Nun excommunicated for allowing abortion to save the life of a mother

[Drolefille]

Originally Posted by Beryana

If she were on a ventilator, close to death, etc she could not have given informed consent. Maybe it WAS her wish to save the life of her child. Where was her husband in all this? Did he make the decision to kill his child? Is she raising the children all by herself? Anytime a parent dies it is a tragedy - be it car crash or other accident, medical condition, etc. But you are saying the child does not have a right to actual live, that the mother is more important because there are 4 other children. What if this had happened outside the 'legal window' to have an abortion?

HER CHILD WOULD HAVE DIED EITHER WAY. You seem not to grasp that. There is no saving the baby in this situation with current technology. Also, what if she wanted to kill her baby with fire? Hypotheticals are useless here.
Late term abortions to save the life of the mother are not outside the legal window even if typically abortions are only allowed up to a certain point. Laws may vary based on state. If the fetus was viable as mentioned below, NICU and hope he or she lives.

Originally Posted by AOII Angel

They would have delivered the child early and put him/her in the NICU. See, I do have an answer for everything.

Are you saying that the father has no say in this? I can assure you that no physician would proceed with an abortion without a consent from the patient or family without going through the proper channels of the ethics committee. For all you know, she could have consented to the abortion before she degraded far enough to need intubation. The whole point is she was critically ill and unable to be moved to another facility. I have over ten years of medical experience (not just radiology since I also did two years of General Surgery), and when patients are too sick to be moved, they are on death's door.

She's assuming a whole hell of a lot.

Originally Posted by Beryana

Ummm...because I didn't see your conspiracy theories and think Dan Brown is simply a very bad writer (and yes, I have read some of his works).

I didn't post conspiracy theories, you implied them. Dan Brown is a shitastic writer.

For your reference: Your post

And I'm going to ask you to elaborate on your statement - other than what you have read in the newspapers. Why do you believe this was a 'cover up' by the Vatican?

My reply

I didn't say this was a Vatican level cover up. I said the Church, which includes all levels of the hierarchy.

Priests with allegations of child abuse were repeatedly removed from positions. The Church historically has not turned offenders or allegations over to civil authorities (although there have been situations where civil authorities also ignored allegations). Priests who have been through therapy - not all of it provided by licensed therapists - were not monitored effectively and were allowed to be around children. This has been a systemic problem and has not been unique to the United States - see Ireland, England, Germany, South America, etc.

And the attitude that the hierarchy has had to this issue has shown a level of disrespect to the victims, although not indicative of Church policy, off handed remarks about this being all about the media, or comparing criticism to anti-semitism, show an incredibly flippant attitude.

The Church is not full of sex offenders and child molesters, percentages are about the same as among other religious leaders or school teachers. However the Church claims moral authority over a large number of people, and to behave immorally and unethically is hypocritical and destroys people's trust in the institution.


Also, "the newspapers" (and other media) are how we get news. Short of being in the Vatican I'm not sure how you expect people to get this information.