Posted on 08/01/2011 5:11:23 PM PDT by wagglebee
FRONT ROYAL, Virginia, July 29, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - When a child is delivered stillborn, a small flower or other token often marks the door of the mother’s recovery room to help staff recognize the loss.
According to one Catholic doctor, the same symbol was used in at least one Catholic hospital where doctors routinely induced labor to hasten the death of a child diagnosed with a genetic defect - a practice she says occurs in “a handful” of Catholic hospitals across the United States.
Dr. Lorna Cvetkovich told a bioethics conference at Christendom College in Virginia this month about her experience at one Catholic hospital she declined to name, where she says abortions had been routinely performed on disabled children for twenty years. Cvetkovich currently works at the pro-life Tepeyac Family Center and is medical director of Sanctity of Life Ministries in Fairfax, Virginia.
“They would place a little flower on the door of a woman to her room to indicate the baby had died - except they also placed a flower on the door of a woman who was being induced with a live baby,” Cvetkovich told the audience. “Most of these were hydrocephalics, or genetic anomalies, that kind of thing.”
Cvetkovich said the hospital’s policies and procedures allowed for the procedure, but were written such that “you really had to read it with a fine-toothed comb to figure out that this was allowable.”
Soberingly, Cvetkovich said the hospital claimed the protocol had even been approved by the local ordinary. “One of the hardest situations I’d ever went through was sitting in the MD’s office and having him tell me, ‘I only did what your bishop told me I could do,’” she recalled.
“It’s hard to have a response to that.”
The Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, a document promulgated by the U.S. Bishops’ Conference, defines abortion as “the directly intended termination of pregnancy before viability or the directly intended destruction of a viable fetus,” something that is “never permitted.” http://www.usccb.org/bishops/directives.shtml The document also prohibits contraception and sterilization.
According to Cvetkovich, faithful doctors must be a “sign of contradiction” even within an ostensibly Catholic system, which have been taken over by modern sexual values and even disregard for unborn human life.
“Most Catholic hospitals, their networks, their clinics, even on the labor delivery floor, do allow prescription of contraceptives. Some also allow sterilization ... sometimes even elective sterilizations,” she said, adding that “a very few, I think a handful” perform abortions.
“On our labor delivery floor, you could go after delivery and punch in an order for depo-provera, and that is not too unusual,” she said.
After the lecture, Cvetkovich told LifeSiteNews.com that the moral theologian at her facility had justified elective sterilizations as a means of keeping patients’ business for the sake of helping other low-income patients. “He was trying to tell me that amount of money is what’s going to be their commitment to serve the poor,” said Cvetkovitch. “It’s just hogwash.”
The doctor also lamented that the problem of abortions and other immoral practices at Catholic hospitals is “very intractable” because bishops have been erroneously led to believe they lack power to reform such facilities.
“The bishops have been convinced that they have no control ove the Catholic hospitals because they are usually owned by a religious group whose authority line goes to the Vatican, not the diocese,” she said. “But that’s not really true, because there’s a canon law that says they really are responsible for every catholic entity in their diocese.”
Cvetkovich pointed to the example of Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix, who took severe national criticism last year for cutting an abortion-performing hosptial out of the diocese, as proof that such action is rare.
“They [U.S. bishops] will not move against Catholic hospitals,” she said.
In a world where even Catholic hospitals push abortion on their staff - Cvetkovitch recalled watching a head nurse “roll her eyes” when a lower nurse asked to be excused from a procured abortion - the medical doctor had dire predictions for the future of conscience rights.
“We will have the choice to either practice anti-Hippocratic, pro-choice type medicine and keep our jobs - or practice Hippocratic, Catholic, pro-life medicine and lose our jobs,” she said.
LifeSiteNews.com in 2008 uncovered that the chief ethicist for the diocese of London, Ontario admitted that its St. Joseph Catholic Hospital had performed early-induction abortions on disabled children for twenty years, and that the procedure had been approved by the bishop.
Related Stories
Canadian Archbishop: ‘Early Induction’ on Babies with Lethal Fetal Anomaly is “Direct Abortion”
Ontario Bishop Says ‘Early Induction’ Policy at Catholic Hospital Under Vatican Review
LSN EXCLUSIVE: Mother “Pressured” to Terminate Pregnancy of Trisomy 18 Child at Catholic Hospital
Doctor of Dogmatic Theology and Ob/Gyn Condemn Early Induction Abortions at Catholic Hospital in Lon
Exclusive: Twenty Years of Eugenic Abortion at Ontario Catholic Hospital
If they don't the Pope needs to remove them.
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This culture is not quite dead, but it certainly is eaten up with gangrene.
Wouldn’t a coat hangar on the doorknob be more appropriate?
I know of a Catholic hospital that does a tubal ligation on all the mothers who undergo their 3rd C-section. Is this the norm in Catholic Hospitals? and secular hospitals?
sometimes you have to induce labor early: such as if mom has toxemia or a huge baby or the malformed infant has polyhydramnos, or mom has placental problems or infection of the uterus.
The difference is that you induce and try to save the baby...in an abortion, you put the kid in the corner and let it die.
I once induced labor for triplets when Mom’s heart started to fail (she had mitral stenosis) and we saved all three.
Another example is Senator Santorum’s wife who had surgery to try to save a baby with a birth defect that would have been fatal if not fixed before birth: after surgery, the uterus got infected and they had to deliver early and the baby died.
Good job Doc. God keep you well and working. :-}
Thank-you for your reasonable prudent post...
Is “abortion” ever morally accepable? Rarely, yes.
And in those cases, it is good to honor the life of that child with a flower.
Our baby was delivered in a Catholic hospital, through D&C, and her tiny body was buried in a local cemetery. My wife and I appreciate the gesture. It has helped us as we grieve the loss of our baby Noah.
There are medical and moral differences between a premeditated abortion and an inducement likely to lead to the death of the child. Or were you talking about aborting the children of rape or incest?
No, rape and incest are terrible forms of sexual abuse, and it is agonizing to carry a baby who is conceived through such horrors. But that is no reason to kill a baby.
I’m just implying that there is probably more to this story, and these “abortions” may be medically and morally permissible.
I’m not saying endangered women *should* abort their babies out of self-defence. And I’m not saying that babies who are reportedly hopelessly malformed *should* necessarily be aborted. I’m just saying that the parents may make the difficult decision to deliver their baby dead in these RARE instances, and retain a clear conscience.
it is my opinion that Almighty God must oppose a nation that condones this.
I had to be induced and later have an emergency c-section because of toxemia. I thank God daily for the alert nurse who recognized the symptoms at the obgyn office. The tox hit so doggonne fast! I was rushed an hour south to Vandy via ambulance - delivered my 27-weeker 5 hours later. Still wasn’t very swollen and had actually lost weight. 2 days later my poor ankles were the size of large coffee cans.
Thanks for the fab work you do!
I’m sure it’s not involuntary. I can’t imagine them getting away with that!
My sister had all four of her children by C and her doctor told her that her uterus would burst if she became pregnant again. It’s hard to not opt for sterilization in that case—a sure loss of a child and endangering her own life?
She opted for the tubal.
it is my opinion that Almighty God must oppose a nation that condones this.
******************************
No. God is not mocked. Not now, not then, not ever. Not even a little bit. And He has made it express that the treatment of the young and innocent is under his particular watch. I think this nation state is up for judgement, and soon. There was a robust and prosperous American culture before there was a federal government, and I am confident there will be one after. But this present power makes Carthage look healthy. God is not mocked.
Psalm 2
Meant to say, ‘Yes”. Tired and wrung out.
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