Connecticut Bishops OK Administering Abortifacient
Catholic bishops in Connecticut have agreed to let hospital personnel give emergency contraception to all rape victims, reversing their decision days before a new state law requires it.
The church, which runs four of the state’s 30 hospitals, had fought the state law requiring medical personnel to give rape victims emergency contraception, sold as Plan B, even if the women are ovulating.
Church officials had said the treatment was tantamount to abortion…but now (as far as I can tell) the bishops have now decided that if they don’t know whether the woman is pregnant or not then administering an abortifacient is just fine.
As I’m still attempting to sort out the info here’s the logic as it seems to me: It’s OK to deliver a lethal drug to an infant if you’re intentionally unaware if a fetus exists.
The law allows the hospital to administer a pregnancy test but those are very unreliable early in a pregnancy. The bishops were seeking to perform an ovulation test as well.
But now the Bishops, according to the AP, said the hospitals will be allowed to provide Plan B without ovulation tests “since the teaching authority of the church has not definitively resolved this matter and since there is serious doubt about how Plan B pills work,” the statement reads. “To administer Plan B without an ovulation test is not an intrinsically evil act.”
I don’t even understand that. The teaching authority of the church hasn’t definitively resolved the matter? Look, I didn’t need the Ten Commandments of Driving to be promulgated by the Vatican before I understood that running people over was bad. When in doubt as to what to do refer to the Ten Commandments like “Thou Shalt Not Kill.”
The Commandment doesn’t say “Thou Shalt Not Kill unless the person is still in the womb and you’re not really sure if they’re there or not.”
Barry Feldman, a spokesman for the Connecticut Catholic Conference, said the bishops had “an evolution of thinking” about “the state of existing science and the lack of definitive teaching by the church and the fact that there are many who are affiliated with the church that believe the ovulation test isn’t necessary.”
The bishops consulted with Catholic ethicists and various constitutional lawyers. Some lawyers agreed the state law is unconstitutional, but warned that such a lawsuit could drag on for years, Feldman said.
“If they could find a way morally to do so, they wanted to put the issue to rest, at last, for the moment,” he said, adding that the bishops might reconsider if there’s more “certainty in the science” about Plan B.
More updates to come. American Papist has excellent coverage.