Better to Let a Mother of Four Die Than Permit Abortion

Update: Catholics for Choice is requesting people from all faiths and communities to send their support for Sister Margaret McBride's stance to protect women. Please sign this petition to send your support.

I continue to be fascinated by the story of the nun at a Catholic hospital in Phoenix, AZ, who was excommunicated for approving a life-saving abortion. What shocks me is how blatant the disregard for a woman's life is, that people actually argue that it would have been better to let her die. What I can't wrap my mind around is the idea that saving a woman's life isn't a no-brainer, isn't pro-life.

Sister Margaret McBride approved a life-saving abortion for a woman 11 weeks pregnant. Hospital documents state that the risk of death without the procedure was "close to 100 percent." That's right: without getting an abortion, the woman was virtually guaranteed to die, meaning that the fetus also would never have been born. The woman would have been survived by a loving husband and four children.

For this, Sister McBride was excommunicated. And while she has now met conditions to have this penalty lifted, canon lawyer Rev. Thomas Doyle points out that none of the priests who sexually abused children have been excommunicated, and that the Church could have taken into consideration the extreme circumstances of McBride's case, exposing a "gross inequity" in the sexist, male Catholic hierarchy.

The framing of this incident is also mind-boggling. In USA Today, Cathy Lynn Grossman writes, "Here's a horrific choice: OK an abortion for a pregnant woman facing heart failure or let her die?" I vehemently disagree. I think it's an easy choice. You approve the abortion. If you don't, not only does the fetus "die" (if you believe it to be a life), but the woman also dies. If you approve an abortion, the only difference in outcome is that now you need one fewer coffin. Now four children still have a mother.

But what was the right thing to do according to the Catholic Church? Lisa Sowle Cahill, a professor of Catholic theology at Boston College, says, "The official church position would mandate that the correct solution would be to let both the mother and the child die." I fail to see how that could possibility be viewed as better. The argument isn't even that the mother would have survived without the abortion: it's that she should have died instead. I'm sure her family and children appreciate this stance.

However, Rev. John Ehrich, medical ethics director for the Diocese of Phoenix, thinks the situation is clear. Sister McBride "consented in the murder of an unborn child," Erlich said. "There are some situations where the mother may in fact die along with her child. But — and this is the Catholic perspective — you can't do evil to bring about good. The end does not justify the means." Again, this idea that the moral action is to let a woman die is nonsensical to me. Self-defense is not murder. As I wrote before, even the Catholic Catechism recognizes this: "Someone who defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow."

Am I missing something? Is the key word there "he"? Is only a man allowed to defend his life, but not a woman? The only explanation I can find for this pro-death stance is a deep-seated misogyny.

Photo credit: g-hat