Richard A. Sokerka
It was heartening to see the Catholic Medical Association (CMA) and the National Catholic Bioethics Center (NCBC), whose Director of Education, Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, is a regular columnist in The Beacon, respond to a misleading statement from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and Physicians for Reproductive Health that abortion can be medically necessary when some issues occur during pregnancies. Its problematic statement read: “There are situations where pregnancy termination in the form of an abortion is the only medical intervention that can preserve a patient’s health or save their life.” The CMA and NCBC were quick to point out the fallacies in this statement stating that they each recognize the obligation to treat both patients, the mother and the unborn child, when a life-threatening pathological situation arises during pregnancy.
Further responding to the statement, they said. “This ‘remedy’ of directly and intentionally terminating one patient’s life as a means of ‘helping’ another is egregiously unethical and represents a failure to do precisely what they declare, namely, to ‘preserve a patient’s health or save their life.’ “Instead they are counseling the focused misuse of medicine to destroy rather than to heal the life of the in utero patient. Direct abortion is never medical care, and under no circumstances can a patient under the care of a health care provider be abandoned in this way and targeted for extermination, even if another person might derive benefit. Both patients deserve better. Both deserve the devoted care and full extent of healing treatments made available by modern therapeutic medicine.” Both the CMA and NCBC operate in steadfast fidelity to the teachings of the Catholic Church and uphold the principles of the Catholic faith in the science and practice of medicine, and they did just that in their response to this statement.
For a statement like this to be issued by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and Physicians for Reproductive Health during Respect Life Month shows a callous disregard for life in the womb and is a direct failure in upholding the Hippocratic Oath these doctors took.