Sister Margaret's Choice by Kristof/New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/27/opinion/27kristof.html?emc=eta1

"Sister Margaret was a senior administrator of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix. A 27-year-old mother of four arrived late last year, in her third month of pregnancy. According to local news reports and accounts from the hospital and some of its staff members, the mother suffered from a serious complication called pulmonary hypertension. That created a high probability that the strain of continuing pregnancy would kill her..."

..."Sister Margaret was a member of that committee. She declined to discuss the episode with me, but the bishop of Phoenix, Thomas Olmsted, ruled that Sister Margaret was “automatically excommunicated” because she assented to an abortion.."

“The mother’s life cannot be preferred over the child’s,” the bishop’s communication office elaborated in a statement."

"Let us just note that the Roman Catholic hierarchy suspended priests who abused children and in some cases defrocked them but did not normally excommunicate them, so they remained able to take the sacrament..."

...I heard about Sister Margaret from an acquaintance who is a doctor at the hospital. After what happened to Sister Margaret, he doesn’t dare be named, but he sent an e-mail to his friends lamenting the excommunication of “a saintly nun”..

"...When a hierarchy of mostly aging men pounce on and excommunicate a revered nun who was merely trying to save a mother’s life, the church seems to me almost as out of touch as it was in the cruel and debauched days of the Borgias in the Renaissance."

Sister Margaret's example of Christ-like compassion for the mother in this difficult choice has obviously touched the hearts of the doctors and staff of St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix. A saintly nun, part of the ethical team, makes a choice to save a mother's life. You can be sure that Sister Margaret would not have been excommunicated if a woman bishop or if women were decision-makers in the diocese of Phoenix or anywhere else for that matter. It is time for women to save church! Brava, Sister Margaret, for your courage! Bridget Mary Meehan, sfcc