Nun Excommunicated After Saving Mother's Life With Abortion

RL The information you bring to bear here is unfathomable. Clearly the power's that be a re misguided souls who fail to use an once of rational thought. I wonder what would happen if women around the world refused to become pregnant (I'm aware it is purely a hypothetical concept)? I'd anticipate that the church would once again get involved to let women know their place. Imagine the chagrin if they were to discover a woman was their God. lol Imagine the opposition science will receive if they establish that the first human was a woman not a man. We paleontologists maintain that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. Since all fetuses begin life as females, it only stands to reason that a female was the first human. lol

All this fails to address the issues at hand, namely the witch hunt mentality that continues today. The hunting name has changed but it's wearing an ill conceived disguise.

HI, RL!

PrintSmith wrote: Our Creator, in His Wisdom, left us many paths back to Him TPP. Each must find their own. He cares not which path you choose, only that you stay on it and make your way back to Him when your time here is done.

True, No worries here.

RenaissanceLady wrote: Whether or not The Powers that Be agree, women are losing their rights the moment they become pregnant. It should be even more terrifying that such laws are being passed in this country and are being upheld in our hospitals.

In this case of this nun being excommunicated, it wasn't even a matter of choosing whether the baby or mother would live. It was a matter of saving one life or allowing two to die.

Is is not "our" hospital RL, the hospital is owned and operated by Catholic entities. It is "their" hospital, not "ours". An important distinction regarding the rights of private property owners everywhere - including individual homeowners. My home does not belong to the collective we of society, nor does St. Joseph's Hospital in Arizona. If you wish to purchase and operate a hospital, you too will be allowed to operate it in the manner you see fit regarding such issues, but you have no right to violate the private property rights of a Catholic owned hospital and require them to do that which violates their canon.

Secondly, the Bishop does not share your views, or that of the ethics board at the hospital, regarding the choice that was made. The Ethical and Religious Directives (ERD) of the Catholic Church state "Every procedure whose sole immediate effect is the termination of pregnancy before viability is an abortion. ... " The Bishop determined that the termination of the pregnancy had a sole immediate effect of destroying a human life. The hospital disagrees with that determination and have asked for clarification from the Bishop. If there is more than one immediate effect in terminating the life of the child in the womb, the procedure is allowed under Catholic canon. In plain English this means that if the effect of directly terminating the pregnancy is the only means of saving the life of the mother the canon of the Catholic Church allows this to be done regardless of the age of the child in the womb. I am a Catholic RL, I had two great-uncles who rose to the rank of Monsignor in the priesthood. I am well versed in the canon of the Church, and I am telling you in no uncertain terms, and without fear of being corrected by the Vicar of Christ himself, that the Catholic Church canon allows for the direct termination of a pregnancy, at any stage, if it the only procedure that will keep the mother alive.

PrintSmith wrote:

RenaissanceLady wrote: Whether or not The Powers that Be agree, women are losing their rights the moment they become pregnant. It should be even more terrifying that such laws are being passed in this country and are being upheld in our hospitals.

In this case of this nun being excommunicated, it wasn't even a matter of choosing whether the baby or mother would live. It was a matter of saving one life or allowing two to die.

Is is not "our" hospital RL, the hospital is owned and operated by Catholic entities. It is "their" hospital, not "ours". An important distinction regarding the rights of private property owners everywhere - including individual homeowners. My home does not belong to the collective we of society, nor does St. Joseph's Hospital in Arizona. If you wish to purchase and operate a hospital, you too will be allowed to operate it in the manner you see fit regarding such issues, but you have no right to violate the private property rights of a Catholic owned hospital and require them to do that which violates their canon.

Secondly, the Bishop does not share your views, or that of the ethics board at the hospital, regarding the choice that was made. The Ethical and Religious Directives (ERD) of the Catholic Church state "Every procedure whose sole immediate effect is the termination of pregnancy before viability is an abortion. ... " The Bishop determined that the termination of the pregnancy had a sole immediate effect of destroying a human life. The hospital disagrees with that determination and have asked for clarification from the Bishop. If there is more than one immediate effect in terminating the life of the child in the womb, the procedure is allowed under Catholic canon. In plain English this means that if the effect of directly terminating the pregnancy is the only means of saving the life of the mother the canon of the Catholic Church allows this to be done regardless of the age of the child in the womb. I am a Catholic RL, I had two great-uncles who rose to the rank of Monsignor in the priesthood. I am well versed in the canon of the Church, and I am telling you in no uncertain terms, and without fear of being corrected by the Vicar of Christ himself, that the Catholic Church canon allows for the direct termination of a pregnancy, at any stage, if it the only procedure that will keep the mother alive.

First, PS, these are OUR hospitals. They receive public funding for their services, which I am now trying to eliminate. If they did not receive my money for their dogma, you would have a point but this is not the case. Also, as I'm sure you're aware, many communities are only served by Catholic hospitals. In this case, the woman was to ill even to be moved to another room for surgery. She could not have traveled to another hospital. No matter how badly you try to spin, the woman was dying and the pregnancy could not be saved. Women understand this. 11-week-old fetuses will never survive outside the womb.

Second, as you should know, half of my family is Catholic as well (the other half is Jewish, which I've discussed). I also have Catholic uncles and Catholic priests in my family. This, on it's own, does not make either of us an expert on Catholic law.

This is what Bishop Olmsted said about the case:

I am gravely concerned by the fact that an abortion was performed several months ago in a Catholic hospital in this Diocese. I am further concerned by the hospital's statement that the termination of a human life was necessary to treat the mother's underlying medical condition," he said.

"An unborn child is not a disease. While medical professionals should certainly try to save a pregnant mother's life, the means by which they do it can never be by directly killing her unborn child. The end does not justify the means," he added.

The bishop said faithful Catholics are obliged to defend human life from conception to natural death and reminded that a Catholic who "formally cooperates in the procurement of an abortion" is "automatically excommunicated by that action."Bishop Olmsted added, "We always must remember that when a difficult medical situation involves a pregnant woman, there are two patients in need of treatment and care; not merely one. The unborn child's life is just as sacred as the mother's life, and neither life can be preferred over the other. A woman is rightly called 'mother' upon the moment of conception and throughout her entire pregnancy is considered to be 'with child.'"

"The direct killing of an unborn child is always immoral, no matter the circumstances, and it cannot be permitted in any institution that claims to be authentically Catholic," he concluded.

http://www.lifenews.com/state5103.html

That seems pretty clear to me. No abortions can ever be performed under any circumstances. Anyone who gives or receives an abortion no matter the circumstances, even if it means two people will die instead of just the fetus, will be excommunicated.

This is why it matters: Many of us do not have access to anything other than a Catholic Hospital. As our taxpayer money funds these places, it is illegal to force their religious dogma on those of us who are unwilling to die for the Church.

Nor is this rare. Catholic countries such as the Philippines and in Latin America make it a crime for giving or obtaining an abortion, even if it's the only way to save a woman's life. These countries also have policies which arrest women for daring to miscarry and cause doctors to lose their licenses (and face imprisonment) if they even recommend abortion to save a life.

Why do you suppose this is? Why are these laws only in Catholic countries if the are groundless? Even in the Middle East, exceptions are made in order to save the life of the woman and if the fetus has some horrific problem. Don't you feel a bit odd that your religion is more radical than the radical Islam as it is practiced in Iran and Saudi Arabia?

This is what Wikipedia says, which is pretty much how I understood it but not how you are stating it:

The Catholic Church and Orthodox Church oppose abortion in every situation, but permit acts which indirectly result in the death of the fetus in the case where the mother's life is threatened or if the fetus is more likely to survive if an abortion is performed. While many evangelical Protestant Christians agree with this position, other Protestant denominations such as the Methodist Church and Lutheran Church are more pro-choice. More generally, some Christian denominations can be considered pro-life while others may be considered pro-choice. Additionally, there are sizable minorities in all denominations that disagree with their denomination's stance on abortion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_and_abortion

Therein lies the problem. An abortion to save a woman's life is not an "indirect" act and Catholic law states that they "oppose abortion in every situation." Bishop Olmsted is using this as a beating stick to keep women in their place and threaten those who would otherwise save a life. This isn't a case where the life of one is worth more than the other. It's a case of sacrificing one potential life or letting both die. You don't seem to be getting that. Perhaps you still feel that 11-week-old fetuses are able to survive outside the womb? Doesn't work that way. At eleven weeks the fetus is only about 1.61 inches long (the size of a fig) and is just starting to develop organs which cannot work at all outside of the womb. It's at the 11th week that the future baby is officially a "fetus". The first 10 weeks the future baby is still an "embryo".

I also don't give a rat's tail if this Bishop disagrees with me. He could run around in a tutu and ruby slippers calling after Toto for what I care. Where I do care is that his actions endanger the lives of women and I intend on learning how many women have died in Catholic Hospitals of "natural causes" when an emergency abortion could have saved their lives.

If you feel like some fun reading, you might want to check out the abortion laws in the Philippines, Chile, and Nicaragua, among others. This is what happens in Catholic Theocracies. Abortions are forbidden in absolutely all circumstances. The Catholic Church in these countries has been a vocal opponent of lessening abortion restrictions under any circumstances. This is why 12% of all maternal deaths in the Philippines were due to unsafe abortions.

There is no law in the Philippines that expressly authorizes abortions in order to save the woman's life; and the general provisions which do penalize abortion make no qualifications if the woman's life is endangered. It may be argued that an abortion to save the mother's life could be classified as a justifying circumstance (duress as opposed to self-defense) that would bar criminal prosecution under the Revised Penal Code. However, this has yet to be adjudicated by the Philippine Supreme Court.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_i ... hilippines

So, why do all of these Catholic countries - and only Catholic countries - get it so wrong when it comes to providing abortion in order to save a woman's life? I'm guessing it's because the Catholic Church approves of such measures.

Edited to add this:

Family physician Debra Stulberg, M.D., was completing her residency in 2004 when West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park, Illinois, was acquired by the large Catholic system Resurrection Health Care. "They assured us that patient care would be unaffected," Dr. Stulberg says. "But then I got to see the reality." The doctor was struck by the hoops women had to jump through to get basic care. "One of my patients was a mother of four who had wanted a tubal ligation at delivery but was turned down," she says. "When I saw her not long afterward, she was pregnant with unwanted twins."

And in emergency scenarios, Dr. Stulberg says, the newly merged hospital did not offer standard-of-care treatments. In one case that made the local paper, a patient came in with an ectopic pregnancy: an embryo had implanted in her fallopian tube. Such an embryo has zero chance of survival and is a serious threat to the mother, as its growth can rupture the tube. The more invasive way to treat an ectopic is to surgically remove the tube. An alternative, generally less risky way is to administer methotrexate, a drug also used for cancer. It dissolves the pregnancy but spares the tube, preserving the women's fertility. "The doctor thought the noninvasive treatment was best," Dr. Stulberg recounts. But Catholic directives specify that even in an ectopic pregnancy, doctors cannot perform "a direct abortion"—which, the on-call ob/gyn reasoned, would nix the drug option. (Surgery, on the other hand, could be considered a lifesaving measure that indirectly kills the embryo, and may be permitted.) The doctor didn't wait to take it up with the hospital's ethical committee; she told the patient to check out and head to another ER.

It's an example of how an "indirect" means to save a woman and terminate a pregnancy, even it it's more invasive, would be tolerated by a Catholic hospital when a safer, less invasive abortion is not.
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2010 ... -isnt-care

RenaissanceLady wrote: First, PS, these are OUR hospitals. They receive public funding for their services, which I am now trying to eliminate. If they did not receive my money for their dogma, you would have a point but this is not the case. Also, as I'm sure you're aware, many communities are only served by Catholic hospitals. In this case, the woman was to ill even to be moved to another room for surgery. She could not have traveled to another hospital. No matter how badly you try to spin, the woman was dying and the pregnancy could not be saved. Women understand this. 11-week-old fetuses will never survive outside the womb.

They may receive compensation for services rendered from the public coffers RL, but that doesn't make them public companies anymore than a government contract to provide desks collectivizes the company that makes the desks or that government monies are paid for rifles makes the rifle manufacturer a government operation. You and I have no ability to stick our noses into the operations of the Springfield Armory because the government pays them to produce munitions for the military in addition to manufacturing arms for private purchase. Catholic and other religious hospitals were treating the poor free of charge long before there was government sponsorship available for doing so.

RenaissanceLady wrote: That seems pretty clear to me. No abortions can ever be performed under any circumstances. Anyone who gives or receives an abortion no matter the circumstances, even if it means two people will die instead of just the fetus, will be excommunicated. <snip>

This is what Wikipedia says, which is pretty much how I understood it but not how you are stating it:
Quote:
The Catholic Church and Orthodox Church oppose abortion in every situation, but permit acts which indirectly result in the death of the fetus in the case where the mother's life is threatened or if the fetus is more likely to survive if an abortion is performed. While many evangelical Protestant Christians agree with this position, other Protestant denominations such as the Methodist Church and Lutheran Church are more pro-choice. More generally, some Christian denominations can be considered pro-life while others may be considered pro-choice. Additionally, there are sizable minorities in all denominations that disagree with their denomination's stance on abortion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_and_abortion

Therein lies the problem. An abortion to save a woman's life is not an "indirect" act and Catholic law states that they "oppose abortion in every situation." Bishop Olmsted is using this as a beating stick to keep women in their place and threaten those who would otherwise save a life. This isn't a case where the life of one is worth more than the other. It's a case of sacrificing one potential life or letting both die. You don't seem to be getting that. Perhaps you still feel that 11-week-old fetuses are able to survive outside the womb? Doesn't work that way. At eleven weeks the fetus is only about 1.61 inches long (the size of a fig) and is just starting to develop organs which cannot work at all outside of the womb. It's at the 11th week that the future baby is officially a "fetus". The first 10 weeks the future baby is still an "embryo".

What the Catholic ERD states is actually quite different from your, and Wikipedia's, representation of what it says. The following is from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops website:

Abortion (that is, the directly intended termination of pregnancy before viability or the directly intended destruction of a viable fetus) is never permitted. Every procedure whose sole immediate effect is the termination of pregnancy before viability is an abortion, which, in its moral context, includes the interval between conception and implantation of the embryo. Catholic health care institutions are not to provide abortion services, even based upon the principle of material cooperation. In this context, Catholic health care institutions need to be concerned about the danger of scandal in any association with abortion providers.

http://www.usccb.org/bishops/directives.shtml#partfour

What Catholic canon says is that when the sole, meaning only, immediate effect is the termination of the pregnancy it constitutes an abortion and is never permitted. Sole immediate effect RL. If there are multiple immediate effects, there is more than a sole immediate effect. Directly terminating a pregnancy when the mother is in imminent danger of death has the immediate effect of death for the child and preserving the life of the mother and is therefore allowable under the Catholic canon. I don't care why some wish to misrepresent the Catholic Church, but anyone with a 5th grade comprehension of the written word can clearly see that this is precisely what is being done by anyone who claims that the Catholic Church doesn't allow a direct termination of a pregnancy under any circumstance. While true that it is never permitted for the sole immediate effect of terminating a pregnancy, it is not true that it is not permitted to save the life of a mother in imminent danger of dying.

RenaissanceLady wrote: Edited to add this:
Quote:
Family physician Debra Stulberg, M.D., was completing her residency in 2004 when West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park, Illinois, was acquired by the large Catholic system Resurrection Health Care. "They assured us that patient care would be unaffected," Dr. Stulberg says. "But then I got to see the reality." The doctor was struck by the hoops women had to jump through to get basic care. "One of my patients was a mother of four who had wanted a tubal ligation at delivery but was turned down," she says. "When I saw her not long afterward, she was pregnant with unwanted twins."

And in emergency scenarios, Dr. Stulberg says, the newly merged hospital did not offer standard-of-care treatments. In one case that made the local paper, a patient came in with an ectopic pregnancy: an embryo had implanted in her fallopian tube. Such an embryo has zero chance of survival and is a serious threat to the mother, as its growth can rupture the tube. The more invasive way to treat an ectopic is to surgically remove the tube. An alternative, generally less risky way is to administer methotrexate, a drug also used for cancer. It dissolves the pregnancy but spares the tube, preserving the women's fertility. "The doctor thought the noninvasive treatment was best," Dr. Stulberg recounts. But Catholic directives specify that even in an ectopic pregnancy, doctors cannot perform "a direct abortion"—which, the on-call ob/gyn reasoned, would nix the drug option. (Surgery, on the other hand, could be considered a lifesaving measure that indirectly kills the embryo, and may be permitted.) The doctor didn't wait to take it up with the hospital's ethical committee; she told the patient to check out and head to another ER.


It's an example of how an "indirect" means to save a woman and terminate a pregnancy, even it it's more invasive, would be tolerated by a Catholic hospital when a safer, less invasive abortion is not.
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2010 ... -isnt-care

Another misrepresentation. What the ERD says is this:

In case of extrauterine pregnancy, no intervention is morally licit which constitutes a direct abortion.

Again, to be considered an abortion according to the ERD, the sole immediate effect of the procedure must be the termination of the pregnancy. It is not true that an ectopic pregnancy has "zero" chance of being a viable pregnancy. Though rare, there are instances where an ectopic pregnancy is indeed a viable pregnancy with proper medical care. If an ectopic pregnancy is ruled to be a medical emergency whereby the pregnancy must be directly terminated to preserve the life of the mother, such a procedure would not be classified as having a sole immediate effect of terminating the pregnancy. If, after examination, it was indisputable that continuation of the ectopic pregnancy would ultimately result in a medical emergency where the life of the mother was in imminent danger, there would again be more than one immediate effect of terminating the pregnancy and doing so would fall within the ERD guidelines. That one doctor in a newly acquired hospital couldn't be bothered with the established protocol to ensure that they were treating patients in accord with Catholic canon in no way establishes that the text you linked to has correctly reported the official position of the Catholic Church or the correct procedures at a Catholic hospital. Dr. Debra Stulberg seems to have an axe to grind, as perhaps do you. Abortion has a very specific definition within the ERD of the Catholic Church and the Catholic hospitals. Abortion according to the ERD and abortion according to Webster's Dictionary are not one and the same. Intentionally equating the two to put the Catholic Church in an unfavorable light is, at best, irresponsible journalism. I expect more from you RL. You are far too intelligent to fall for intentional misrepresentation without first conducting your own research.

You are doing an excellent job of trying to deflect and distract from this case but your own bias is showing. I, however, am not going to stoop to trying to pick a personal fight with you or disparage your intelligence.

First, no matter how badly you try to spin away, any religious organization which receives public funding is required to meet certain standards, including work for a PUBLIC good and being restricted from coercing the public into its own religious agenda. You cannot change the fact that when Bishop Olmsted decided that a doctor could not save this woman's life due to his own religion, he broke that code. You may not like that law but it doesn't change the fact that it IS the law.

Second, the Bishop isn't an MD now matter how much you or he would prefer otherwise. The doctors said that this woman's chance of mortality was "close to 100%" if she did not have an abortion. The doctors also said that she was in such a dire condition that she couldn't even be moved to an operating room, much less another hospital. These doctors chose to act in order to save her life. Bishop Olmsted chose to excommunicate a nun for allowing her life to be saved. This is the story which is not being denied by anyone. I'm guessing you are still insisting that all of the doctors were wrong whereas you and the bishop are right in that both could be saved.

You are entitled to your medical opinions but you are not entitled to your own facts. You are also not an MD. Every medical person, the patient, her family and the ethics board knew this woman would die without an abortion. The only people who are confused by this are you and the bishop and neither of you were there. In any case, the bishop has made clear that any abortion under any circumstances causes an immediate excommunication if those who were involved were Catholic.

It's telling how you aren't discussing this. It's even more telling how you refuse to address the case of a woman who may be allowed to die simply because the only hospital which serves her area is a Catholic Hospital.

But that's the point, isn't it? This isn't your life. You will never be a woman. It is neither bravery nor morality to risk a woman's life for a situation you will never face.

If someone pointed a gun at you and said that "your chance of mortality is almost 100%" would you do nothing or would you fight for your survival? Is praying the right answer or would you try a more aggressive approach to saving your life?

What if your chance of survival was 90%? 60%? 40%?

If your answer is to do anything other than pray or "hope" for survival, you are a hypocrite. The only difference is that the fetus was not holding a gun and would die no matter what (there really aren't any cases of 11-week old fetuses surviving no matter how much you would hope otherwise. Ectopic pregnancies are also usually fatal if not aborted or otherwise removed.) The mother has the same rights you take for granted every day when she chose to survive rather than die along with her fetus. She has the right to fight for her survival even if her chances of mortality were slightly less than 100%. It is not morality to choose death for another who wants to live. Your religious objections end where her body begins.

Here's the point you refuse to understand: The bishop has damned himself, his church and Catholic hospitals by his actions.
1. If he feels, as he has stated, that any abortion is wrong no matter how necessary it is to save a life, then he is going against the "law" you claim allows for such exceptions. He is not a doctor. It is not his job to 2nd guess doctors. The doctors made it clear that this woman would die without an abortion. Period. His religion is not science. Neither is yours.
2. If he is upholding Catholic law by stating that all abortions are wrong, even if it is to save a woman's life, then by law Catholic hospitals should not be given a dime of taxpayer money. Whether or not you like the law, this country does still have a First Amendment and taxpayer money may not be used to force someone to abide by another man's religion.

Let me know when you will join my campaign to stop giving public funding to Catholic hospitals. Otherwise, you need to insist that they abide by the rules of accepting taxpayer money by not pushing a religious agenda onto their unwilling patients. To do otherwise is to admit that you are willing to break the law in order to serve your own ends. I'd like to think that you are above that.

If the Catholic hospital was operating outside of the regulations which permit it to be compensated for its services from the public funds, RL, they would not receive the public funds. Plain and simple, isn't it. If the states don't pass mandatory seat belt laws, reduce the level of BAC to 0.08%, they lose federal funds don't they. The access by Catholic hospitals to public monies is similarly restricted. Whether or not you are willing to acknowledge this obvious reality is up to you.

Neither the federal, state or local governments are codified to pass laws which make it mandatory that religiously held beliefs be violated by any individual RL. A family physician or an ob/gyn who is also a Catholic is not required to perform abortions and abridging their religious tenents. The reason that in some areas the only hospital around is a Catholic hospital is that there is no one else interested in operating a hospital at a loss other than the institutions of Catholic religion who seek to serve the Almighty God by tending to His children than those that seek only the almighty dollar. The charity of the Church hospitals is not solely dependent upon receiving federal dollars, which is why they existed well before the progressive attempts to eradicate them by bribing private hospitals with public funds to extend federal charity to these individuals and why Catholic hospitals are expanding into areas that would not have a hospital at all if not for the charity of the Catholic people in this nation.

I agree that the Bishop is not an MD. Nor have I endorsed his position regarding this incident. I have consistently said that I lack the amount of information upon which his conclusion is based and therefore don't have the information necessary to know whether or not his conclusion is within or outside of the canon of the Catholic Church in this instance. I have allowed that his determination may be wrong, and have said that the excommunication is subject to appeal to the Vatican. I have pointed out that the board at the hospital, which includes another Sister of Mercy, has asked for clarification from the Bishop, which would be the first step taken in such an appeal. I have never, not even once, taken the position that the Bishop is correct.

I do, however, know that the Catholic canon does allow for the direct termination of a pregnancy to preserve the life of the mother if that is the only means by which her life can be continued. I am intimately knowledgeable in this area of Catholic canon RL, particularly in the case of an extrauterine pregnancy. As you yourself stated, "Ectopic pregnancies are also usually fatal if not aborted or otherwise removed." Usually is not always. That the pregnancy is ectopic is not sufficient under Catholic canon. It must be a non-viable instance of ectopic pregnancy before it can be terminated without such termination being the sole immediate effect of the procedure. Continuation of an ectopic pregnancy must be shown to be an actual mortal danger to the mother, and it is possible to arrive at a medical determination of absolute certainty prior to the point where the mother is in actual mortal danger in such instances. As I have said, I have intimate knowledge in this particular area of Catholic canon. Catholic canon does not allow for the destruction of human life to avoid a difficult or inconvenient pregnancy, but in every instance it does allow for the destruction of human life to terminate a pregnancy that will result in fatality of the mother.

And yes, every instance of abortion is forbidden in Catholic canon, but abortion has a very specific definition, which you seem to overlook for whatever reason, within that canon - a procedure whose sole immediate effect is the termination of a pregnancy. Restoring health to the mother, or removing her from danger of imminent death, are but two instances where the immediate effect is not solely the termination of the pregnancy and are allowed by the canon because they do not constitute an abortion as defined within the canon of the Catholic Church. The termination of any pregnancy, for any reason, falls within the general definition of abortion by society, and perhaps even of science and medicine, but only the procedures which have the sole immediate effect of terminating a pregnancy are classified as abortions within the canon of the Catholic Church. Anyone who opines otherwise is factually in error. Using the medical or societal definition to disparage and taint the Catholic Church is neither reasonable, nor factually correct.

I enter such discussions armed with logic, not emotion RL, and that, as they say, is the facts ma'am. They are not my facts, they are simply the facts.

I am willing to join your fight to end federal support for any and every hospital, not just Catholic ones. It is not an area that the federal government was tasked with overseeing in the Constitution. When you are ready to join the fight for an end to this usurpation of power by the federal government we can raise our voices together, though given the recent passage of the latest scam of health insurance reform, I wouldn't expect that the current cabal will listen.

.

RL wrote "But that's the point, isn't it? This isn't your life. You will never be a woman. It is neither bravery nor morality to risk a woman's life for a situation you will never face."
:Exactly: