elevated white blood cell count, along with something called a “left shift” (which she explained to me as some immature cells being forced into circulation as part of the inflammatory response) would or should have triggered a suspicion of infection somewhere in this patient’s body, possibly quite some time before it disseminated into systemic infection (septicemia) unless a) the woman was immunocompromised, or b) the responsible microorganism was particularly virulent. She commented that frequently medication treatment of pregnant women tends to be conservative for fear of exposing the baby to what would be a high dosage of drug crossing the placental blood barrier. She wonders if an average dose had been initially prescribed. She questions the advisability of the route of administration (oral) in favor of admission with IV antibiotics.

She went on to say that a sub-therapeutic dose could possibly cause the responsible microorganism to adapt and continue to grow despite the administration of the antibiotic. She wonders if this was what happened in this case. She said that frequently, a mutating organism will be less responsive to an antibiotic and may require treatment with a different, or even multiple, antibiotics. She cited the popular press’ reports on hospital-acquired “superbugs.”

She additionally commented that there were many potential scenarios for seeding of the woman’s reproductive organs by E. coli, one of which she remarked is that if the lady had taken a tub bath before realizing that her cervix was dilating (a real possibility if she had a back ache,) perianal E. col colonies could have been washed into the vagina and reproduced through the dilating cervical os. She noted that if the initial exam had included a vaginal exam, that in itself might have been enough to further spread the infection due to the manipulation of infected soft tissue. She also remarked that the child may have had central circulation and thus a detectable fetal heart tone, but extremities may have been hypoxic, anoxic, or even necrotic. Likewise, she said she has never heard of a seventeen week gestational age baby surviving delivery, either vaginally or via C-section, but this is not her area of practice.

She is a non-Catholic, and holds no particular views on abortion one way or another (she works in a respiratory ICU, but previously worked in the surgical ICU.) Our hospital, because of the proximity of a specialized maternity and pediatric hospital, does not handle obstetric cases, so it is easy to see how she would have no particular formation vis a vis abortion: She doesn’t have to encounter it in her practice.

Her take on the whole thing is that IF a CBC was not done on the initial ER visit, it should have been done, and she questions why it would not have been done. She wonders if the initial visit’s provider’s thinking was “healthy early second trimester primipara with back pain,” and the provider did a physical exam without lab work prior to discharge from the emergency department. Both of us wondered what the “event in the bathroom” was that caused the patient to return to the hospital a couple of days later.

Neither of us could determine why pain control was so inadequate, since the cervix was fully dilated and spontaneous abortion (miscarriage) seemed inevitable. She remarked that if the spontaneous abortion was considered to be inevitable, inadequate pain control would be a factor in forcing the woman deeper into shock. We both wondered whether the doctors attempted a cerclage operation (purse-string sutures around the cervix in an attempt to stave off a threatened abortion, if their position was that the child was alive and the pregnancy would be allowed to continue while the infection was being adequately treated.

My colleague’s comment was less than charitable, but I will share it: She remarked that the medical team seemed to be taking into account their legal liability under their national law (not merely a specific hospital’s policy) in performing an evacuation of the uterus at least as heavily a factor as the lives of both patients.

We agreed that without a comprehensive medical record review, including what lab tests were obtained when, it’s impossible to garner the rationale of the treatment team for the course of treatment. We both said that we would have liked to have been flies on the wall in the mortality and morbidity conference that surely followed this.

Actually, I do think that the half-information that was in the press had a political agenda and was a not so subtle form of Catholic bashing. At the very minimum, it neglected to take into account what the teachings of the magisterium actually are, which would have included (and insisted on) adequate treatment of the infection and adequate pain control for the mother.
 
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