[M. Dodge Thomas]

I apparently missed the part Bishop Olmsted discusses his medical credentials.

[M. Dodge Thomas]

I apparently missed the part where Bishop Olmsted discusses his medical credentials.

[yarddog]

Interesting to me as I am right now watching “A Man For All Seasons” I have never seen it before but know it involves a man taking a stand for what he thinks is right rather than what the king wants.

[SuziQ]

What I haven't read, in any of the stories about this situation, is how far long in the pregnancy the woman was, at the time of the abortion. Why did the hospital not DELIVER the baby, so that BOTH would have a chance at life. That's the Church's usual stance on this issue.

I thought that women usually didn't develop hypertension until later in the pregnancy. It's becoming almost typical for babies born after 22 weeks to survive, and thrive, so if the woman was past 5 1/2 months, the baby could have been delivered, and treated as any other preemie.

[married21]

It seems like the bishop is expecting too much here. If the hospital thought they were following ethical Catholic practices and it turns out they weren’t, isn’t the answer to teach them better so they can get it right the next time?

If there is a case to be made that the hospital was trying to get by with something, more should be said about that. If not, why the excommunication?

I’m a lifelong Catholic and I honestly thought that if the mother and baby were both going to die absent intervention, that was one time you could ethically abort the baby, because one life saved is better than two dead. It is not a “good” outcome, but the best that can be done under the circumstances. Also, I thought abortion in the case of tubal pregnancies was not grounds for excommunication, under the same reasoning, that both would die otherwise.

If that’s not right, the bishops had better explain things better to all of us, and do so before the next life-and-death situation arises.