Pro Life in TN

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Pro Life thoughts in a pro choice world through the eyes of a convert. I took early retirement after working in the social work and Human Resources fields but remain active by being involved in pro life education, lobbying and speaking .

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Tuesday, May 25, 2010

(Prolifer)ations 5-25-10


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by Susie Allen, host of the blog, Pro-Life in TN
  • Barbara of Mommy Life showcases an article by Lloyd Marcus, who challenges the black community on their support of Obama and boldly asks whether their desire to see a black man in the White House trumps their commitment to Christ.
  • Rai's Mundo draws attention to FL Gov. Charlie Crist 's statement that he and his new wife were both troubled by the pending ultrasound bill's "notion that women would be lectured to... during this deeply personal decision." Rai points out the oddity of the Governor's argument, remarking, "I get lectured by my dentist twice a year for not flossing more."
  • Pro-Life Action League gives an update on the successful protest of PP CEO Cecile Richards' appearance in Cedar Rapids, IA including slide show and links to all news stories.
  • Dr. Gerard Nadal continues to explore the controversy of the excommunicated nun in Phoenix who authorized the abortion of an 11-week-old preborn baby. He includes an interesting email exchange with a pediatric cardiologist, Judith Becker, M.D. who takes exception with his writings on this issue. Under the HIPAA law, no information should be given out on this issue to protect the privacy of the woman, yet the hospital is leaking information favorable to its decision.
  • Christina at RealChoice pulls together a requested retrospect of her posts concerning late term abortions including her posts about the late Dr. Tiller. They are conveniently grouped by topic.
  • Carol of Parenting Freedom highlights articles and studies showing the risk of repeated ultrasounds during pregnancy.
  • 27 comments:

    Anonymous said...

    Dr. Becker is certainly taking Nadal to task over this!

    The Catholic Church's stance on this is a tough sell, especially to anyone but a staunch Catholic. Without the abortion, the fetus and mother will die. With the abortion at least the mother will live. The nun allows the abortion to save the mother's life. The Church, putting its principles ahead of life, gets rid of the nun.

    Susie Allen said...

    Well I am not Catholic but I would like to know if there is any way to treat the illness except the outright killing of the preborn child. If they treated the illness to the best of their ability and the preborn baby died as a result that would be unfortunate but at least they were trying to treat without killing the preborn. So did she just heal once the abortion was completed? I am not hearing anything and Dr. Nadal brought out a good point in that under HIPPA nothing should be released but of course select information is being released.

    One thing that puzzles me is why the woman came to a Catholic Hospital? Their stand is well known and I know of an occasion where the Catholic hospital offered to transfer since they do not do abortions. It took time for the ethics committee to meet and discuss. She could have been transferred during this time. That puzzles me. Another thing is that the doctors that seek to work at Catholic Hospitals are aware of their stand on this issue. When they say they treat both lives as important and do not prefer one life over the other is not hard to understand. I think the Dr. is not taking Dr. Nadal to task. She is clearly pro choice. She admits that this situation is rare.
    On another point it has never been illegal to do an abortion when the life of the mother would have been lost. Of course if the mother dies so does the preborn.

    However it must not be forgotten that this situation is very rare and the represents less than 1 % of the abortions done for social reasons.
    This has been very interesting to study, I wish we had more information but of course there is much we will never know.

    Anonymous said...

    Susie have you even been reading the discussion going on over there?
    If so, you should realize that regardless of the exact circumstances of this case, Nadal's argument is that it is wrong to perform the abortion even if without one the mother dies and the fetus dies in any case. Period. That is the Church's position.

    Susie Allen said...

    Their stand is that you have two lives not one and that you should strive to save both lives, not preferring one over the other. You do not kill one life in the hopes that the other life will be saved. Doctors have been wrong about whether the continuation of the pregnancy will be fatal to the mother. The illness should be treated the baby is not the illness.

    Anonymous said...

    "You do not kill one life in the hopes that the other life will be saved."

    The fetus is going to die anyway. By making that happen before the mother dies from the pregnancy, the mother is at least saved.

    I recognize that that might be "their" (the Catholic Church) stand. In which case they should not be offering emergency room services.

    Anonymous said...

    "Their stand is that you have two lives not one and that you should strive to save both lives, not preferring one over the other"

    Well, their stand is wrong. If it is IMPOSSIBle to save the one life then the other life should be "preferred".

    Sticking to the Church's principle would have killed the mother. There is something wrong there. The nun saw it.

    Anonymous said...

    Pro Choice people do indeed feel that the mother is more important than the baby. They feel that the mother has more stake in life. that is why there is so many convenience abortions. The mother's circumstances are more important than the life of the baby.

    shirley said...

    We don't know if treating the disease would have saved both because the course of treatment was to kill the baby first.

    Anonymous said...

    Shirley, let's go with the assumption that there was no other way to save the mother's life than to terminate the pregnancy. Do you think it was wrong to save the mothers life? Keep in mind that there is no way the fetus will survive , whether the abortion is done or not.

    Nadal is saying it was wrong to save the mother's life. I disagree.

    Susie Allen said...

    Anonymous....you cannot make that assumption because you do not know that.

    Anonymous said...

    True we don't know the details of this case Susie. But that doesn't matter. Read again what I wrote.

    Susie Allen said...

    Did they kill the baby and she recovered? That would mean the baby was the disease. No other treatment? I don't think so. Address the disease. The child was not the disease.

    Anonymous said...

    Are you a cardiologist Susie? I'm not . But that mothers doctors made the call. And Dr. Becker commenting on Nadals site is, and she agrees.

    Once again ( bangs head on wall!) the details in this case aren't the point here. The point is, Nadal is arguing that even if the mother was going to die without the abortion and the fetus was going to die regardless, it would be wrong to do an abortion to save the mothers life. I disagree. You?

    Susie Allen said...

    even if the mother was going to die without the abortion and the fetus was going to die regardless, it would be wrong to do an abortion to save the mothers life. I disagree. You?

    Bang away A....
    you are making up circumstances that are not part of the case that started this whole discussion. Give me a circumstance where the only thing that could save the life of the mother is abortion and the preborn baby dies either way. The only one I can think of is etopic pregnancy...where the baby can not live and grow in the tube and without removing the tube the mother also dies. That is the only one I can think of. In this case, there is a disease, the baby is not the disease...treat the disease while trying to save both patients.
    But you are pro choice so you don't have a problem with abortion no matter what the reason. So you don't give any value to the life of the preborn otherwise it would be hard for you to simply accept it as a choice. Like I choose to stop blogging at this moment and kill my five year old. You may take exception to that because you see a five year old as having some value but not as much value as my circumstances.
    Thus some women seek abortions for various reasons and want to preserve their fertility for another time. See any problem there.
    Why do some oppose abortion. Because it is the taking of an innocent defenseless human beings life. Under what circumstances is that acceptable?

    Anonymous said...

    Clearly you aren't aware of the discussion going on at Nadal's blog Susie.

    Anonymous said...

    "you are making up circumstances that are not part of the case that started this whole discussion".

    Susie, I suggest you go over to Nadal's blog and get informed of the discussion.

    Gerard Nadal said...

    Hi Susie & Anonymous,

    I noticed the discussion and wondered if I might join in for a while.

    Dr. Becker would not be my choice for a pediatric cardiologist. She stated the following on my blog:

    "2 – An abortion early in the pregnancy of a patient like this is far safer than taking a wait and see
    attitude."

    I think that says it all for how Dr. Becker views her patients. The safest bet for the mother is not to treat medically in order to save the baby, but to just resort to killing the child.

    That isn't medicine. That's timidity, despair, and a second-rate mind. Many physicians treat patients such as this very successfully. The goal is to bring the baby to viability at 23-25 weeks and take it via C-section.

    My point over at Coming Home is that Catholic hospitals are bound by Catholic moral and ethical norms. In a pluralistic society, in the city of Phoenix with over 7 hospitals within a 1.5 mile radius of St. Joseph's, this couple had immediately exercisable options if Catholic bioethical norms were not to their liking.

    Dr Becker would have us believe that this woman could have been so unstable as to die in the five minutes it would have taken to ride five blocks to the nearest hospital, but somehow survive the physiologic stress of an abortion. It's the type of absurdity peddled by pro-aborts who regard pro-lifers as hayseeds and Neanderthals.

    Contrary to the spin, the fact is that there are two patients before us in this case. A baby and its mother. Both have equal human dignity and moral value. Each has a right to the expectation that the physician will do all within acceptable moral, ethical and medical parameters to save its life.

    Dr. Becker has weighed in and been found wanting on all counts.

    The Catholic Church has weighed in and been found to be faithful on all counts.

    Anonymous said...

    Susie you wrote on Nadal's site:

    "You bring up a point that is interesting. Someone who is pro choice and does not have a problem with choosing abortion anyway is not likely to accept your DE logic."

    That is very true. Someone who is pro choice would have no problem with an abortion being performed to save a mother's life.

    I add that someone who is pro life might also agree to an abortion to save the mother's life, especially when the fetus has no chance of survival.

    Gerard Nadal said...

    A-

    You accept as an absolute predicate that the mother would die before the baby became viable. That's the essential predicate error in this argument. We simply do not know for certain.

    However, you are correct in stating that someone who is pro-life may well opt for an abortion under such circumstances. However, if you recall from Dr. Becker's comments, of the three patients with acute, severe Pulmonary Hypertension in 20 years (which shows how rare this truly is), two women died rather than murder their child.

    My extraordinarily pro-life wife made it brutally clear to me in a conversation over this debate on my blog:

    "Either the baby and I make it over the finish line together, or we meet God together. I will not meet God having murdered my child so that I might live."

    The truly pernicious evil lurking behind Sr. McBride's decision is this-

    She has compromised an immutable moral principle that all human life is sacred and inviolable. That's the goal of the pro-aborts.

    Once a principle has been compromised through pragmatic consideration, one no longer has recourse or claim to it. Once we abandon "all life is sacred and inviolable", we are left with, "some life is sacred and inviolable".

    At that point we are left with a free-for-all, such as we have these past 37 years, with 52 million babies being murdered in what ought to have been the safety and sanctity of their mother's wombs.

    Once the Church has inked at the direct killing of a baby in one set of circumstances, it cannot proscribe other circumstances.

    Bishop Olmsted was quite right to hold the line.

    Anonymous said...

    "My extraordinarily pro-life wife made it brutally clear to me in a conversation over this debate on my blog:

    "Either the baby and I make it over the finish line together, or we meet God together. I will not meet God having murdered my child so that I might live.""

    And she has that choice. Just as other women have the choice to NOT lose their life for a fetus that will die anyway. Or put their life at great risk for a fetus that has a very minute hope of survival.

    Personally, if I were this woman with four children and husband at I would choose life. My life.

    Fortunately, we do not all have to abide by the Catholic Church's rules.

    shirley said...

    Personally, if I were this woman with four children and husband at I would choose life. My life.


    Would you give your life for one of your children if that were necessary? Which one...your favorite?? the oldest?? the youngest?? Or would you choose your own life again?

    Gerard Nadal said...

    "Fortunately, we do not all have to abide by the Catholic Church's rules."

    Yes, and that's half of my point about the Phoenix case. Of course, if you value choice, then chice is a two-sided coin.

    The Catholic Church needs to have OUR choice respected: The choice not to have babies murdered in our hospitals. In a pluralistic society sich as ours, women have the ability to exercise their choices at the facility of their choosing that honors their choice.

    The Roman Catholic Church will not be compelled by lightweights such as Sr. McBride, into accepting the murder of children in our hospitals. That there are seven other hospitals within a 1.5 mile radius of St. Joseph's proves how facile the pro-choice argument in this particular case really is.

    We may not have a say in whether women murder their babies. We do have a say in whether or not we will employ such executioners.

    That's OUR choice.

    Gerard Nadal said...

    Susie,

    I apologize for the typos. Writing on the fly today, and just slowing down.

    Anonymous said...

    Okay, I see my reply isn't posted so I will rewrite.....

    Shirley, you asked:

    "Would you give your life for one of your children if that were necessary? Which one...your favorite?? the oldest?? the youngest?? Or would you choose your own life again?"

    Would I give my life for my children? I believe I would. Though it would mean that I am not only giving up my own life but leaving my children without their mother and husband without his wife.How to choose which lives? I can't imagine. I hope I never will be faced with such a decision.

    But all this assumes Shirley, that they will live because of my death. In the Phoenix case we are talking about an early fetus that will die if its mother dies.

    And Gerard, I don't have a problem with Catholic hospitals adhering to their religious beliefs. But they should not receive public funds and they should make it clear to patients that they will not perform abortions nor offer emergency contraception.

    In Canada when abortion laws were repealed, emergency care and sex/reproductive healthcare were all moved to the general hospital in the small city where we lived. The Catholic hospital no longer provided this care but took on extended care and other services instead.

    Susie Allen said...

    Anonymous, I don't see any comments from you that were not posted. I post them all and appreciate your comments. Maybe you did not hit send.

    Gerard Nadal said...

    A.,

    The charge that Catholic Hospitals consent to tearing babies apart, one limb at a time, or crushing their skulls, or birthing them and sucking out their brains, or else face the loss of reimbursement with public funds for providing services that don't involve tearing babies apart one limb at a time, crushing skulls, or live birthing and sucking out brains...is simply absurd.

    Government reimbursements for elder care, medicaid, etc.. have everything to do with maintaining a system of government reimbursement to private facilities at a fraction of what it would cost the government if they not only had to pay he clinician's salaries, but also benefits; not tp mention the salaries and benefits of support and administrative staff.

    Respecting a religion's constraints regarding what they will NOT do can hardly be construed as an establishment of religion; whereas paying for services that are uniquely stipulated by a given religion could be loosely construed to be a participation in a given religion via funding of its mandates.

    Yours is the same shopworn argument made by pro-aborts for decades. It is decidedly disingenuous.

    Anonymous said...

    Eldercare is a great example Gerard of what a Catholic hospital could offer and not run into this problem between religious, medical and patient concerns.

    Sexual and reproductive healthcare is where the concerns are. Hence that is why in Canada, where I lived anyway, this was removed from the Catholic hospitals services.

    Followers