Yesterday, Father Jonathan Morris defended a hospital's right to deny women the life-saving procedure of abortion in some cases. He was completely out of line, because in all the cases addressed by the lawsuit, a partial miscarriage had already occurred, and the Catholic Hospital(s) refused to provide the life-saving procedures for the afflicted patients. If a woman goes to a Catholic Hospital, which is often times, the only one in her area, and needs an abortion to save her life, the pro-fetus nuts think that it's perfectly in their right to deny her that essential operation. The non-viable fetus has more rights than the mother, according to the forced birth 'pro-life' brigade.
On Fox and Friends, arguing that exact point, was the ACLU's Eboni Williams, who tried futilely to explain that the lawsuit was not for an 'on-demand' abortion, it was necessary to save the life of the mother, the fetus being no longer viable. The counter argument was the Right Wing modus operandi of ad hominem and baseless accusations without any evidence, you know, the Fiorina way. Charmaine Yoest, the President and CEO of Americans United For (Fetal) Life accuses the ACLU of being up to their 'old tricks again.' They are 'trying to score political points and force hospitals to treat the mother and fetus as one patient, and she wants two lives to always be considered separately. The hospital doesn't have the right to favor a living adult female over a fetus that won't survive anyway, and Yoest subscribes to that warped way of thinking.
Yoest never mentions the partial miscarriage and claims that this will open the door to making Catholic Hospitals perform abortions around the clock. The ACLU argues that this is in violation of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act.
Trinity Health Corporation, which is headquartered in Michigan and owns and operates more than 80 hospitals around the country, and receives public funding, requires that all of its facilities abide by the Ethical and Religious Directives promulgated by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. These directives prohibit a doctor working at a Catholic hospital from terminating a woman’s pregnancy even when the failure to do so puts her health or life at risk.
“A hospital policy like the Directives that limits what physicians can tell and offer our patients and prohibits us from providing our patients with the best possible care is extremely dangerous,” said Timothy R B Johnson MD FACOG, Chair of OB/GYN at University of Michigan. “The ACLU's suit is based on a simple principle that medical decisions should be between doctors and our patients.”
Isn't it ironic, that the very same opponents of the Affordable Care Act were protesting that the government would get in between a doctor and a patient; and here they are violating that exact point of contention by interfering themselves? Lest anyone forget: IOKIYAR.
The ACLU statement explains: A hospital’s failure to provide pregnant women appropriate emergency care, including an abortion when the circumstances warrant, violates a federal law called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, known as EMTALA. A public health educator in Michigan discovered that at one of Trinity’s hospitals alone, at least five women who were suffering from miscarriages and needed urgent care were denied that care because of the Catholic directives.
The ACLU has lost the battle to prevent religious doctrine from dictating a woman's health in the past, but this time, the right-wing, pro-fetus advocates fear that they may be on the losing side of this fight. Anyone with the sense the good lord gave a frog could see why the ACLU has a pretty solid case. The life of a non-viable fetus should never take precedence over the life of the mother, because that flies in the face of logic. A woman suffering a miscarriage should never be given a death sentence. Period.
