Save One Life or Lose Two? Catholics say lose two!

Video Update: This was on The Today Show.

Here's the story in a nutshell.

A woman in a Catholic hospital is 11 weeks pregnant and will die unless she has an abortion.

The nun on staff and the woman decide that an abortion is the logical choice.

The women survives and the abortion takes place.

The nun is excommunicated soon after for the abortion.

Catholic leaders lambast the nun and say that the abortion should not have taken place.

Here were the two options:

A) There is no abortion. The woman dies and the fetus dies.

B) There is an abortion. The woman lives and the fetus dies.

It should be very obvious to any rational person that the obvious choice is B. But no, Catholic leaders and other various individuals would have preferred A and said that the abortion should have never taken place. The decision should be obvious: save one life instead of losing two.

Here are the facts from an NPR article:

According to a hospital document, she had "right heart failure," and her doctors told her that if she continued with the pregnancy, her risk of mortality was "close to 100 percent."

The official church position would mandate that the correct solution would be to let both the mother and the child die.

The woman survived. When Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted heard about the abortion, he declared that McBride was automatically excommunicated — the most serious penalty the church can levy.

"She consented in the murder of an unborn child," says the Rev. John Ehrich, the medical ethics director for the Diocese of Phoenix. "There are some situations where the mother may in fact die along with her child. But — and this is the Catholic perspective — you can't do evil to bring about good. The end does not justify the means."

Olmsted dealt with the situation very quickly and excommunicated the nun.

Ehrich also felt that the mother should have died instead of living.

The positions of the Catholic Church are extremely dangerous and ironically often anti-life. Whether or not you consider yourself to be pro-choice or pro-life, this situation should be an obvious case where there should be an abortion because you're saving the life of the mother and the fetus would die regardless. This isn't rocket science.

The nun who was involved with the abortion was a very brave individual in my opinion who acted in opposition to church dogma and saved the life of another human being...but she's being lambasted because of her decision and was excommunicated.

Let's review some despicable words from Catholic News Agency and Catholic.org:

The Catholic Physicians Guild of Phoenix has come out in support of Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted, who expressed outrage that a nun administrator at a Catholic hospital in his diocese permitted a direct abortion.

"The Guild stands by the church's teaching that is guided by the Holy Spirit in ordering life toward truth and love."

Brophy reaffirmed that "medical treatments are appropriate for the direct purpose of curing a proportionately pathological condition of a pregnant woman, when they cannot be safely postponed until the unborn child is viable. When an unborn child attains viability, labor may be induced."

"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 said.

Dr. Paul A. Byrne, Director of Neonatology and Pediatrics at St. Charles Mercy Hospital in Toledo, Ohio, told LifeSiteNews.com Monday that he knew of no situations when an abortion was necessary to save the life of the mother, and that "given just pulmonary hypertension, the answer is no" to abortion.

Apparently, "Life, Truth, and Love" is having a woman die when her life can be saved; it's very clear that various individuals would have preferred that the woman should die.

It's nonsense to say that medical treatments are only for curing pathological condition...the woman, according to NPR, was almost guaranteed to die (which Catholic.org conveniently left out) and the medical procedure of an abortion saved her life. Unborn children (or in this case, potential human beings) certainly aren't diseases, but the woman was going to die if the abortion did not take place. It's very sad that they'd prefer that a woman die just to uphold Catholic teachings.

There are various situations (including this one) where abortions are necessary to save mothers, also here and here. Regardless of how frequently situations like this happen, this is one definite case where the mother's life was at risk...this should not be written off as "just" hypertension.

Bishop Olmsted explained that every Catholic institution is obliged to defend human life “at all its stages,” and that Catholic individuals also have this obligation.

“If a Catholic formally cooperates in the procurement of an abortion, they are automatically excommunicated by that action,” the bishop continued. “The Catholic Church will continue to defend life and proclaim the evil of abortion without compromise, and must act to correct even her own members if they fail in this duty.”

“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.”

“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.”

Hmm. So, defend human life at all stages, but don't have the abortion and have the already living mother die and have the fetus also die. Sounds about right...

The bishop sets up a false dichotomy of "one life over another." Nobody proposed that one life was more important than the other. I already discussed the real two options: Have the mother and fetus die or have the fetus die. The issue here is to either save one life or lose two. The bishop also calls the fetus a child, but it is not a child by any means - it's a potential human being. Even if it were a child, the decision should be obvious to save one life instead of losing two.

Imagine that there were a stranded person who was unable to swim and was going to certainly die in a very fast current. No matter what you, the onlooker, could do, the person is going to die. Do you think that you should jump in and also die...or should you live while the non-swimmer dies? My analogy might not be perfect, but it's clear...again, save one life or have two die? The choice is simple...

Questions come to mind....

Why are churches so fast to act regarding abortions, but not fast when addressing child rape and torture by priests within the church?

Why is the church so hypocritical? They always talk about "the dignity of persons" and "fighting for life," but they'd prefer that a mother and a fetus die instead of the mother living and the fetus dying.

The NPR article addresses the "double-standard" of dealing with the priestly abuse cases.

"In the case of priests who are credibly accused and known to be guilty of sexually abusing children, they are in a sense let off the hook," Doyle says.

Doyle says no pedophile priests have been excommunicated. When priests have been caught, he says, their bishops have protected them, and it has taken years or decades to defrock them, if ever.

"Yet in this instance we have a sister who was trying to save the life of a woman, and what happens to her? The bishop swoops down [and] declares her excommunicated before he even looks at all the facts of the case," Doyle says.

What do individual Catholics have to say about this?

The world so truly need religous and lay people in its hospitals that will ALWAYS ALWAYS uphold the PRO LIFE teachings of the Church ie Those that wil always protect the vunerable innocent unborn! Now if some religous cant do this when they are put to the test if the pressure is far too much then perhaps these people should not be in such positions at all if they buckle under pressure! One mistake and an innocent vunerable human life aborted is one mistake too many! We were all the unborn once and we are here because some one protected our right to be born. Religous have to be both better prepared and informed re these issues and have to always resolve to hold the pro life line whenever these matters arise! Saving innocent lives is always far far better than ever destroying them!

That so called "nun" needs a serious reprogramming in Catholic Medical Ethics! Now that she has excommunicated herself, she has some serious canonical matters to deal with. A "Religious" who publically defied Church teaching is a source of grave scandal and should not only be removed from her lofty position as CEO of that hospital, but asked to removed herself from that Diocese and go back to her Motherhouse, or her apartment, of wherever those of her ilk "roam the world seeking the ruin of souls ..."

Years of dissent and flaunting of the teaching of the Catholic Church morphed many former Catholics (politicians and sisters) into the functionaries of a leftist, secular party with claims that the Church "allows" abortion. These are the times of diabolical assault.

I am so proud to have Bishop Olmsted as the Bishop of our diocese. He is true to the teachings of the Catholic Church and all he says and does is out of humble love and obviously guided by the Holy Spirit. Thank you Bishop Olmsted for all you do to fully support all life!

This is quite disgusting. I'm quite certain that readers of my blog and others who consider themselves Catholics would make a decision to save one life instead of losing a fetus and a mother. Morality, as I've previously mentioned, is quite tainted by absolutist church teachings May God be less...