COLORADO
Addicting Info
Posted by T. Steelman
In a stunning bit of hypocrisy, Catholic Health Initiatives – a non-profit that runs about 170 health facilities in 17 states – is arguing that fetuses are not people. Specifically, two fetuses involved in a wrongful death suit brought against them in Colorado.
This began on New Year’s Day 2006, when 31-year-old Lori Stodghill arrived at St. Thomas More hospital in Cañon City, CO. The seven-months-pregnant woman was short of breath and vomiting and she lost consciousness soon after her arrival. Her obstetrician, Dr. Pelham Staples (who also happened to be the OB on-call that night) was paged but he did not answer. Ms. Stodghill died from a heart attack less than an hour after she arrived at the Emergency Room. The twins she was carrying died in her womb. Her bereaved husband filed a wrongful death suit against the hospital on behalf of himself and his daughter (who was 2 at the time), charging that Dr. Staples should have at least directed the ER staff to perform an emergency C-section. An expert testified that while Lori could not in all likelihood have been saved, the babies could have been if a caesarean had been performed right away.
Catholic Health Initiatives, being the parent company of Thomas More Hospital, is the defendant in the case. For a non-profit they do remarkably well, with at least $15 billion in assets. But they maintain that all they seek to do is “nurture the healing ministry of the Church” guided by “fidelity to the Gospel.” Of course, they follow the rulings of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in the form of the Ethical and Religious Directives of the Catholic Church. Those directives, as we well know by now, speak of the sanctity of life “from the moment of conception until death.” The Church has made quite a big deal out of this lately to the point of objecting to birth control and even cancer screenings (don’t even try to follow that “logic”).
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