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Posted on 07/07/2010 10:25:52 AM PDT by NYer
NEW YORK, July 6, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – “Rights for me, but not for thee” seems to be the theme of the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) latest duel with the U.S. Catholic Church. In an effort to get the federal government to mandate abortion as an emergency medical service in certain situations, the group has sent a letter to the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services demanding it investigate Catholic hospitals for “potential violations” of U.S. law by failing to provide what the organization asserts are “life-saving” abortions.
"The government must ensure that the well-being of the patient does not take a back seat to religious beliefs," said Vania Leveille, ACLU Legislative Counsel, who additionally noted that federal law requires hospitals “to provide life-saving medical care to their patients."
The ACLU is seeking that the federal government adopt its interpretation of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) and the Conditions of Participation of Medicare and Medicaid (COP), which mandate that hospitals provide emergency medical treatment to all-comers, and at least stabilize their condition, regardless of ability to pay. In the ACLU’s interpretation, “emergency reproductive health care” would be included, and the letter makes clear the ACLU wants the government to require Catholic hospitals to perform abortions on pregnant women in emergency situations as a valid means of reproductive care.
The Catholic Church, which operates about 15 percent of U.S. hospitals, has resisted these efforts on the basis that one cannot legitimately intend to directly kill one person (the unborn) for the sake of another (the mother). However, the Church says that in certain circumstances it is morally permissible to treat directly the cause of the mother’s medical condition, even if those efforts unintentionally and indirectly cost the baby’s life.
The ACLU said it was sending its letter in response to the controversy surrounding a Catholic nun and administrator of St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix, who was excommunicated by Bishop Thomas Olmsted for approving an abortion on a woman who was 11-weeks pregnant. Sister Margaret McBride and hospital officials alleged they were trying to save the woman, who had a deteriorating condition due to pulmonary hypertension, and was additionally diagnosed with right-sided heart failure and cardiogenic shock. The hospital’s ethics committee then decided to approve a direct abortion as the only way to save her life.
McBride justified the decision, saying that their intention was to save the woman’s life, not kill the baby; but the defense did not fly with Bishop Olmsted who pointed out that the act of abortion always directly intends the killing of a human life, even if it is for the sake of some other goal. Additionally, Olmsted noted that they were not treating the woman’s underlying medical condition, but treating the pregnancy and the unborn child instead as the “disease.”
While various media gave the impression that abortion would cure the woman’s pulmonary hypertension, Catholic medical experts pointed out that this is not the case.
In fact, Dr. Paul Byrne, a pioneer in the field of neonatology, explained to LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) at the time that with pulmonary hypertension, an abortion, although it may relieve some of the stress on the heart, may also make the situation worse due to the stress of the abortion procedure. Byrne also explained that the literature on the condition indicates that there have been successful interventions for pregnant women with pulmonary hypertension that have enabled both mother and child to survive.
The ACLU also accused three other Catholic hospitals of endangering or permanently harming the lives of women who were miscarrying badly and sending them to other hospitals without having first stabilized their condition. Again, the ACLU contended that direct abortion was the most appropriate medical treatment.
“Religiously affiliated hospitals are not exempt from complying with these laws, and cannot invoke their religious status to jeopardize the health and lives of pregnant women seeking medical care,” declared the letter. “To the contrary, the federal laws mentioned above protect patients’ right to receive emergency reproductive health care.”
The ACLU then said they wanted the CMMS to take “appropriate action” and “issue a transmittal, that denying emergency reproductive health care violates federal law.”
The Catholic League, a Catholic civil rights group, said that given the ACLU’s history of antagonism toward the Catholic Church, it is “not at all surprising” that it would oppose the religious freedom of the Church or its right to operate its hospitals by its own doctrinal and moral beliefs.
“This kind of intolerance will surely be tried in the courts as well as the court of public opinion,” Bill Donahue, president of Catholic League, told LSN. “Indeed, all the data show that a majority of Americans are pro-life so what the ACLU is doing is going against the grain."
Read the ACLU letter here.
See related coverage by LifeSiteNews.com:
Bishop Says Nun is Automatically Excommunicated for Rubberstamping Hospital Abortion
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/may/10051712.html
Catholic Doctors Support Ariz. Bishop's Rebuke of Nun over Abortion
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/may/10051907.html
U.S. Bishops Back Phoenix Bishop in Nun Excommunication Abortion Case
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jun/10062501.html
Well damn, one can only wish Bin Laden or some other terrorists would target every ACLU office.....=.=
Abortion is anything but life saving! Thought you might be interested in this.
Why are these bastards so damn worried about getting abortions completed yet don’t want to help Arizona with all of the human trash entering the country illegally?
Yeah, nothing like brutally murdering a baby to save a life.
You know the Ohaha's are behind this atrocity.
THE COCKEYED WORLD OF THE PRO-ABORTION NUT JOBS
Obama is the most radically pro-abortion President in US history. Outrageously, he was invited to speak at Notre Dame. Despite his flowery words, all of his actions serve to radically increase abortions in America, and around the world.
CASE IN POINT A federal probe into whether the Obama Administration broke federal laws by promoting a proposed constitution that radically changes abortion policy in Kenya was requested by three high ranking lawmakers with congressional oversight responsibilities.
CASE IN POINT Obama DOJ nominee Dawn Johnsen saw a great danger to liberty in laws enacted to protect babies in the womb...... it was OK to make such laws to protect the interests of the woman carrying unborn child -- or to protect whatever interest the baby may have retroactively in its fetal existence if it is ever born alive -- but it was not OK to make such laws in the interest of the unborn child itself.
============================================
What Obama and Michelle "Believe" re Aborted Babies Born Alive
FR POSTED http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2253212/posts?page=6
In February 2004, US Senate candidate Barack Obama's wife, Michelle, sent a fund-raising letter with the "alarming news" that "right-wing politicians" had passed a law (prohibiting doctors from stabbing half-born babies in the neck with scissors, suctioning out their brains and crushing their skulls).
Michelle Obama called partial-birth abortion "a legitimate medical procedure. " She urged supporters to pay $150 to attend a fund-raising luncheon for her husband, who she promised would fight against "cynical ploy[s]" to stop it.
BACKGROUND Legislation was presented on the federal level and in various states called the Born Alive Infants Protection Act. It stated all live-born babies were guaranteed the same constitutional right to equal protection, whether or not they were wanted. BAIPA sailed through the U.S. Senate by unanimous vote. Even Sens. Clinton, Kennedy and Kerry agreed a mother's right to "choose" stopped at her baby's delivery. The bill also passed overwhelmingly in the House. NARAL went neutral on it. Abortion enthusiasts publicly agreed that fighting BAIPA would appear extreme. President Bush signed BAIPA into law in 2002.
But in Illinois, the state version of BAIPA repeatedly failed, thanks in large part to then-state Sen. Barack Obama. Obama worried aloud that legislation protecting live aborted babies might infringe on women's rights or abortionists' rights.
In 2003, as chairman of the next Senate committee to which BAIPA was sent, Obama stopped it from even getting a hearing, shelving it to die much like babies were still being shelved to die in Illinois hospitals and abortion clinics.
BAIPA passed in 2005.........after Obama left.
uhm…Abortion is proxy to infanticide; ACLU forcing facilities and individuals to submit to abortion activities.
Now the ACLU is the determiner of “the most appropriate medical treatment,” as long as its abortion.
Every abortion ends a life.
It’s almost never the case that the mother’s life will be saved by an abortion. Some physicians actually say that situation doesn’t exist at all.
If, on the other hand, you want a gun to protect yourself, they'll go to court on behalf of your oppressors so you don't have a chance.
We'd all be better off without this bunch.
Ectopic pregnancy is really the only case. Somehow I doubt this is the case here.
That’s a very obvious and reasoned example. Nice. I should have thought of that myself.
Thanks for the correction.
I will say that I was focusing on “Late Term” in my mind, and that’s why I wasn’t so inclined to remember your example. Still, there’s no excuse for me not remembering such a clear cut case of threat to the mother.
In that instance, I am very much in support of saving the mother. I don’t believe the child could come to term anyway.
With current technology no, but perhaps someday.
Perhaps so. That would be great. I sure don’t see any easy resolution to the problem though.
But in this case, as in the case of an ectopic pregnancy, there is no abortion procedure per se with the intention of killing the baby. In the case of ectopic pregnancy, it's the diseased fallopian tube (containing the preterm baby) that's removed; in the hysterectomy, it's the diseased uterus (containing the preterm baby) that's removed.
In both of these cases, the baby is not the target: the diseased organ is. The baby's demise may be foreseeable, but unavoidable and unintended.
This is important because it is never right to directly target a baby (or any innocent person) for intentional destruction.
It is sometimes OK to induce labor prematurely to save the mother's life. Some such cases may truly be in a "gray area" (because premature labor does not intend the baby's death, but at the same time they may know the preemie's chances of survival will be very low). But evidently ---as I now understand it ---the Arizona case was not just a premature delivery, it was a direct abortion.
Which is exactly what the ACLU is arguing in favor of, even if it overrides the whole SAanctity of Life ethic that motivated the founding of all these hundreds of Catholic hospitals to begin with.
The ACLU is so repellent, and its actions so abhorrent, it's almost beyond words.
Thank you for the comments. I agree with them.
The A. C. L. U. is a despicable organization.
The same First Amendment that the ACLU will support when they argue for the right to publish porn, but will fight when they argue against the free exercise of religion. Much like they twist the phrase "separation of church and state." They want church and state to be separate when it means the church stays out of the public square, but not when it means that the state stays out of church-related matters.
Let's just say it's not a lot of disgruntled Catholics named Leary and O'Toole who support this, so one wonders at the motivations and background of the ACLU founders, leaders and key supporters.
ACLU Demands NY Gov. Investigate Catholic Hospitals Refusing “Life-saving” AbortionsIntersting. One wing of the Democrat party wnats to investigate another wing of the Democrat party over abortions, the glue that holds the Democrat party together.
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