The Catholic Church has long argued that life begins at conception. This is the reason that the Catholic Church does not support abortion and reproductive control. From the Ethical and Religious Directives of the Catholic Church:
First, Catholic health care ministry is rooted in a commitment to promote and defend human dignity; this is the foundation of its concern to respect the sacredness of every human life from the moment of conception until death.
and
In accord with its mission, Catholic health care should distinguish itself by service to and advocacy for those people whose social condition puts them at the margins of our society and makes them particularly vulnerable to discrimination: the poor; the uninsured and the underinsured; children and the unborn; single parents; the elderly; those with incurable diseases and chemical dependencies; racial minorities; immigrants and refugees.
(my emphasis)
and
The Church’s defense of life encompasses the unborn and the care of women and their children during and after pregnancy.
Now, I bring all this up, because in an amazing display of breaking with the Catholic Church and hypocrisy in action. The lawyers in a wrongful death lawsuit against a Catholic Hospital (Catholic Health Initiatives) have, for the sake of expediency, thrown all that out the window and are arguing that two unborn fetuses are ‘not alive’ and therefore not subject to a wrongful death lawsuit.
The story is that a woman, pregnant with twin boys, went to the hospital feeling ill. Turns out that she had a massive heart attack and died. The on call obstetrician, who happened to be the woman’s doctor, never answered the calls from the hospital. Without instructions from the physician, the hospital did not try to save the twins and they died in the womb with their mother.
The husband filed wrongful death charges and the lawyers of the Catholic hospital have responded that because the fetuses were not born, they were not alive and therefore cannot be the subject of a wrongful death suit.
Thanks to Tom for pointing me to this article.
