The president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, archbishop Joseph Kurtz, issued a statement on the ACLU lawsuit on Friday. It’s the predictable pack of lies from the episcopal sack of shit. Yes that’s harsh language but the sack of shit is lying in defense of his vile organization’s insistence on forcing women to die of miscarriages in all hospitals that his vile theocratic organization controls. Think about that. This man of god, this priest at the pinnacle of the catholic organizational tree, is issuing official lies to defend the church’s policy of forcing hospitals to stand by while women die of miscarriages in the miserable way Savita Hallappanavar did.
It is important to note at the outset that the death of any unborn child is tragic, and we feel deeply for any mother who suffers such pain and loss.
No it isn’t. Nobody cares what you think is tragic, or how deeply or shallowly you feel. Nobody wants your distractions; the issue isn’t the death of the fetus, the issue is the life of the mother.
We cannot speak to the facts of the specific situation described in the complaint, which can be addressed only by those directly involved. The suit instead claims that our document titled “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services” (ERDs) encourages or requires substandard treatment of pregnant women because it does not approve the direct killing of their unborn children.
Because it forbids abortion under any circumstances, even if the fetus will die anyway, even if the woman will die without the abortion.
This claim is baseless. The ERDs urge respectful and compassionate care for both mothers and their children, both during and after pregnancy. Regarding abortion, the ERDs restate the universal and consistent teaching of the Catholic Church on defending the life of the unborn child—a defense that, as Pope Francis recently reminded us, “is closely linked to the defense of each and every other human right” (Evangelii Gaudium, no. 213). This same commitment to the life of each human individual has motivated Catholics to establish the nation’s largest network of nonprofit health care ministries. These ministries provide high-quality care to women and children, including those who lack health coverage and financial resources. The Church’s rejection of abortion also mirrors the Hippocratic Oath that gave rise to the very idea of medicine as a profession, a calling with its own life-affirming moral code.
Not when the pregnancy is killing the woman it doesn’t.
The Church holds that all human life, both before and after birth, has inherent dignity, and that health care providers have the corresponding duty to respect the dignity of all their patients. This lawsuit argues that it is legally “negligent” for the Catholic bishops to proclaim this core teaching of our faith. Thus, the suit urges the government to punish that proclamation with civil liability, a clear violation of the First Amendment.
The bishops do more than just proclaiming core “teachings” of their “faith” – they do their best to enforce their “teachings” on all catholic hospitals, and many hospitals obey.
A robust Catholic presence in health care helps build a society where medical providers show a fierce devotion to the life and health of each patient, including those most marginalized and in need. It witnesses against a utilitarian calculus about the relative value of different human lives. And it provides a haven for pregnant women and their unborn children regardless of their financial resources. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops will continue to defend these principles in season and out, and we will defend ourselves against this misguided lawsuit.
No it doesn’t. Tamesha Means didn’t find any “haven” at that hospital that sent her home twice when she was miscarrying, and was about to send her home a third time when she was lucky enough to deliver her fetus while the paperwork was in progress.
The archbishop is a lying sack of shit.
Look how he completely fails to address the case at hand, the point at which a pregnancy is killing a woman.
It is as if such cases never happen. I must have dreamed up things like HELLP syndrome and my friends who nearly died of it (and yes, one of them lost her baby. He was a premie who didn’t make it, but she went on to live and have two healthy children afterwards).
I think it is possible he may genuinely not have a clue what he is talking about. He is a nominally celibate male, not presumed to be educated in gynecology. It goes without saying that he should have no say whatsoever in the medical treatment of human reproduction.
Giliell, if he actually addressed the issue, he would probably be fired.
Hey, look over there!
I don’t think your words are too harsh, by any means. Calling this bishop a lying sack of shit is an insult to sacks of shit.
In other words since a potential human life is worth exactly as much as an existing human life dignity equates to piously standing by mopping fevered brows while both the foetus and mother die. Horribly. But it’s all God’s will, so we can feel the wonder and mystery of it all and revel in the complex theology.
Mothers should just accept their god-willed fate as meek little dears (with dignity) so that the rest of us can feel pity for them and then comfort ourselves that mother and child are in a better place.
There are not words to describe the revulsion I feel.
(Stop calling pregnant women mothers.)
When first reading about this case and her experience, one of the first things I thought of was that probably in the vast majority of these cases they’re wanted pregnancies. It’s terrible to lose a wanted pregnancy, especially if the problem is one that could affect your potential to have children in the future.* It’s a devastating experience, and in these cases they make it many times more terrifying and dangerous and painful for the woman. They don’t care if women live or die, and they don’t feel deeply for those going through this.
Who’s the patient? It can’t be the pregnant woman, because they plainly do not show a fierce devotion to her life or health. And that’s who the patient in fact is, in reality. Becoming pregnant does not render a woman no longer the patient. Are they suggesting that the fetus is (also) the patient? Not only is this a ridiculous idea, but it would contradict the idea that they “[witness] against a utilitarian calculus about the relative value of different human lives.” If they consider – again, absurdly – that a fetus is a patient, then they’re balancing its (perceived) value against the (perceived) value of a woman.
*They don’t seem to consider this aspect at all, interestingly enough.
Seems to me the real problem is that we’re asking them to protect the life of women who aren’t even capable of delivering a live child, and therefore aren’t really doing their duty as women…which is to push out as many children as “God” wants them to have. They just can’t quite say it that way, so they pretend it’s all about making the lives equal. And if the lives are equal, and one of them dies because the mother is not enough woman to carry it to term, well, she deserves to die for that transgression, right?
These people make me sick.
Very good point, SC.
Another thing they don’t consider at all is the children of the women they order their hospitals to allow to die. The anonymous woman who did get an emergency abortion at St Joseph’s hospital in Phoenix had FOUR small children. That sack of shit the bishop of Phoenix thinks their mother should be dead now, along with her fetus (she was 11 weeks pregnant), and her four young children without a mother.
Savita Halappanavar could have gone on to have babies if UHG had saved her life, but noooooooooooo.
No no, they care deeply about the pregnant women. They know that having an incredibly painful, inevitable, and potentially fatal miscarriage would traumatize and upset the woman, so they’ll spare her that by doing all they can to make sure she dies from it…problem solved. She and her baby can live forever together in Heaven, happy ending. When God closes a door on your fingers he opens a window so he can hear you screaming in pain and get off on it.
Do they literally just want stuff like that to happen? Like it makes them happy? Do they not understand the phrase “will fucking die anyway”? What is the best case scenario for them in these situations? Because the baby jebus coming down on a cloud and kissing her womb like it was a boo-boo and making it all better doesnt seem like its something they even expect. What are they hoping to achieve? Is it just to kill women, is that the goal? Because I can’t really see any other point.
But Ophelia, think of the Dignity in teh face of teh Utilitarian Calculus…
Rowan @8
The bishops are geriatric, virginal, bachelor males. They don’t think women are the equal of men. The first requirement for the priesthood is possession of testicles, ovary havers need not apply. Bishops don’t have a clue about marriage, their opinion that sex should be purely procreative shows this. Laymen’s function is to support the Church, i.e., pay the priests. Laywomen’s function is to have the next generation of Catholics, preferably men to provide priests or payers of priests.
Some years ago I had a conversation about sex with a Catholic priest. He didn’t know about pair-bonding or any other purpose of sex other than baby-making. The idea that women could enjoy sex wasn’t something he’d ever considered. I told him I wouldn’t bother to consider his dogma about contraception when he was absolutely clueless about why couples had sex.
Rowan @8
It isn’t just to kill the woman. Her suffering is very important. It can relieve some of the temporal punishment due to sin, not only her sins but the sins she made men commit. Women’s bodies imperil men’s salvation. It’s good and right and just to make them suffer.
I learned that in Catholic school.
Stella
It is important to note at the outset that the death of any unborn child is tragic….
Garbage. This isn’t about a fetal demise in utero, it’s about preterm premature rupture of membranes/incomplete abortion. Nothing to do with the fetal part of the pregnancy.
The suit instead claims that our document titled “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services” (ERDs) encourages or requires substandard treatment of pregnant women because it does not approve the direct killing of their unborn children.
More garbage. The document requires substandard treatment of pregnant women because it forbids the first step in the standard of care management of PPROM, namely informed consent. For example:
Many infants who are delivered after previable rupture of the fetal membranes suffer from numerous long-term problems including chronic lung disease, developmental and neurologic abnormalities, hydrocephalus, and cerebral palsy. Previable rupture of membranes also can lead to Potter’s syndrome, which results in pressure deformities of the limbs and face and pulmonary hypoplasia. The incidence of this syndrome is related to the gestational age at which rupture occurs and to the level of oligohydramnios. Fifty percent of infants with rupture at 19 weeks’ gestation or earlier are affected by Potter’s syndrome …. Patients should be counseled about the outcomes and benefits and risks of expectant management, which may not continue long enough to deliver a baby that will survive normally.
And more garbage:
The Church holds that all human life, both before and after birth, has inherent dignity, and that health care providers have the corresponding duty to respect the dignity of all their patients. This lawsuit argues that it is legally “negligent” for the Catholic bishops to proclaim this core teaching of our faith.
Because nothing says respecting patients’ dignity quite like malpractice.
A robust Catholic presence in health care helps build a society where medical providers show a fierce devotion to the life and health of each patient….
a fierce devotion to the life and health of each patient = no informed consent and dangerous, substandard care for the uterine container + fantasy care for bits of the container’s internal organs.
I’m surprised that the Bishops haven’t yet used this argument:
You heard it first, right here on Butterflies & Wheels!
The Abrahamic religions are profoundly misanthropic (cf. sin, hell) but their god(s) profess a love of humanity.
The zygote and foetus are the perfect objects for this etiolated love – full of human potential without any of the challenging and sometimes unpleasant characteristics which real people have and which we all acquire so quickly after parturition.
Anyway – this missive is just for the proles. It would never work in any self-respecting court, the bishops know this and it’s their court pleading I want to read.
What I should have said explicitly in the post above is that, in a straight competition between a real, live woman and a (perfection not-quite-personified) foetus, although they may both theoretically be human and both patients, the woman does not stand a chance with the bishops.
If “catholic” hospitals aren’t willing to provide standard medical care and abide by standard protocols then their accreditations should be revoked by the various states. Unfortunately in too many states there are many in the legislatures and state governments who are in sympathy with the bishops’ position so it wont happen. I wonder what hospitals that weren’t all about love (of yeshue bar yussef, of christ for his church, of bishops for the people , of people for the bishops) would look like? Oh wait!…
@yahweh #14
Many’s the time I’ve thought the same thing. It must be easy to “love” a fetus–for certain cheap and sentimental values of “love.” They’re little blank slates on which their fetishists can project cuteness and innocence. So much more lovable than these complicated pregnant women with their sinful lady parts.
Hey, is that an analog? An anagram? An anapest?
No, it’s the very prosaic, generic truth.
You had my hopes up there for a minute.
Although this one is a very upstanding sack of shit.
One thing that stood out in the Guttmacher reports was that the number of children harmed or killed by anti-abortion policies is even larger than the number of women harmed, because so many women with unwanted pregnancies have children. The Loving Dignifiers have almost nothing to say about them – children tending to their sick mothers, left as orphans in poverty, trying to care for their siblings, hungry, desperate, marginalized, killed or starved or dying because of these vicious policies.
***
Yes, like it’s easy to “love” a woman who’s died in pregnancy. What a beautiful, womanly sacrifice, even if it was nothing of the sort. Dead, abstract women are a much better target of this ersatz sort of love than women with lives and interests and wishes and needs.
You know what else hasn’t been confirmed by the facts, Francis? The idea that controlling women’s reproduction and therefore our lives contributes to human well being, dignity, and justice. Over and over again, the opposite has shown to be true The policies promoted by your church have led to incalculable suffering, oppression, and indignities, and deaths, just like market-fundamentalist ideologies.
If we’re going to talk about the facts, let’s talk about the facts.
So, according to the bishops,
“A robust Catholic presence in health care helps build a society where medical providers show a fierce devotion to the life and health of each patient, including those most marginalized and in need”
If they really want to be good catholics, they should not accept payment and use their money to take care of people. Oh, wait, of course they need money, for their lovely robes and hats. The Vatican is just one big parasite
Calling this bishop a lying sack of shit is an insult to sacks of shit.
Yup. Because sacks of shit tend to sit where they’re placed, and they don’t lie unless you place them on their side.
The Church holds that all human life, both before and after birth, has inherent dignity
Until we throw them in a septic tank.
Yeah. They are such liars.