To the great dismay of Catholic bishops, Connecticut's lawmakers have mandated that all of the state's hospital emergency rooms, including Catholic-run hospitals, must make emergency contraception for pregnancy prevention available to every rape victim who comes through their doors.
The Connecticut Catholic bishops are not happy. They have agreed, according to the current issue of the National Catholic Register, to "reluctant compliance."
Reluctant? Every time this issue comes up -- an issue that, astonishingly, remains unresolved in many parts of the country -- we have to ask: How can these guys live with themselves? Their goal is to deprive a woman who has been raped -- forcibly penetrated by a man who gets off on violence and violation -- of the means to prevent a pregnancy, with the express aim of forcing her to carry the rapist's progeny to term.
And that is exactly what the Catholic churchmen have been doing. The Vatican publicly and vociferously denounced the UN's plan some years ago to send the "morning after" pill to women raped in the wars in Kosovo and Bosnia. Catholic bishops have been lobbying all over the country against these laws, claiming that EC is an abortifacient because it can impede implantation of a fertilized egg (as opposed to preventing fertilization).
Many Catholic hospitals put every raped woman who appears in their ERs through another ordeal, requiring her to take and wait for the results of a urine test to see if she's ovulating. If she isn't ovulating and EC is therefore useless to her, she can have it. If she is ovulating -- and is therefore in grave danger of becoming pregnant from the rape -- they refuse to give her EC.
Because this new law mandates the provision of EC, the urine test is down the toilet.
So the bishops have shifted position. There are several reasons for this. First, they make a ton of money in their hospitals. To refuse to comply, they'd have to close those institutions down, and you won't see them doing that.
Second, while they like you to think their theology is set in holy stone, it's actually quite fungible, when it's to their advantage. Despite their past claims that EC is immoral, evil, and all of the denunciations they like to hurl at things female (birth control, sterilization, in vitro fertilization, abortion), and despite a Vatican declaration that EC, whether interfering with implantation or fertilization, "is really nothing other than a chemically induced abortion," they're singing a different tune.
Their new position holds that since you can't know when EC is interfering with implantation, and since that's probably not often the case, and since we're not talking about a high number of women who get pregnant from rape (several thousand women in the U.S., who cares?), then dispensing EC without the ovulation test is not "intrinsically evil."
"In permitting Catholic hospitals to comply with this law, neither our teaching nor our principles have changed," lied Bridgeport, CT Bishop William Lori, chair of the U.S. Bishops Committee of Doctrine (and, less illustriously, as I point out in Good Catholic Girls, a bishop who has kept an accused priest sex molester in ministry after including his victim in a $21 million settlement). "We have altered the prudential judgment we previously made."
The twisting of their theological "truths" to serve their own ends reveals the capricious nature of the decision-making process of this all-powerful, all-male hierarchy. Unfortunately, there is no indication that they are willing to allow the woman who has been raped or any other pregnant woman to make her own "prudential judgment."
Interestingly, Dan O'Brien, VP of ethics of St. Louis-based Ascension Health, which has 65 acute care hospitals including St. Vincent's Medical Center in Bridgeport, expressed great alarm that lawmakers would dare to make laws governing medical institutions. He obviously forgot that regulation of medical care and medical providers is one of the most important jobs of policymakers and lawmakers in their efforts to protect public health.
Connecticut's new law goes back to basics. It is a triumph of state over church. It insures that women who have been raped get the care they need when they enter a hospital, any hospital, if it serves the general public, employs the general public, and lives off public monies, as do Catholic institutions. America's Catholic hospitals are not little islands of religiosity, employing and serving only devout Catholics with private monies. They are full-fledged institutions that have established themselves firmly in the secular health care world.
Their responsibilities are to all of us, not just the men in the mitres.
65 Catholic hospitals in Bridgeport, CT? Wow!!! Only one example of inaccuracies. If you're going to bash, bash with more care to detail.
Morally, the situation is identical to forcing a hospital administered by a religious that is opposed to abortion, to perform abortions. That is both wrong, and illogical. Consider: the fact that a private non-profit group performs a useful service to society, does not mean that they should be forced to offer other services.
For example, if a charitable group ran free health clinics for poor children, why should they also be forced to also the elderly as well? Must a group providing meals for the elderly, also service the unemployed? Or, if someone runs a shelter for cats, must they also be required to take care of abandoned dogs as well? It makes no sense.
What private, religious hospitals choose to do is to the good. Don't force them to offer other services. REALLY, what this is about is forcing people who are against abortions to perform abortions.
Read this shocking page:
http://www.pregnantpause.org/euth/nethhist.htm
At the above link, you read about active euthanasia of not only the terminally ill, but also of the disabled being practiced widely in another country. I don't believe that any physician, however, is obligated to participate in it. Pass a law like Connecticut's, and define such active euthanasia as "primary care," and they will be obligated. If it is not wrong to force doctors and hospitals to violate their conscience in the one situation (pregnancy caused by rape) then how can anyone say it would be wrong to force them to violate their conscience in other situations?
No one who provides emergency care, or other care, is "interfering" with anything. The services they offer are of benefit to the public. A similar situation is that there are some hospitals that do not have a burn unit, or a cardiac care facility, or a kidney transplant unit. Patients needing these services are transferred to other hospitals. Is it correct to say that the hospitals that do not offer these services are "interfering" with the care of those who desire them? Of course not.
Maybe there should be a movement where religous people keep their beliefs silent- its personal and keep it personal
Regarding Bridgeport Bishop William Lori, Bishop Lori is a veritable saint compared to his predecessor, Bishop Edward Egan, who covered up for numerous perverted priests when he was Bishop of Bridgeport. Slick Eddie Egan's reward for protecting these molesters was promotion to Archbishop of New York.
Anyway, the medication (and the shower, and the treatment of injuries) should be given at the hospital.
Whether the policy of the Catholics is wrong or not, it is their hospital, so I would think they should have the right not do something that goes against their morality, whether you agree with it or not.
The people who don't agree with this policy are always free to start another hospital, or offer that service to rape victims, or whoever they want, in their own way.
Or they could choose the path of the rapist, i.e. use the threat of brute force to coerce someone into doing something they don't want to do. It's not quite analogous, as the law does offer them a choice:
"To refuse to comply, they'd have to close those institutions down, and you won't see them doing that."
So the choice to people providing inarguable goodness in their medical services for years is:
"You either do exactly as we say, even if it violates your convictions, or you don't do good it at all."
Nice.
What is the non-violent response to violence? Is the pregnancy, blessing or curse, life or death? Why doesn't a God of love only create when there is sufficient human love to maintain the creature being created? Why does the God of love create where there is no love?
Is a woman who goes for the morning after pill after being raped defending her life? Is this act of "violence" an act of self-defense for a woman to prevent pregnancy from violent sexual assualt?
I don't think this is so morally cut and dry.
Why are male rapist allowed to "parent" any child? Shouldn't that be a crime?
If catholic church and the mormons and the evangelical protesants paid taxes on the capital that they use to fund their commercial enterprises at the very least it would level the venture capital playing field and perhaps even pay down the national debt.
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What an incredibly arrogant (and dishonest) comment. Every time I hear one of these characters use the term "teaching", I cringe. They never "learn"... they "teach".
Almost 40 years ago I was in the seminary, so I knew the guys who went on to become Catholic clergy. Most of the guys who proceeded to ordination were consummate lightweights. Few had ever dated. Most had, shall we say, "issues" with women. Most were remarkably immature. And there wasn't a critical thinker in the bunch.
Yet many Catholics (although fewer every day) take these jokers quite seriously. If they knew what I knew, they wouldn't.
I wish Italy would kick that corrupt, disgusting Vatican City right out of the country.
Vatican city is a country seperate from Italy all together. The Italian government has no power to make them leave.
Just though I'd let you know.