Beyond Belief News- 7 June 2010

Here is the headline from MSNBC

"Hospital nun rebuked for allowing abortion"

And the addition just under the headline;

"She agreed that seriously ill woman needed procedure to survive"

Curious yet?

Well in this weeks edition of Beyond Belief News, we tell the unbelievable story of a Hospital Ethics committee member being let go for being judged unethical in examining the ethics of a life saving medical procedure.

The key pieces of information that you are missing is that the Ethics committee member was....
A nun.

The hospital?
Catholic.

The life saving procedure?
Abortion.

The person who punished the nun?
A bishop.

Not a doctor, not an expert in medical ethics, not an expert of any kind.

The patient made the decision to terminate the pregnancy because of a previous condition called Pulmonary hypertension. In order to make such a serious decision, she consulted her doctors, her family and the ethics committee (of which the nun,Sr McBride, is a member). They informed her that her heart dysfunction would be made worse and possibly fatal by continuation of the pregnancy. In a statement issued 14 May 2010 "If there had been a way to save the pregnancy and still prevent the death of the mother, we would have done it," the letter says. "We are convinced there was not."

Sound medical advice.

The Bishop Thomas J Olstead, however, felt that he was qualified to comment on the validity of this decision, despite no actual qualifications or medical knowledge in his background.

Olmsted said in a statement sent to The Arizona Republic. "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. 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."

Who is he to say what medical professionals should and shouldn't do? Further what did he want them to do?

Watch her die from cardiac arrest, and then watch her baby die anyway?

McBride was reassigned and excommunicated, for the crime of listening to the advice of doctors and allowing the abortion to happen.

I would defend his right to exclude her from his catholic "club" for not following their immoral rules, but to expect hospitals (even catholic ones) to respect religious dogma more than their patients health and safety is unforgivable.

It is long past time for governments to remove all catholic doctrine from hospital mandates, to remove the "catholic" from any hospital and allow them to do their jobs without iron age morality interference.
It is long past time to stop conflating religion with health and education. They are mutually exclusive and, in most cases, polar opposites.

Once you make the decision to favour death over over a procedure that will save a life that is NOT YOUR OWN because of YOUR personal morality, you no longer have a hospital.

All you have then is a building ruled by witch doctors, evangelists, and a 2000 year old morality which you force on people in need of care, not judgment.

Do we want to examine religious ethics instead of medical conditions?
Are we concerned with personal morality instead of patient mortality?
A philosophy of long ago, or the philosophy of life?

What I am trying to say is;
Catholics, if you are going to stand in the way of treatment,

leave the business of healing to the doctors.


OK?



http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37171656/ns/health-health_care