Sister Margaret McBride

The life of a woman is hanging in the balance.  She’s suffering from pulmonary hypertension, a condition that “limits the ability of the heart and lungs to function and is made worse, possibly even fatal, by pregnancy.”  The medical staff and ethics committee at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix, AZ determine it’s best to terminate the pregnancy in order to save her life.  If the woman were to die, her unborn child would die with her, so that seems like a sound, albeit unfortunate, decision.  Not so, according to the Catholic Church, who’ve excommunicated Sister Margaret McBride for agreeing with the hospital ethics committee and allowing the abortion. That’s right: the Church believes a woman should die rather than terminate a pregnancy.

According to the Washington Post, “hospital officials defended McBride’s actions but confirmed that she has been reassigned from her job as vice president of mission integration at the hospital.”  Susan Pfister, vice president of St. Joseph’s, said the facility “adheres to the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services but that the directives do not answer all questions.”

Bishop Thomas Olmstead of the Phoenix Archdiocese responded to the case by saying, “The Catholic Church will continue to defend life and proclaim the evil of abortion without compromise, and must act to correct even her own members if they fail in this duty.” 

Bioethicist Jacob M. Appel, in this piece on The Huffington Post, describes Olmstead as a “stone-hearted and intransigent figure,” who “gained notoriety for refusing communion to a ten-year-old autistic child who could not swallow and later spearheaded an effort to incorporate local church parishes individually in order to shield the Phoenix archdiocese from suits by sex-abuse victims.”  In his headline, Appel asks if women are still safe in Catholic hospitals, which he notes comprise one-third of all medical institutions in this country.  Would you trust your health to a tyrant like Olmstead? Continue reading »

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New York City has only 13 home birth midwives, and 7 of them are in danger of losing their licenses.

State law requires all home birth midwives to have agreements with obstetricians at nearby hospitals who will back them up and handle medical emergencies with their patients. St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan was the official back-up hospital for more than half of New York City’s midwives until it closed this week.

Now the midwives are having trouble finding a new hospital that will take them in. Obstetricians, it seems, are not eager to sign on for back-up duty.

Continue reading »

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Jennifer Spiegel is suing a Chicago hospital for $30,000 in damages because, one night in 2008, a hospital nurse brought her the wrong day-old infant boy, and she mistakenly nursed him.

Today, Motherlode invites readers to weigh in on the question of nursing someone else’s child: would you?

I can understand Spiegel being distraught at the mix-up, but I have a hard time seeing it as grounds for a lawsuit.

But maybe I’m a little biased. I’m nursing someone else’s baby right now.

Continue reading »

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Hospitals are stepping up their efforts to keep swine flu in check, and for hundreds across the nation, that means banning kids from visiting.

It’s true – your kids are as germy as all those non-breeders think they are.

And they’re carriers! Continue reading »

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Natasha Ramirez of Sydney Australia says that she was turned away from a hospital because they didn’t have “enough room.” And besides, the nurse told her, you won’t be in labor “for another 24 to 48 hours.” So she went home. “Five hours later baby Anjelita was born” on her bedroom floor, according to Australia’s Daliy Telegraph.

The 27-year-old new mom claims that she was bleeding and “in labour” (they spell things funny in Australia) when she arrived at Liverpool Hospital. Apparently Ramirez was 4 days past her due date, “needed anti-D injections because of her O-negative blood type” and due to complications with a previous birth, and oh yeah — she was having contractions. But a nurse “assessed” her and told Ramirez to go home. She says that she was not seen by a doctor. Continue reading »

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