Better to let a woman die than perform an abortion?

[Himalaya]

I am just reading about the case recently in the US ( Phoenix) where a mother was being cared for through her pregnancy by a Catholic hospital. She had pulmonary hypertension and by 12 weeks it had reached a point where the stress on her heart was too much - both the woman and feotus would die, and her other four children would be left without a mother.So the woman and her Doctors agreed that an abortion was the best course of action, to save the mother's life.

Now the Catholic church have said that the right thing to do would have been to let the woman die. They have excommunicated the hospital and its ethics committee, and have issued guidance to other Catholic Hospitals to this effect.

WTF? Sorry I have nothing else more sensible to say. But it dumbfounds me that the Pope and Co are looked on as some kind of moral authority. This is psychotic.

That is crazy.

Organised religion has an awful lot to answer for. Like all these things though it's not about whether they're Catholic, Jewish or Muslim etc it is the extremity coupled with no pragmatism.

I couldn't agree more with your assessment as psychotic.

Well, if it's a Roman Catholic hospital then they do regard the pope as a moral authority. I agree it's crap that they let that interfere with a medical decision, but that's what you get if you go into a hospital that considers itself to be Roman Catholic.

If I was on their ethics committee I'd be issuing an open letter to the Vatican explaining why they made the decision they did and telling them where to shove their excommunication, but that's just me!

Appalling.

To the hospital's credit they didn't let religious doctrine get in the way of medical ethics.

On the question of why/how the Pope and the church is viewed as a moral authority, I more meant outside of the church itself - Thought for the day, state visit, bishops in the House of Lords, the general respect accorded to religious leaders. This ruling looks to be completely amoral.

That's absolsolutely insane! But it doesn't surprise me, I don't have a lot of tie for Catholicism.

Well, I think you're muddling up a few things there - the Pope gets to have a state visit because he is (technically) a head of state and the queen invited him. We've had state visits from much worse!

Thought for the day is, what, 5 minutes a day on one radio channel, covering all religions - for the number of people who have an interest in religion that's not much, compared with how much time something like sport for example gets.

And the Bishops in the House of Lords are there because the Church of England has an official position in England - personally I think they should disestablish and not be in that position, but its a historical tie-in, like the rest of the House of Lords - they have much fewer Bishops in there than they did previously, as the whole thing is gradually being reformed.

I don;t think religious leaders getlistened to that much in the UK - not like the US - they are seen as representatives of a group of people, and so the politicians pretend to listen to them, but if it doesn't suit them to take their opinion, then they don't.

Absolutely appalling, especially when you look at the blatant double standard - men who commit appalling crimes are not excommunicated (paedophile priests, fathers who abuse their daughters - there was an abortion case in Latin America along those lines where the Church planned to excommunicate the doctors and the girl who was something like 12, but not the rapist).

The Pope needs to put his own wicked house in order wrt child abuse, for starters, before attacking decent people who have acted quite properly to preserve the lives of women.

If she had pulmonary hypertension why weren't she and her partner sterilised to avoid pregnancy at all costs? Most insurers will cover it in such instances.

Good question Expat. I don't know. The reports say she is a practising Catholic being treated by a Catholic hospital - so that may have had something to do with it.

I think it says a lot about how the Church view women generally. Disposable. Good on the hospital for doing the decent, humane thing in this case.

A slightly fuller article here:

www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=12399

sorry here

What a tragic case. But the fact that the Catholic Church have once again proven themselves to be a misogynistic organisation is no great surprise.

The surprise is that so many people still take any notice of their ridiculous 'teachings'.