Bishop Thomas Olmsted's private directive to St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix to conform to moral teaching or lose its status as a Catholic hospital has been made public. Now, the ACLU has ridiculed the Bishop saying that federal law requires ALL hospitals to perform abortions when the mother's life is at risk.
UPDATE 12/21/10: Catholic affiliation stripped from hospital
Read background: Mainstream Media Lambast Bishop over Nun's Abortion Decision
-- From "Catholic hospital in Arizona gets reprieve from deadline" by Michael Clancy, The Arizona Republic 12/17/10
To retain his blessing as bishop, Olmsted required hospital officials to acknowledge in writing that the medical procedure last year was a violation of Catholic directives for health-care institutions.
The diocese and hospital have spent months attempting to come to agreement over the bishop's belief that St. Joseph's violated the church's Ethical and Religious Directives for Health Care in the matter, in which a young mother of four was suffering from pulmonary hypertension. Her condition rapidly grew worse after she became pregnant, and the lives of the mother and her unborn child were in jeopardy.
The hospital on Thursday said that without intervention, both would have died. The woman was 11 weeks pregnant.
Olmsted has declared the surgery an abortion, while St. Joseph's has argued that the procedure was allowable under church-approved exceptions to the abortion policy. The exceptions allow for termination of the fetus if that is not the direct purpose of a surgery, such as in cases of uterine cancer or a blockage of a fallopian tube.
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From "Hospitals Must Provide Life-Saving Care Despite Pressure To Do Otherwise, Says ACLU" posted at ACLU.org 12/15/10
The American Civil Liberties Union, citing the Arizona incident and other refusals of emergency care, wrote to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in July alerting them to the potential violations of federal law by religiously affiliated hospitals that refuse to provide emergency abortions and requesting an investigation.
. . . Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, staff attorney with the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project [said,] "Religiously affiliated hospitals are not exempt from federal laws that protect a patient's right to receive emergency care, and cannot invoke their religious status to jeopardize the health and lives of pregnant women. Women should never have to be afraid that they will be denied life-saving medical care when they enter a hospital."
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