St Joseph's Catholic hospital in Phoenix is at the epicentre of a whirlwind of controversy, after it took the decision to carry out an abortion on a pregnant woman, who would almost certainly have died without it late last year.
According to Women's E-news, the Phoneix Roman Catholic dicoese denounced the event as a scandal, as St Joseph's is expected to adhere to strict ethical codes which prohibit abortion under any circumstances. (Even apparently, in order to save the mother's life in a scenario where the foetus would in all likelihood have died anyway).
What's particularly interesting about this is the way in which a nun, one Sister Margaret Mary McBride has been scapegoated for her part in the decision. She sat on the hospital's ethics committee and voted to allow the emergency abortion in order to save the twenty seven year old woman's life. This was far from her sole decision and yet she has been publicly excommunicated as a result of her actions.
The abortion debate seems to run and run, and I'm not going to attempt to solve it here! But I find it very difficult to understand a decision to destroy the vocation of a woman who was obviously committed to her calling, simply because she had to make a tough choice in an incredibly tough situation.
The hospital itself remains firms in its resolve that it made the right decision, and given that there is a young woman who is still walking around with a future ahead of her, instead of the corpse of a mother and her unborn child, I tend to agree with them.
