If it were within the power of the
Church, Tamesha Means would be a dead woman today -- following in the example the Church horrifically set with
Savita Halappanavar (the Indian woman who died in an Irish hospital -- along with her unborn child -- when they refused to perform an abortion that would have saved her life). Means, you see, is one of millions of people in the
United States of America whose only realistically reachable
hospital is one which has been acquired by the
Roman Catholic Church. And like Halappanavar, Means was
pregnant.
And so, when Means showed up at that Catholic hospital in excruciating pain, her water having broken months too early, the physicians who evaluated her huddled and conferred with one another about
how to prevent her from choosing to terminate her pregnancy -- though it was clearly already doomed -- and chose
not to confer with her about how they might save her life. Just like Halappanavar before her, Means was not looking for an
abortion to end an unwanted pregnancy. She was intent on carrying this baby as she had three others before, but she was unaware that this one was threatening her life. The hospital sent her home with pain pills. She was never told of the mortal danger she now faced, or that her sanest option -- really her only option -- was to end her pregnancy immediately, instead of waiting for it to inevitably follow its own sad, dangerous arc to that conclusion.
So they sent Means home with false assurances; and she returned as the pain increased and was sent home a second time with the same excuses; and she returned a
third time, weak and feverish, and was on the verge of being sent home a third time, when she started actually
delivering her dying baby in the hospital lobby. And then, finally, finally, they treated Tamesha Means in the only way that was medically possible, by insuring that the unhealthy
fetus was removed from her body. When the inevitable
lawsuit faced them, the doctors were quick to explain, their hands were tied on the matter. They simply could not, as a matter of hospital policy, advance an "abortion," even when this would be
the only way to save the mother's life, and even while the baby was beyond any hope of saving. In becoming pregnant, Means had immediately been demoted in the eyes of the Church from
human being deserving of life to expendable carrier, to be prevented from saving her own life at the expense of a few hours of her child's.
Perhaps the most heinous thing about such a policy is that it forces an unborn baby to become the
killer of his own
mother. Consider that most babies love their mothers, and if they had the capacity to make an informed choice, and were not complete moral monsters,
would choose to have their own death come a few days or hours earlier than it inevitably would, in order to save their mother's life. It is amongst the highest
perversions of
nature and
morality when
religion fails to honor that inherent choice.
Read more here, if you wish.... I'm done with this.