Baby Joseph - state murder or not?

Baby Joseph is a 13 month old baby who is on life support and in a vegetative state (the five main areas of his brain have been damaged by a severe degenerative neurological condition). In the hospital, his parents want to take him home to die "in their arms" but the state has issued a court order to pull out the respirator and "let nature take its course" and the pro life movement is going ballistic, comparing the case to the regrettable murder of Terry Schiavo.

However, it's not the same. Schiavo was severely handicapped but from neurologists who examined her case history and even from films on the website, not in a persistent vegetative state - she was non verbal but teased her doctor and followed with her eyes and smiled at her parents. A neurologist in Florida opined that she could have been rehabbed and he had in fact, rehabbed several cases with similar CT scan results. And Schiavo was an adult whose rights should not have been turned over to her divorced estranged husband. She breathed on her own and they enforced her starving to death by pulling her feeding tube and stationing 5 police officers on guard around the bed to prevent family from feeding her by mouth (she could eat soft foods by mouth and of course, could take liquids). That was first degree murder and sadly the whole country stood by and watched.

Baby Joseph needs a trach to be allowed to leave the hospital. The doctors say that they know a lot more about trachs and that he could die on the table and secondly, probably wonder if his parents want to see him bleeding from the trach, his insides ripping up and suctioning the trach tube every 2 hours etc. So in this case, there might be a medical reason to withdraw the respirator.

However, the pro life movement is comparing it to Schiavo and there is really no resemblance. Terry was not dying and could have been rehabbed. Baby Joseph is dying. Terry was not really vegetative but rather non verbal and severely handicapped. But Baby Joseph is vegetative.

Here are a couple of comments which were very relevant on one of the news sites:

From Doug in Canada:
It's hard not to get choked up reading about kids like this.It hits everyone hard.This is the sad part of life.But it is life in the real world. Lord knows if this was my child,I would likely be hanging on to the very last breath too. But here's the thing.First,the father wants the child to die a "natural" death.In truth,isn't it already to late for that? Were it not for medical intervention,he would probably not have survived this long.Prolonging the suffering of this child is not something they are doing for the child,the parents are doing that for themselves. Saying good-bye to your child is the worst of all horrors, and one that no one wants to face.But there are times when you have to let go.If this child cannot recover from this,the sooner the parents face that reality,the better it will be for everyone. Every life counts.But prolonging the suffering of someone incurable,is just plain cruel.And not only that,the resources that the health care system spends trying to prolong a life that seems lost already,could be far better used to save a child who can be saved. Logic and reason aside,my heart goes out to all those involved.I readily concede that it's easier to use logic and reason when you're far removed from the family,and the pain they must be in.It's not easy to use logic and reason when the issue is about your family.While I don't think prolonging this child's suffering is the right thing to do,I can't criticize this family unless I walk in their shoes.

From Rick in SJ
Playing God?? Oh you guys are having it backwards. ... It is because of medicine and modern science that this child is as old as he is now. For them to pull the plug is not playing God, for when the plug IS pulled...isn't it "the will of God" that will take him from them? If he wanted the child to live, he would have him breathing on his own and etc.You are thinking this backwards. I almost lost a son too when he was 2 months of age and had the doctors told me that he wouldn't have lived, and given the objective information (no reflexes, full vegetative state) I would have done what they asked...they are PROFESSIONALS who deal with life and death every day...there isn't emotion attached to this.

Bottom line, perhaps we should pick our battles more carefully. While this is a sad case, it may not be the one to make a media event to prove a point which may not even be relevant to the pro life cause.

Breaking news: Baby Joseph may be moved to a Detroit hospital, sources now say.

Can lying for a good purpose be justified? Hard choices

Lately the question has been raised among theologians whether it was moral for Lila Rose to go into Planned Parenthood clinics, posing as a under-aged "lady of the night" working for her p/imp in order to video employees of Planned Parenthood, supporting this type of lifestyle with birth control and abortion.

Sadly whereas the murder of millions of babies hardly raises an eyebrow anymore, the exploitation of children for se/xual purposes is considered intrinsically wrong in all circles, pro choice as well as pro life. And so Lila Rose's videos have raised public awareness of the possibility of Planned Parenthood not being a 'good for society' group. (Abby Johnson's book, UNPLANNED also has raised a lot of awareness).

However, that some good might come from LiveAction's campaign, only confirms that God can work good out of anything but does not in itself, argue for the morality of the idea of -what some are calling - "lying for Jesus".

Mark Shea brings out in his excellent blogs, "Dawn Eden is right..." and "Last Comment about Lying for Jesus" that the Catholic Catechism states that lying is always "intrinsically evil", among many other excellent points.

The American Catholic had an article by Joe Hargrave entitled "My Problem with Lila Rose" which is worth reading. He questions whether the entrapment of a couple of Planned Parenthood employees agreeing with potential customers is really proof of Planned Parenthood supporting exploitation of children.

The questions raised by these articles have been mine from the beginning. St Ignatius Loyola in his "Spiritual Exercises" states that no ends, regardless of how meritorious, justify immoral means.

Would God really require us to be immoral, even for a "good purpose"? I would say, "NO". And the fact that those videos are of questionable morality for Christians, puts the pro life movement in a shaky position. It is true, for example, that the demise of George Tiller meant a lot less full term or almost full term babies murdered but does anyone sanction that? Murder is prohibited in the Ten Commandments but so is lying. Sticking to our Christian morality sometimes presents us with very hard choices but as believers, we have to believe that Christian morality will always work out the best, regardless of less moral methodology seeming to be appropriate at times.

For example, is the classic "white lie" really appropriate...that is, is it right for husband to answer his somewhat chubby wife's question about her looking fat in a certain outfit with a lie? Or is there another way? For example, would it not be better, rather than lying about something she can see about herself, to say as my husband said when I was clinically obese - "You always look good to me regardless of what size you are!" Which ended up making me feel a lot better than a lie would have done. (Now that I am no longer clinically obese, he STILL says in answer to my comment about looking fat in a photo, with "You look good to me, now as you did, THEN!".

No one is judging any individuals here. The Mercy of God always is at work and none of us are totally right, no matter how hard we try to be. But I think Christians and pro lifers would hold a stronger position simply in combating evil with truth.

For example, I found it very effective to stand outside of a High school and hand out "informed consent" booklets about abortion. Students seeing medical information would ask "are you for or against abortion?" And evading the question (this is called "reservation" and not a sin), I would say "I am just providing the medical information to help folks make the decision which would work the best for them." Most of them took my informed consent information which in itself, will talk many out of choosing abortion. I have literally stopped ladies from going into Planned Parenthood by asking them "Did you know that abortion greatly raises the risk for breast cancer?" (this is supported in 38 worldwide studies including the clinical studies of pro choice scientist, Janet Daling).

I think ... no, rather, I feel confident, we can stop the murder of millions of babies by simply providing the public with the medical truth about the abortion procedure without wandering into morally questionable areas.

Pro life article in the NY times?

I knew that would get your attention. Well, I was rather shocked that the Times, the bastion of pro abortion views in the city where several times more babies are aborted than born, would print something which gives a more balanced view on abortion but it has happened. It's in a blog by Ross Douthat, not a mainstream article, but still, blogs do get crawled. As a person working in the diocese of Phoenix wrote "Maybe the truth keeps knocking until we are embarrassed not to answer!"

The blog talks about the new show on MTV about women facing decisions which seem (according to MTV anyway) best solved by abortion. I didn't watch the show because I knew right up front, it would totally annoy me.

Blogger ROSS DOUTHAT said although the view of MTV was, pro choice, the first show turned out to be "a heartbreaking spectacle, whatever your perspective."

He talks about shortage of babies available for adoption, partially because only a small percentage of single mothers are not keeping their babies. But Ross does add that "Since 1973, countless lives that might have been welcomed into families like Thernstrom’s — which looked into adoption, and gave it up as hopeless — have been cut short in utero instead."

Another thing, Ross brought up about the show was the euphemistic de-humanizing way the abortion industry talks about the baby. Expressions like "fetus" or "baby" are carefully avoided and the baby is referred to as "the pregnancy problem" which is just a "ball of cells".

However, apparently the pregnant woman on the show has realized it is a baby because she begins crying when her boyfriend calls her baby a "thing".

Sadly, she went ahead with the abortion because like many other women, she didn't see a way out. However, life is always the best way out and unfortunately, we often find out all too late that nothing is solved by the termination of a life - that only adds to the difficulty of a situation. One only has to listen to a small sampling of the thousands of women in the Silent no more awareness campaign to realize that abortion causes many more heartaches than going through with a pregnancy.

I did like Ross's conclusion though. It was:

"This is the paradox of America’s unborn. No life is so desperately sought after, so hungrily desired, so carefully nurtured. And yet no life is so legally unprotected, and so frequently destroyed."

Imagine that in a blog of the New York Times. As the old saying goes, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus". That is, this is not a bad way to start a new year, in which we hopefully will progress toward ending the mass execution of the unborn.

Details on the Bishop's decision about St Josephs Hospital

This video is the best I've seen for details - it should answer any questions:

News Conference at the Diocesan Pastoral Center, Dec. 21, 2010 from Diocese of Phoenix on Vimeo.

The Diocese of Phoenix held a news conference today announcing that St. Joseph's Hospital can no longer identify itself as Catholic.

The Bishop and the Hospital

In a controversial decision (at least according to the news services), Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted revoked his consent for St. Joseph’s Hospital to use the name Catholic because he cannot verify that the hospital will provide authentically Catholic health care in accord with the teachings of the Church.

Bishop launched a website to explain why.

His reasons are as follows:

• St. Joseph’s Hospital’s sanctioning and performing a direct abortion in late 2009,
and

• St. Joseph’s admitting to being in formal cooperation in abortions, sterilizations and contraceptive services administered through their Mercy Care Plan — a $2 billion endeavor covering about 368,000 of Arizona’s poor.

Let's talk about the first one because the second reason is a no brainer. NOTE: The Bishop never said that St Joseph's was not a good hospital or that you will not get good health care there. He merely wants to warn Catholics that it's no longer a Catholic hospital i.e. St Joseph's is not delivering care according to Catholic church teachings on life issues!

The concern of the doctors was not an immediate emergency with the lady with pulmonary hypertension (for whom the Sister approved an abortion) but rather that in a number of cases with this disorder, during childbirth, women have been observed going into respiratory shock leading to death a few days after delivery.

In other words, there was no medical emergency with the pregnancy but in the case of a high risk pregnancy, doctors will always suggest aborting the baby.

This is effectually saying that the mother's life is worth more than the baby's life. But the Catholic church disagrees. We do not rate one life as worth more than another, and we cannot sanction willful murder of one life to make life "less risky" for another human.

The bottom line may come from the Jesuit Spiritual Exercises which remind us that no immoral means justify any ends, even the best of ends.

As my Jesuit Spiritual advisor, Fr John Becker, would say in answer to ANY arguments in favor of abortion, "But it’s murder!"

It is interesting to note that when St Gianna Molla, a pediatrician was pregnant and developed a tumor, she was given the same advice by her doctors that the lady with pulmonary hypertension was given, to abort the child.

St Gianna told them whatever the case, save the baby. St Gianna developed septicemia after her delivery of a little girl (who is now, like her mother, a physician) and died about two weeks after delivery.

And now the church honors her AS St Gianna, a model for all of us. Her daughter whose life was saved by her mother's decision, was present when her mother was canonized by John Paul II.

Truly, as a mother, I would not want to buy my life with the life of my baby. If God wants me or the baby (or both) to live, He will allow it. If not, we, as Catholics do believe that His Divine Providence is a perfect plan.

That is why the Bishop decided what he did and I applaud his decision. He is courageous and standing up for Our Lord and what our church teaches.

Gender - is it really in the genes?

A recent "Mystery Diagnosis" program which featured a woman who did not mature, female-wise, throws some doubts on the idea of gender being in the genes as is often claimed by trans-gendered folks. A doctor consulted on her lack of female development, recommended surgery, saying her ovaries were non functional and had a high risk of being a factor in cancer later on. She was quickly taken into the hospital and the offending ovaries were removed or at least that's what she was told.

Before her surgery, she had developed looking more male than female with the exception of the bodily hair which she did not have. After surgery, she was given large amounts of estrogen and told she would have to stay on this for life but, as an adult, unsatisfied with the diagnosis, she began to dig and finally asked for her hospital records (which they gave her a hard time about releasing, first claiming she had never had surgery there). When a doctor in California examined her records, he found that she had been lied to. She had never had her ovaries removed because she never developed ovaries. Apparently, her "gonads" were non functional... the gonads secrete what is needed to either develop ovaries and a feminine shape or not. They had removed the gonads (the part about them being a prevalent spot for cancer was true). They probably had not told her because of the fear of throwing her in a position of considering "gender reassignment" but apparently, the reason she had not developed ovaries was because she, unlike females, had a "Y" chromosome!

What was surprising is despite being physically somewhat "masculine", she, after finding out she had a "Y" chromosome did NOT seek gender reassignment. She was attracted to men and found a mate who was crazy about her - they adopted 2 kids and have been married at least 18 years (the oldest kid is 18 and was adopted as a very young kid).

The interesting thing is she's totally happy as a woman and if gender reassignment would be understandable in anyone, it would be someone who is genetically, basically a man and yet, apparently this woman on the show had never even considered that - it seems totally off her radar screen.

One study, touted as the largest study on the issue, stated that one gene had been found which was a bit "longer" in females than males and "might cause" "feminisation" of the brain. This study was only of 112 male to female gender reassignment cases however, and is far from conclusively proving that there is anything genetically involved.

The Discovery Health "Mystery Diagnosis" case throws serious doubt into the need for "gender reassignment" in anyone - something, even knowing several "gender reassigned" folks, I have wondered about for years. None of the "gender reassigned" people I've known were really, truly the gender they claimed to be and in more closely interviewing several of them, it seemed the problem was more "inferiority complex" or bad memories from the past (one gender reassigned male to female had been an officer in Vietnam, ordered to blow up entire villages) or simply feeling that they more "belonged" to the female (or male) gender due to their interests, for example like one artist I knew or their sensitivity. For one transgendered male to female, I matched all her stories of childhood female likes with my boy likes - I was a tom boy, loving guns, using dolls to merely to be hostages in boy games and even not particularly desiring to be female when I grew up. I have to date, always hated make up (feels yucky on the skin so I have never worn it) and dresses (hamper movement and are not as comfortable as pants). I wear my hair very short and find that much more convenient than the alternative. And yet, I loved being a mother and love being a grandmother and am very attracted to males, particularly my good looking husband of 44 years duration.

So often we are basing gender on their likes (like boy toys or girl toys etc) and clothing or makeup or long hair, rather than deeper things, forgetting that in other societies it may be the men who wear dresses or makeup. It may be that gender is much deeper than even what we are genetically, like possibly, in the so called "soul" or "spirit".

If God wanted us to use artificial birth control ....

I keep wondering this - if God wanted us to use artificial birth control, why hasn't He helped us invent something which is both safe and effective? The family planning method which is safe and effective is "periodic abstinence" or "Billings Ovulation". And ironically, this is the method the Catholic Church recommends. You only have to abstain 5-7 days a month and the rest of the time, have a good time whenever you want. So why are 85% of Catholic Women using artificial birth control?

Natural Family Planning is one of the best kept secrets perhaps because no one makes a buck from it.

With the latest news of the study which found a significantly higher risk of both lung cancer and breast cancer in women taking pharmaceutical estrogen and progestin, perhaps Catholic women will have a change of heart.

I have personally observed young women on this medication to have severely crippling strokes and another friend on the medication who developed uterine cancer - she ended up dying in her early 60's with pancreatic cancer.

The Health Read News blog tells about the latest risks found in low dose birth control.