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In Which the New York Times Spoils My Day
Yesterday proved a thoroughly lovely day–cold air but bright sunshine, got a lot of work done, went for a jog with the dog, had a good time talking with my kids when they got home from school–and then? I read the New York Times. In particular, an editorial headlined “When Bishops Direct Medical Care,” about a case the ACLU is bringing on behalf of woman who was refused an abortion at a Catholic hospital.
An excerpt:
How the suit will play out is unclear, but it showcases an important issue. Catholic hospitals account for about 15 percent of the nation’s hospital beds and, in many communities, are the only hospital facilities available. Allowing religious doctrine to prevail over the need for competent emergency care and a woman’s right to complete and accurate information about her condition and treatment choices violates medical ethics and existing law.
In re those three sentences, three observations:
1. Because Catholic hospitals are the only hospitals in certain communities, the Times suggests, property rights simply do not apply. Catholic organizations may build and run the hospitals, but the hospitals must be operated according to the ethics, judgement and wishes of the federal government, which is to say, of course, of the liberals who staff the health bureaucracy. You really couldn’t ask for a more exact illustration of the mindset of a commissar.
2. Just get a load of the euphemisms in the final sentence–really, just look at them. “The need for competent emergency care…a woman’s right to complete and accurate information….” That sentence just floats past on a cloud of dissembling and insincerity–the Times editorial writer will resort to any verbal obfuscation to avoid saying what is obvious: that he believes in abortion on demand. Has the New York Times lost its copy of George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language?”
3. Again, look at that final sentence, in this case, the way it closes: The Catholic position on abortion, the editorial insists, “violates medical ethics and existing law.” I’d have thought that the First Amendment would trump “existing law,” whatever that might mean, and that the Times, so eager to trumpet the First Amendment when using the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech as a cover for publishing, say, the Pentagon Papers or Wikileaks, might refer to the First Amendment here as well. Anyway. If the editorial is correct–if the First Amendment really must be subordinated to “medical ethics [as the Times defines them] and existing law”–then freedom of religion in this country is extinct.
Arrogance, double-speak, and violence to the Constitution. In other words, business as usual.
Published in General
The NYT knows what it’s doing. It wants the faithful to be driven out of medicine the same way it has been driven out of adoption-placement.
And there’s every reason to believe we’re headed exactly in that direction.
The last people to see that? The cold-hearted bishops who eagerly promoted this metastasizing nationalized healthcare scheme (I’m looking at you, Dolan).
They place more importance on the killing of one baby than on the saving of many other lives. When you boil it all down, their position is so evil even the devil would shrink from it.
Peter – Push that argument about “…a woman’s right to complete and accurate information….” at an pro-abortion activist and ask them how that squares with their dislike of sonograms and graphic displays of exactly what an abortion does.
They don’t want any woman to have “complete and accurate information.” It would destroy the abortion industry.
It is not bad enough that the Supreme Court has found an unwritten right to kill your baby if every part has not crossed the cervix but now the NYT thinks it is required by medical ethics. I am reminded that abortion was specifically prohibited by the Hippocratic oath until recently. Of course the ethics of the Times editor is superior to the ethics of the ancient wisdom regardless of the source.
Before we all get too huffy, I hope DocJay shows up. I clicked on the link expecting to find that the NYT had said nothing about the actual facts of the case to hide the fact that this was about nothing more than a woman experiencing a perfectly normal pregnancy showing up at a Catholic hospital demanding an abortion and being denied.
That isn’t what I found. There’s a fair bit of detail there about a woman experiencing what seems credibly alleged to be a failing and hopeless pregnancy and a hospital allegedly (and seemingly) putting a fairly blind and absolute opposition to abortion ahead of the need to do what good it could — by taking appropriate steps to preserve at least the mother’s physical health in a situation in which the baby had no chance to survive.
Obviously there’s medical information we don’t have, and that I wouldn’t understand anyway, and I’m sure there’s a NYT spin, but this one doesn’t look so black and white to me.
The issue Peter flags sounds in principle like the Hobby Lobby case, but the facts of this one appear a lot messier.
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The issue Peter flags sounds in principle like the Hobby Lobby case, but the facts of this one appear a lot messier. ·0 minutes ago
The position of the church is still not to hasten the inevitable end of the baby.
In reading your post, your indignation comes off the page like steam from a lake in late fall (I’m trying to avoid using the word ‘palpable’)!
Too bad, it couldn’t be the text for a full-page add in tomorrow’s NYT (placed alongside said article); I believe all but the most fossilized minds would see the tortured logic of the ACLU’s position!
We must keep this outrageous case before the public and, somehow, we need to develop and encourage the sentiment behind the warning that was made famous by Martin Niemoller,
First, they came for the communists…
Eventually, with enough examples of raw power, wielded by the federal government through the Affordable Care Act, people should see that, with one stroke of the regulatory pen (or guillotine), we are all at the mercy of the state!
Having just read your post for a second time, what really jumps off the page at me is your quote that, “the Catholic position on abortion… violates medical ethics…”
What about the most long-standing and fundamental medical ethic that is being contravened in this case:
The Hippocratic Oath, ‘First, do no HARM…!
“Allowing religious doctrine to prevail over the need for competent emergency care …”
It’s the religious doctrine of charity for the poor that inspired the creation of the hospitals in the first place.
Just as SSM resulted in the closing of Catholic adoption services in Massachusetts, the religious doctrine of the NYT crowd throws the baby out with the “dirty” bath water. Literally.
Politically aware people are now starting to realize just how deeply authoritarian the American left is but we also have to acknowledge how truly nasty they are as well.
The Nazis held racial purity as their “ideal.”
For Lenin, Mao, et. al., it was social equality.
For our homegrown fanatics, it is the right of a mother to murder her child.
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The issue Peter flags sounds in principle like the Hobby Lobby case, but the facts of this one appear a lot messier.
The position of the church is still not to hasten the inevitable end of the baby.
Again, I don’t fully understand the medical exegencies of this case, but if the church’s position is literally that it will watch a woman bleed to death to provide an all but dead and certain to die unborn baby with an additional hour of life in the womb then the church, paraphrasing Mr. Bumble, “is a ass.”
Our nation’s Catholics had a chance to fight Obama and gave him a limp wristed slap at best.
Catholic health care in the United States is done.
My training hospital, St Vincent’s. My insurance, St Marys. My last two kids were born at St Mary’s. There has never been any more loving and compassionate care in history than from Catholic facilities and they will all be closed within two decades along with all adoption agencies and anything else that meshes with the PC world. The end of this is beyond sad but I promise you, Catholic health care will end here.
Going from memory here, but didn’t the hospital send the woman home the first time with a recommendation that she consult with her doctor? The assumption that the hospital was the only port in the storm is likely to be invalid. Anyway, what the hell is Planned Parenthood for, if not to help those poor women neglected by the system. I guess it is better to fund the creation of pretexts for lawsuits than to help people.
With regard and respect to Peter, he missed the most ominous point of the NYT editorial:
The morphing of “freedom of religion” into “freedom to worship” is the real agenda of the left, and–I’m sure–the real agenda behind this suit.
Not content with having driven the mainstream Protestant church from the public square in the aftermath of Prohibition, the left wants to drive out the Catholics and Evangelicals as well.
The Constitution does not recognize our God-given rights to worship and advocacy–we hold as self-evident that God gives each man his right to the free exercise of his religion.
This test case? It’s the camel’s nose under the tent. Ending all those pesky religious folks and their antiquated practice of actually, y’know, living their faith–that’s the agenda.
On Meet the Press earlier this month, Cardinal Dolan was still offering to hold hands with the statists — saying if only this or that rule were relaxed, the church would be Leviathan’s ally.
Because Dolan still does not understand: Leviathan wants subjects, not allies. Do the statists in Mass. lament that the Catholics were driven out of family services? No, they rejoice.
The U.S. Catholic Church has absolutely no idea who it is trying to partner with; the NYT is eight steps ahead of the bishops here — well on the way to driving all faithful from the public square (as well as any public accommodation).
Catholic health care in the United States is done.
My training hospital, St Vincent’s. My insurance, St Marys. My last two kids were born at St Mary’s. There has never been any more loving and compassionate care in history than from Catholic facilities and they will all be closed within two decades along with all adoption agencies and anything else that meshes with the PC world. The end of this is beyond sad but I promise you, Catholic health care will end here. ·16 minutes ago
I believe you are correct, that this is not just a ‘retreat’ but a long march back into oblivion!
It has been occurring in Catholic educational institutions, too.
Politically aware people are now starting to realize just how deeply authoritarian the American left is but we also have to acknowledge how truly nasty they are as well.
The Nazis held racial purity as their “ideal.”
For Lenin, Mao, et. al., it was social equality.
For our homegrown fanatics, it is the right of a mother to murder her child. ·51 minutes ago
Interesting about the Nazis angle in that I read an interesting factoid yesterday about the anniversary of the trials of 12 German doctors as part of the Nuremberg proceedings. One of their defenses was that they were merely expanding the on the eugenics works of California’s CM Goethe, Founder of Sacramento State University and the work of the Rockefeller Foundation which included Dr. Mengele, who was not on trial as he escaped. Even more interesting the trial was prosecuted by 100% Americans unlike the other war criminal trials. Browse it, fascinating.
Anyway, this is what slinks and slathers around in the dungeons of the Left and their wanton regard for a death culture no surprise.
The American people have a right to “complete and accurate” information on:
The mandarins at The New York Times can get started on that list.
The mandarins at The New York Timescan get started on that list. ·1 minute ago
No need to even leave the hospital — how about “complete and accurate” information on treatment options the FDA is arbitrarily blocking?
This attack on religion in this country is getting really scary. The ACLU is a destructive menace. Such as in the cases where the judges ruled that a photographer and a Baker have to go against their religious convictions to provide their services for Same Sex wedding ceremonies. Which will likely result in religious people getting out of the wedding industry all together.
I guess the left has taken off the mask is going full bore Totalitarian, there is no nuance to this case, they want to force Catholic hospitals to go against their conscience.
That is what David Horowitz has been saying for years. That inside every leftist is a Totalitarian screaming to get out.
I think soon the Catholic church will have no recourse soon and will have to get political for its own survival.
That isn’t what I found. There’s a fair bit of detail there about a woman experiencing what seems credibly alleged to be a failing and hopeless pregnancy and a hospital allegedly (and seemingly) putting a fairly blind and absolute opposition to abortion ahead of the need to do what good it could — by taking appropriate steps to preserve at least the mother’s physical health in a situation in which the baby had no chance to survive.
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The issue Peter flags sounds in principle like the Hobby Lobby case, but the facts of this one appear a lot messier. ·1 hour ago
The NYT article states, “Ms. Means is not suing the hospital for medical negligence but the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.” So this is not a malpractice case. The issue is not whether the medical professionals did what was right (they, and the hospital, are not the ones being sued), the issue is whether a Church owned institution can be run according to Church doctrine. That is why this is a First Amendment case.
The position of the church is still not to hasten the inevitable end of the baby.
And the pregnant woman?
We need to stop supporting the business plans of the Leftists who hate us.
Love the sentiment, but the Left has ubiquity on its side. Ever use a Microsoft product? Apple? Google? Yahoo? Amazon? Just about any banking institution? Any car manufacturer? Any entertainment provider? How about the insurance industry’s steadfast opposition to Obamacare? Ha! They love the guarantees! Doctors hardly squeaked. AARP? Puhleeze.
OK, maybe there’s a handful of counter-examples out there, but list them all and you’ll only prove my point.
Big Government and Big Business love one another with the searing heat of a thousand suns because it’s a relationship based upon the most reliable of human motivators . . . self-interest.
If Luddites for Constitutional Democracy had a chance, I’d join. But sadly it doesn’t, so we’ll have to find another way.
We need to stop supporting the business plans of the Leftists who hate us.
Love the sentiment, but the Left has ubiquity on its side. Ever use a Microsoft product? Apple? Google? Yahoo? Amazon? Just aboutanybanking institution? Anycar manufacturer? Anyentertainment provider? How about the insurance industry’s steadfast opposition to Obamacare? Ha! They love the guarantees! Doctors hardly squeaked. AARP? Puhleeze.
OK, maybe there’s a handful of counter-examples out there, but list them all and you’ll only prove my point.
Big Government and Big Business love one another with the searing heat of a thousand suns because it’s a relationship based upon the most reliable of human motivators . . . self-interest.
If Luddites for Constitutional Democracy had a chance, I’d join. But sadly it doesn’t, so we’ll have to find another way. ·14 minutes ago
I suspect you are right. However, I will continue to vote with my wallet. It’s all I can do as an individual. But if anyone wants to start organizing boycotts — to focus pressure on one corporate coward at a time — count me in. Buycotts too.
Exactly!
How about the complete and accurate information that the woman is carrying another human being? Who exactly is lying to women on this issue? Not the pro-life side.
Once again, our own Dr. Savage reduces the issue to a single, compelling, and (in this case) horrifying sentence.
Unfortunately, this is about the self-proclaimed enlightened and ennobled deciding who lives and who dies; it’s not some reasoned debate about advancing medical options.
There’s nothing new going on here. No matter how advanced the technology one applies, no matter how many times the Left wraps itself in the flag of “progress,” it’s the same ritualistic infanticide that got Old and New Testament pagans in trouble.
If you don’t believe me, read a little more about the goings-on with that doctor in Philly.
Perhaps there’s one way in which it’s different today. I don’t think the pagans of yore had what one would call an abortion industry, let alone one generating such handsome profits as today.
All of Peter’s points above demonstrate just the reasons why Cardinal Dolan, just a few weeks ago on Meet the Press, sounded hopelessly naive (counter-productively so to his own cause and ours) to our ears:
….
What is it that is sometimes said? One must be a fool for God? Well, we have the former down pat.
Unfortunately, this is about the self-proclaimed enlightened and ennobled deciding who lives and who dies; it’s not some reasoned debate about advancing medical options.
Actually it’s about who gets to make these life and death decisions. Individuals or the the State.
And the pregnant woman? ·2 hours ago
It’s not always a bipolar choice, less so now as technology and medicine improve.