Author Anne Rice argues with Catholics about Bishop Olmstead IRT St. Joseph's Hospital

[Lyric]

http://www.ncregister.com/blog/olmsted-threatens-smackdown-on-catholic-abortion-hospital/

A fascinating read. And yes, this really is THE Anne Rice posting in the comments section. I got the link from Anne herself via her Facebook feed.

Go Anne go!

[Monique1]

1. I do remember reading about this some time ago

The baby was going to die within a short time after birth, the mother was also going to die. If the mother's life had not been saved both baby and mother would die. What is the problem? Of course the mother should live. The church is wrong on this - it is time they use common sense. 2 deaths = no lives, one death = one life that can be their for her children and do good works for people. One life that will live less than six months or less = there is nothing to give.

I guess it is easier to be quiet regarding pedophiles and drunken priests. A priest, a bishop, Bishop O'Brien of Phx ran over a man, the man was killed but O'Brien fled the scene of the accident-two days later he was found at home with his car in the garage with a cracker windshield. Was he drunk and didn't want to get caught with a DUI? We will never know because he had time to dry out before he was caught. So, a Bishop kills a person, flees but gets away with and is still a priest- there is really something wrong here.

[Shallah Kali]

2. I used to wonder why my Nana was so relieved when other granddaughters gave birth safely

saying that doctors sometimes don't take care of the mothers when there were complications. She worked at a Catholic hospital for many years some 40 yrs ago. I had no idea how bad it was or how they still won't help women who are pregnant if it risks the fetus in any way - even if the woman is miscarrying and the fetus too underdeveloped to survive -

When There’s a Heartbeat: Miscarriage Management in Catholic-Owned Hospitals
http://escholarship.org/uc/item/8dm907hm

As Catholic-owned hospitals merge with or take over other facilities, they impose restrictionson reproductivehealth services, including abortion and contraceptive services. Our interviews with US obstetrician–gynecologists working in Catholic-owned hospitals revealed that they are also restricted in managing miscarriages.

Catholic-owned hospital ethics committees denied approval of uterine evacuation while fetal heart tones were still present, forcing physicians to delay care or transport miscarrying patients to non–Catholic-owned facilities.

Some physicians intentionally violated protocol because they felt patient safetywas compromised. Although Catholic doctrine officially deems abortion permissible to preserve the life of the woman, Catholic-owned hospital ethics committees differ in their interpretation of how much health risk constitutes a threat to a woman’s life and therefore how much risk must be present before they approve the intervention

Are Catholic Hospitals Safe for Pregnant Women?
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2010/05/17/when-catholic-care-isnt-care

The author of the study, Dr. Debra Stulberg, has had her own issues with medical directives being overturned by Catholic hospital administrators, and in one case a woman would have been forced to put her life in danger just to avoid abortion.

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."

http://www.self.com/health/2007/05/denial-of-health-care?currentPage=7

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.

snip

And truly, many of these are cases of saving a woman's life. Women who are already in danger due to their pre-existing conditions are being told that not only are they so expendable, and that these hospitals will not perform the abortions that would save their lives, but that they should further risk their lives by seeking out some other place that might provide them care, such as Michelle Lee, who had to travel to a different state to have a necessary procedure performed.

In 1998, the Louisiana State University Medical Center in Shreveport refused to provide an abortion for Michelle Lee, a woman with cardiomyopathy who was on the waiting list for a heart transplant, despite her cardiologist's warning that the pregnancy might kill her. Hospital policy dictated that to qualify for an abortion, a woman's risk of dying had to be greater than 50 percent if her pregnancy was carried to term; a committee of physicians ruled that Lee did not meet this criterion. Since her cardiomyopathy made an outpatient abortion too dangerous, she traveled 100 miles to Texas by ambulance to have her pregnancy terminated.