Let the Mother and Fetus Die for Superstitious Idiocy. Or save a life? A Nun's Dilemma.

That was the choice of Sister Margaret McBride, a member of the ethics board of a hospital in Phoenix, when an 11 week pregnant woman came into the emergency room with pulmonary hypertension.

The doctors determined that the pregnancy must be terminated immediately, or the mother and her fetus would die. With no time to spare, Sister Margaret decided to save the woman’s life (who already had four other children at home) and permit the pregnancy to be terminated.

But what is a no brainer exercise of common sense, humanity, and good judgment … opting to save one life as opposed to losing both the woman’s and the fetus’, and leaving four kids motherless ... seems to be a cardinal sin to the Church. Sister Margaret was excommunicated from the Church. Whole story here: http://wireless.go.com/wireless/abcnews/section/topstories/10799745_1?&page=1

Speaking for the Phoenix archdiocese Thomas J. Bishop Olmsted (smiling shaman in his mystical costume pictured above) said: "An unborn child is not a disease ... the end does not justify the means.”

What!? Was there another means to ensure the woman or both the woman and the fetus survived? What is that other means would the bishop recommend? Prayer? How many times has prayer reversed a fatal syndrome that required immediate medical intervention? Would the death of both the mother and the fetus, and leaving four children motherless been the Church's preferred outcome???

This is religious mindlessness and hypocrisy at its worst -- mindlessness because the Sister did the only logical, reasonable and humane thing, for which she should be proclaimed a hero, if not a saint. Instead she is demonized and cast out by her “loving church” because she somehow offended their imaginary man-god and broke with unthinking, unyielding, inhumane doctrine.

Hypocritical, because while for decades priestly abuse of children and it’s destructive impact on them, has been tolerated, covered up, or ignored by bishops, cardinals, and the pope himself…with virtually NONE of the perpetrators, or their enablers being excommunicated. Why … because mass sexual perversion is tolerable, but saving a woman’s life and giving a child his mother back is intolerable? Because the sex abuse was by men, and this break with irrationality was by a woman?

Any Catholic who is not enraged by the injustice, the misogyny, the hypocrisy, the blind disregard for the greater good being perpetrated by the Church by this act is beyond contempt. Between all of the grotesque trespasses perpetrated by this arrogant medieval cult of ignorance if there was ever a last straw for leaving it behind, this should be it.

[Thanks to Rachel H. from Texas for bringing this important story to my attention]