Nun Excommunicated for Recommending Abortion

According
to the AP, Sister Margaret McBride was on the ethics panel of a
Catholic hospital, which last year heard the case of a woman who was 11
weeks pregnant. The woman had pulmonary hypertension, and her pregnancy
"carried a nearly certain risk of death." A letter from the chair of
the hospital's board says, "If there had been a way to save the
pregnancy and still prevent the death of the mother, we would have done
it. We are convinced there was not." Given this, the ethics panel
recommended an abortion.

Says Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted, head of the Phoenix archdiocese,

I am gravely concerned by the fact that an abortion was
performed several months ago in a Catholic hospital in this diocese. I
am further concerned by the hospital's statement that the termination
of a human life was necessary to treat the mother's underlying medical
condition.

An unborn child is not a disease. While medical professionals
should certainly try to save a pregnant mother's life, the means by
which they do it can never be by directly killing her unborn child. The
end does not justify the means.