Author: Ophelia Benson

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops insists on exactly the same murderous policy that the rebarbative bishop of Phoenix does. The CCB is very clear about it. The CCB doesn’t mess around.

“Surgery to terminate the life of an innocent person, however, is intrinsically wrong… Nothing, therefore, can justify a direct abortion. No circumstance, no purpose, no law whatsoever can ever make licit an act which is intrinsically illicit, since it is contrary to the Law of God which is written in every human heart, knowable by reason itself, and proclaimed by the Church.”

No circumstance whatsover, including the circumstance that the fetus is already doomed and will not survive no matter what, can make it licit to remove the placenta to prevent the woman’s death, since it is contrary to something that does not exist.

The bishops don’t know that there is such a thing as “God” or that it exists or ever has existed. They don’t know what the “Law” of that “God” is. They know nothing whatsoever about it. They know they’ve been told things, but anyone can tell anyone anything, and often does. Mere telling is not enough, especially when ordering medical workers to let patients die on the authority of the telling.

The putative law of the putative God is not “written in every human heart.” It’s not written in mine, and the bishops have no business saying it is. They’re bullshitting, and they’re doing it in aid of backing up a rule that would let women die when they could be saved, on the grounds that their fetus can’t be saved too.

Defenders of this revolting policy are bullshitting, if not outright lying, too: they are calling this policy a “right to life” policy, but of course it’s not, because the whole point is that it kills a woman and a fetus instead of only a fetus. That’s not “pro-life.” This policy results in the death of an adult, not life for a fetus.

Let’s see if I can force myself to read and comment on some of the horrible dogmatizing of Catholic theologian Ronald Conte. I could manage only about three paragraphs on the first attempt.

The subject of his anathema is “M. Therese Lysaught’s grave doctrinal error.” He notes that she points out that the fetus was doomed no matter what, that

it was not a case of saving the mother or the child. It was not a matter of choosing one life or the other.

Then he spends the rest of the long piece saying fuck that.

He quotes JP2 saying it’s disobedience to God’s law. He quotes the catechism. He insists on the (authoritarian and theocratic) claim that some acts are inherently evil no matter what the intentions and circumstances, period.

The intentionally-chosen act is the removal of the prenatal from the mother prior to viability, and this act is inherently ordered toward the death of the prenatal. The prenatal dies as a direct result of his or her removal. The inherent moral meaning of this act is the killing of an innocent prenatal. In other words, the essential moral nature of the act is murder. No creative explanation can change the fact that the death of the prenatal results directly from his or her removal and that this removal was intentionally chosen. The good intention to save the life of the mother, and the good consequence that one life is saved instead of two lives being lost, cannot change the moral object from evil to good.

Because it’s murder. That’s what “murder” means. It’s bad. The end.

In the Phoenix abortion case, the abortion was willed as a means to save the life of the mother; saving a life was the good intended end. And the circumstances were such that the abortion resulted in the good consequence that her life was saved. However, the end does not justify the means. Intrinsically evil acts are never transformed into good acts by intention, no matter how noble, nor by circumstances, no matter how dire.

It would have been morally good to let the woman die along with the fetus and leave four young children to deal with that however they could. Consequences are beside the point. Outcomes are beside the point. There was an unconscious undeveloped fetus with no plans or thoughts or memories or ties, inside the woman, therefore the woman had to be allowed to die and the fetus’s conscious thinking feeling siblings had to be bereft. Period.

Pope John Paul II taught that there is no room for ‘creativity’ in the moral determination of intrinsically evil acts; such acts are irremediably evil. In the case of direct abortion, we cannot find some creative explanation that would justify the act and save the life of the mother. We can only evaluate the moral object, and refuse to willingly choose any act of direct abortion, regardless of the cost, regardless of the cost, regardless of the cost.

Ok, that’s it, that’s all I can read.

A Catholic woman priest is trying to convince herself that the bishop of Phoenix didn’t mean what he of course necessarily did mean. She’s not having an easy time of it.

When I was a teen, I saw a movie that depicted a bishop, the brother of a pregnant woman, who loved his sister, but when the chips were down and it was her life or the baby’s life, the choice was his to make and he chose the baby. I will never forget how horrible I felt that his sister was powerless in this situation, and that the decision was her brother’s to make.

Quite – and in the bishop’s case, it wasn’t even a matter of choosing the baby, because that choice wasn’t available. It was a matter of choosing – insisting – that the fetus and the mother should die instead of the fetus only.

So today, here we are again, reflecting on the controversy surrounding the mother in Phoenix whose life was saved by the the ethical team at St. Joseph’s Catholic Hospital. As directive 47 indicates, one is obliged to save both lives, but if that is not possible then the moral principle is to save the life that can be saved. Surely, Bishop Olmsted of Phoenix is not implying that the hospital should have let the mother die when her life not only could be but was saved! Hopefully, Bishop Olmsted, Bishop Niederauer will clarify their positions in this kind of tragic situation when pregnant women’s lives are at risk.

Oh yes he is – that’s exactly what he’s implying, or rather, simply saying. He knows perfectly well that that’s the issue, because that is the issue. It can hardly have escaped his attention!

Mark Jones found the confirmation I was looking for, in the shape of the letter the bishop of Phoenix wrote to the president of Catholic Healthcare West. It is unbelievably disgusting.

He’s pissed off that the president of CHW told him that this is a complex matter on which the best minds disagree – not, as one might hope, because he thinks there should be no disagreement on whether or not a pregnant woman should be allowed to die along with her fetus rather than prevented from dying at the expense of her fetus, but because he is The Bishop.

In effect, you would have me believe that we will merely have to agree to disagree. But this resolution is unacceptable because it disregards my authority and responsibility to interpret the moral law and to teach the Catholic faith as a Successor of the Apostles.

His responsibility, that is, to order doctors to let a woman die. Because he is a Successor of the Apostles.

The decisions regarding life and death, morality and immorality as they relate to medical ethics are at the forefront of the Church’s mission today. As a result, the Church and her bishops have a heightened moral responsibility to remain actively engaged in these discussions and debates.

So that they can do their level best to compel hospitals to refuse to save the lives of pregnant women.

While the issues discussed in the moral analysis you provided are certainly technical and deeply philosophical, they are also foundationally “theological.” And the theology of the Catholic Faith, as concretized in the Code of Canon Law, dispels any doubt whose opinion on matters of faith and morals is decisive for institutions in the Diocese of Phoenix.

Me! Me me me me me me me! Do you understand? Me, the Bishop! My opinion is decisive! Not yours! Mine! I am the boss and you have to do what I say.

It goes on like that for four horrible pages. This from a church that protects priests who fuck children!

I feel dirty.

The ACLU letter to the administrators of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says something I hadn’t known, something quite staggering. The trouble is, I haven’t been able to find it anywhere else, so I can’t be sure it’s accurate. I would email the ACLU to ask, but they say they get too much mail to answer.

…just last week it was revealed that the Bishop of Phoenix threatened to remove his endorsement of St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center – where, as discussed in our previous letter, doctors provided a life-saving abortion to a young mother of four in November 2009 – unless the hospital signed a written pledge that it would never again provide emergency abortion care, even where necessary to save a woman’s life.

 You see why that’s staggering. It says that the bishop demanded that the hospital sign a written pledge not to do an abortion even where necessary to save a woman’s life – the bishop explicitly demanded that the hospital let a woman die rather than do an abortion. I knew he’d been saying that in effect all along, but I didn’t know he’d been willing to spell it out himself.

[pause to say – fuck I hate these bastards. I hate them I hate them I hate them.]

At any rate, even without confirmation of that part, he said way more than enough. The Phoenix diocese kindly makes his saying available to us. It’s disgusting.

…earlier this year, it was brought to my attention that an abortion had taken place at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix. When I met with officials of the hospital to learn more of the details of what had occurred, it became clear that, in the decision to abort, the equal dignity of mother and her baby were not both upheld; but that the baby was directly killed, which is a clear violation of ERD #45.

There was no baby. There was a future baby inside the body of the woman who was on the point of death. It wasn’t possible to uphold “the equal dignity of mother and her baby” because the mother had fatally high blood pressure.

In this case, the baby was healthy and there were no problems with the pregnancy; rather, 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. This is contrary to the teaching of the Church (Cf. Evangelium Vitae, #62).

That’s just outright dishonest. A healthy 11-week-old baby is just that, it’s not a fetus of 11 weeks. Does the bishop consider a newborn infant a 9-month-old baby?

Not to mention of course that treating the disease without killing the fetus wasn’t an option, so it’s dishonest of this reactionary woman-hating theocrat to imply that it was.

The president of St Joseph’s hospital, Linda Hunt, pointed out that it wasn’t an option.

“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,” Hunt said. “Morally, ethically, and legally, we simply cannot stand by and let someone die whose life we might be able to save.”

But that is exactly what the bishop is demanding that they do, and exactly what he is making a condition of the hospital’s “Catholic” status. You don’t get to call yourself “Catholic” unless you’re willing to let a woman die along with her fetus rather than kill the fetus to save the woman. (Notice that the bishop neglects to mention that the fetus dies either way. He’s not even demanding that they let the woman die to save the fetus, he’s demanding that they let her die to make a point.)

Dr. Charles Alfano, chief medical officer at the hospital and an obstetrician there, said Olmsted was asking the impossible from the hospital.

“Specifically the fact that he requested we admit the procedure performed was an abortion and that it was a violation of the ethical and religious directives and that we would not perform such a procedure in the future,” he said. “We could not agree to that. We acted appropriately.”

That’s close to a confirmation of the ACLU item. I don’t doubt the ACLU item, I just would like to see it in writing somewhere else.

Catholic News Service gives a slightly evasive account.

Amen.

 Josh Rosenau says my post on how gnu atheism can Help is an exercise in sugary saccharine vigorous self-back-patting, and also lacking in evidence. It’s nice of him to Reach Out, but his reading is rather sloppy.

If she’d said that these effects might well follow, I’d have no real argument. They might (and also might not, I don’t know). The initial claim that gnus have already rendered religion “not altogether intellectually respectable” strikes me as the weak point in this argument, though.

Yes but the claim is not mine. I didn’t claim that. My claim overall is pretty much that “these effects might well follow.” I didn’t say that gnus have already rendered religion “not altogether intellectually respectable”; I said

One thing gnu atheism is doing is relentlessly pointing out that religious belief is not altogether intellectually respectable. That means that religion no longer offers such a desirable kind of identity. It means the identity aspect is more mixed.

That’s a pretty hedged, undogmatic claim. It’s undeniable, surely, that gnu atheism is relentlessly pointing out that religious belief is not altogether intellectually respectable – that is precisely why we get shouted at, isn’t it? That’s why we are gnu? That’s why we are Not Helping? It’s debatable that that means that religion no longer offers such a desirable kind of identity, to be sure, but we have heard and read plenty of people saying exactly that, and lots of others implicitly acting on that conclusion. Why else is Karl Giberson so exercised about Jerry Coyne? And saying the identity aspect is more mixed – well is that a very dramatic claim either? I don’t think so. That, again, is what gets people pissed off, surely. We keep pointing out that religion isn’t %100 wonderful and Helpful and desirable.

Absent some sort of evidence that religion is less intellectually respectable now than it was 10 years ago, this first step in Ophelia’s logical chain fails, and the conclusions go with it.

The backlash is the evidence. The flood of books and articles and blog posts and Facebook updates and tweets all yelling with rage at the very idea that belief in God is fatuous. That’s the evidence. I didn’t say the effect was universal, and of course I don’t think it is. But it certainly exists.

Jerry Coyne also responds to Josh.