You wouldn't go to a Catholic hospital to have an abortion but what if you went to a Catholic hospital and one was needed in order to save your life?
A women in Michigan went to the only hospital within 30 miles of after her water broke while in the eighteenth week of her pregnancy. She was given Tylenol and sent home. She went in a second time and though she was in intense pain and bleeding the hospital sent her home again. It was not until the third visit, when she began a premature labor did the hospital step in and treat her. By that point the women had two acute infections and was in extreme pain. She delivered a premature baby in the breech position that lived for only two and a half hours.
Medical experts who have reviewed the case have determined that the fetus had virtually no chance of survival and that this would have been apparent on her initial visit to the hospital. They also said that in these such circumstances doctors usually induce labor or surgically remove the fetus to reduce the mother’s chances of infection.
This women is Tamesha Means and the American Civil Liberties Union is filing a lawsuit against the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on her behalf. The suit alleges that the hospital did not tell Means that her fetus was doomed, nor that inducing labor and terminating the pregnancy was the only way to reduce the risk of a dangerous infection that could cost her her own life as well. Why is the ACLU suing the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops instead of the hospital where the negligence occurred? It is the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and their “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Healthcare Services requires Catholic hospitals to avoid abortion or referrals, “even when doing so places a woman’s health or life at risk.” Catholic hospitals that disobey can expect to at the very least be dropped from their religious affiliation.
One such recent example is St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix. In 2010, the hospital was stripped of its affiliation with the church after doctors performed an abortion on a woman in her first tri-mester because it was necessary to save her life. She had pulmonary hypertension and nearly 100% chance of killing her had she continued her pregnancy.
The senior Nun who gave the final okay for the termination was excommunicated by the local bishop.Sister Margaret McBride believed that the termination was warranted given that there are some circumstances where procedures that endanger the fetus are allowed to save the mothers life. Apparently, pulmonary hypertension and near certain death for the mother doesn't fall into this category.
What is terrifying is that the position of the church in this life and death situation would have been to let both the mother and her 11 week old fetus die. Just as if Means had ended up losing her life to the infections that ravaged her body after being sent home from the hospital. From the article cited above: "They were in quite a dilemma," says Lisa Sowle Cahill, who teaches Catholic theology at Boston College. "There was no good way out of it. The official church position would mandate that the correct solution would be to let both the mother and the child die. I think in the practical situation that would be a very hard choice to make."
In this regard, hospitals with religious affiliations are not institutions that are bound to the basic medical principles such as saving the patients life regardless of whether or not she is pregnant. Being a pregnant women is more than a liability in a Catholic Hospital and this isn't the first such case to bring that issue to the forefront of the "abortion" debate. In October 2012, Savita Halappanavar began miscarrying her 17 week old fetus in Ireland and was admitted to the hospital. Halappanavar repeatedly asked for an abortion but was informed that the Catholic hospital she was being treated in would not intervene in the miscarriage as long as the was a heartbeat. They would not perform a life saving abortion and Halappanavar died from sepsis a week after she was admitted to the hospital.
If hospitals cannot practice medicine because of their religious affiliation than they should not be allowed to exist. Medical treatment centers need to practice medicine regardless of the religious beliefs held by the bishops or board members. These patients turned to these institutions with the belief that their lives would be respected, their wounds would be treated, that doctors would be making decisions about their health. In the instance of Savita Halappanavar, I don't think it is a stretch to say that this women was killed by the very people who were supposed to treat her. She was forced to carry a dying, non-viable fetus while she laid in bed being poisoned by her own body. The women in Phoenix who had a near certain fatal diagnosis had the hospital not removed the fetus from her body- well,the women who gave the okay was excommunicated. Priests involved in sexual abuse scandals, priest who have been found GUILTY of sexual abuse of children have not been excommunicated but this Nun who allowed a life saving abortion was. Hypocritical and disgusting. The worth of women in the church is made clear over and over again. Women are dispensable, they should die if it means they need a fetus removed in order to live. They should suffer in order for a fetus to...what? Perish with "dignity?"
Whether the ACLU succeeds in suing the Catholic bishops or not, this case brings the issue into the ever raging abortion debate. Is it not the right of women to live first? How many more stories like this need to happen? How many more times do women have to put their lives on the line for the sake of an unborn and often doomed fetus? These women did not want abortions while the possibility of "life" existed. These women wanted to carry their pregnancies to term and what kind of society has medical facilities that will risk a patients life for the so-called "beliefs" of the ones who operate it?
Monday, December 9, 2013
Sunday, December 1, 2013
British Social Services Forces C-Section on Italian Women and Takes Child into Custody
If you needed any more reason to be weary of your rights as a pregnant women the UK has given us a starling and horrifying example.
In August 2012, an Italian women was given a forced c-section and had her child removed by British social services after having a panic attack while in the country for a business trip. The women called the Police after suffering a panic attack, apparently because she could not find the passports for her other two children who were with her mother in Italy. The police came to the women's hotel and took her into custody after speaking with her mother on the phone who indicated she had bi-polar but was not currently taking medication.
The police told the mother that they were taking her to the hospital to “make sure that the baby was OK”. They brought her to a mental hospital and though she said she wanted to go back to her hotel, she was restrained by orderlies, sectioned under the Mental Health Act and told that she must stay in the hospital. After five weeks she was told that she couldn't eat breakfast that morning and then was forcibly sedated and put through a cesarean section. She later woke up in a different hospital and was informed that her child had been delivered by c-section. She later learned that a high court judge, Mr Justice Mostyn, had given the social workers of Essex permission to arrange for the child to be delivered. Later on she was told that she would be escorted back to Italy without her baby.
The women, back in Italy, immediately resumed taking her medication and began the process of battling for the return of her daughter. She returned to the UK in February to regain custody of her daughter. The baby girl, now 15 months old, is still in the care of social services, who are refusing to give her back to the mother, even though she claims to have made a full recovery, the reason? The judge said that while she indeed seemed impressively "articulate" he could not risk a failure to maintain her medication in the future and therefore he ruled that the child must be placed for adoption.
Earlier in 2013, her American husband, who she is amicably separated from and who is the father of her eldest daughter- asked that the baby be sent to Los Angeles to live with his sister. The sister was described by her US lawyer as “a rock”. Because, however, the sister is not a blood relative of the Italian women she is not considered a relative of the baby.
When I first saw this story I figured it was a spoof. I thought, surely this is from the Onion or another parody website, right? Nope. I googled the case and many news outlets were running the story, it was indeed real life. This is an actual instance where the State forced a women to give birth while unconscious through an invasive procedure without her knowledge and or consent for the good of the BABY! The authorities then refused to give her her own child back. They are still refusing to give her her daughter back.
There are a number of disturbing things in this case besides the actual unprecedented procedure. Primarily the fact that she was taken into custody in the first place and held hostage in a psychiatric facility for over a month. Everything I read stated that she received appointed legal counsel only after the forced c-section of her daughter and that was at a hearing where she was told that she would be escorted back to Italy without her daughter. The case has been raised before a judge in the High Court in Rome, which questioned why British care proceedings had been applied to the child of an Italian citizen. The Italian judge accepted, though, that the British courts had jurisdiction over the woman, who was deemed to have had no “capacity” to instruct lawyers.
No capacity to instruct lawyers? A panic attack does not deem you incapable of having rights.
John Hemming, MP (Member of Parliament) who is advocating more openness in family court and raising this case in Parliament stated “I think this has a fair chance of being the worst case of human-rights abuse I’ve ever seen. She wasn’t treated as a human being.”
No, she was not treated as a human being and as more details from the case become public, I am weary to think of what other abuses may have taken place. Argue anyway you'd like- but pregnant women or mothers with mental health issues are not treated as human beings. Yes, the welfare of the children is important but it is truly inhumane to drug a women in order to extract the fetus from her womb and then then take custody of the child.
Obviously the entire story has not yet been told, but one thing is absolutely certain- any women with any mental illness has to be extremely cautious when having or considering having children. If you take medication you risk certain birth defects and or fetal abnormalities which could be interpreted as endangering your child and if you do not take medication you can be certain that your untreated mental illness will be held against you. Women with mental health issues face double discrimination when carrying a child. There are those that would advocate terminating pregnancies of women with bi-polar and other depressive disorders, regardless of the desires of the women.
This case is one of my worst nightmares. As a women with mental illness I consider the ramifications of child bearing often and I struggle with the knowledge that being a functional, well-adjusted member of society may very well equal never procreating. The medications that I take daily are not approved for pregnant women and there are VERY few that are. I can't imagine that every women on medication feels the same way, what if they want to have children, don't they have that right? That's why social services or government intervention in birthing is so frightening. This Italian women already has two children, she is already a mother and a handful of strangers in a foreign country decided to knock her unconscious, steal her baby and claim that it was in the best interest of this child who hadn't even been born yet.
Mental illness holds its own stigma and in a society where pregnant women are already stripped of their own personal rights I wonder sometimes why so many women take the risk. In this case the State literally took over a women's body and removed the child from her womb while she was unconscious. Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, said: “At first blush this is dystopian science-fiction unworthy of a democracy like ours. Forced surgery and separation of mother and infant is the stuff of nightmares.” There is simply no justification for that.
In August 2012, an Italian women was given a forced c-section and had her child removed by British social services after having a panic attack while in the country for a business trip. The women called the Police after suffering a panic attack, apparently because she could not find the passports for her other two children who were with her mother in Italy. The police came to the women's hotel and took her into custody after speaking with her mother on the phone who indicated she had bi-polar but was not currently taking medication.
The police told the mother that they were taking her to the hospital to “make sure that the baby was OK”. They brought her to a mental hospital and though she said she wanted to go back to her hotel, she was restrained by orderlies, sectioned under the Mental Health Act and told that she must stay in the hospital. After five weeks she was told that she couldn't eat breakfast that morning and then was forcibly sedated and put through a cesarean section. She later woke up in a different hospital and was informed that her child had been delivered by c-section. She later learned that a high court judge, Mr Justice Mostyn, had given the social workers of Essex permission to arrange for the child to be delivered. Later on she was told that she would be escorted back to Italy without her baby.
The women, back in Italy, immediately resumed taking her medication and began the process of battling for the return of her daughter. She returned to the UK in February to regain custody of her daughter. The baby girl, now 15 months old, is still in the care of social services, who are refusing to give her back to the mother, even though she claims to have made a full recovery, the reason? The judge said that while she indeed seemed impressively "articulate" he could not risk a failure to maintain her medication in the future and therefore he ruled that the child must be placed for adoption.
Earlier in 2013, her American husband, who she is amicably separated from and who is the father of her eldest daughter- asked that the baby be sent to Los Angeles to live with his sister. The sister was described by her US lawyer as “a rock”. Because, however, the sister is not a blood relative of the Italian women she is not considered a relative of the baby.
When I first saw this story I figured it was a spoof. I thought, surely this is from the Onion or another parody website, right? Nope. I googled the case and many news outlets were running the story, it was indeed real life. This is an actual instance where the State forced a women to give birth while unconscious through an invasive procedure without her knowledge and or consent for the good of the BABY! The authorities then refused to give her her own child back. They are still refusing to give her her daughter back.
There are a number of disturbing things in this case besides the actual unprecedented procedure. Primarily the fact that she was taken into custody in the first place and held hostage in a psychiatric facility for over a month. Everything I read stated that she received appointed legal counsel only after the forced c-section of her daughter and that was at a hearing where she was told that she would be escorted back to Italy without her daughter. The case has been raised before a judge in the High Court in Rome, which questioned why British care proceedings had been applied to the child of an Italian citizen. The Italian judge accepted, though, that the British courts had jurisdiction over the woman, who was deemed to have had no “capacity” to instruct lawyers.
No capacity to instruct lawyers? A panic attack does not deem you incapable of having rights.
John Hemming, MP (Member of Parliament) who is advocating more openness in family court and raising this case in Parliament stated “I think this has a fair chance of being the worst case of human-rights abuse I’ve ever seen. She wasn’t treated as a human being.”
No, she was not treated as a human being and as more details from the case become public, I am weary to think of what other abuses may have taken place. Argue anyway you'd like- but pregnant women or mothers with mental health issues are not treated as human beings. Yes, the welfare of the children is important but it is truly inhumane to drug a women in order to extract the fetus from her womb and then then take custody of the child.
Obviously the entire story has not yet been told, but one thing is absolutely certain- any women with any mental illness has to be extremely cautious when having or considering having children. If you take medication you risk certain birth defects and or fetal abnormalities which could be interpreted as endangering your child and if you do not take medication you can be certain that your untreated mental illness will be held against you. Women with mental health issues face double discrimination when carrying a child. There are those that would advocate terminating pregnancies of women with bi-polar and other depressive disorders, regardless of the desires of the women.
This case is one of my worst nightmares. As a women with mental illness I consider the ramifications of child bearing often and I struggle with the knowledge that being a functional, well-adjusted member of society may very well equal never procreating. The medications that I take daily are not approved for pregnant women and there are VERY few that are. I can't imagine that every women on medication feels the same way, what if they want to have children, don't they have that right? That's why social services or government intervention in birthing is so frightening. This Italian women already has two children, she is already a mother and a handful of strangers in a foreign country decided to knock her unconscious, steal her baby and claim that it was in the best interest of this child who hadn't even been born yet.
Mental illness holds its own stigma and in a society where pregnant women are already stripped of their own personal rights I wonder sometimes why so many women take the risk. In this case the State literally took over a women's body and removed the child from her womb while she was unconscious. Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, said: “At first blush this is dystopian science-fiction unworthy of a democracy like ours. Forced surgery and separation of mother and infant is the stuff of nightmares.” There is simply no justification for that.
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