The ACLU apparently believes in freedom for their pet causes, such as the free aborting of babies, but not religious freedom for Catholics.
I read on LifeSite:
ACLU targets Phoenix bishop for opposing hospital abortion
by Kathleen Gilbert
NEW YORK, December 16, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The American Civil Liberties Union has attacked Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix after news broke this week that the bishop had taken further steps against a Catholic hospital that had performed a direct abortion. [Apparently the ACLU doesn’t think that the Catholic bishops has the right, under the laws of the USA, to enjoy the civil liberty of exercise of his religion and to act as a Catholic bishop.]
Reacting to the latest clash, Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, staff attorney with the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, [I wonder how many people they defend who choose to be pro-life?] said the staff of the St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center “did the right thing” by killing an unborn child late last year to avert aggravation of the mother’s pulmonary hypertension. [That child will now never been able to enjoy civil liberties.]
“A hospital’s first responsibility must be to protect the health of its patient,” [the unborn child was also a patient whose life was in danger] said Kolbi-Molinas in a statement Wednesday. “Religiously affiliated hospitals are not exempt from federal laws that protect a patient’s right to receive emergency care, [get this…] and cannot invoke their religious status to jeopardize the health and lives of pregnant women.” [Word choice Hell would be proud of!]
The pro-abortion wing of the advocacy group [= ACLU] had already written to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in July of this year urging them to investigate Catholic hospitals that refuse to perform direct abortions as a matter of Catholic moral principle.
[…]
Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, s. 2, 71–78
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So what exactly is the aclu all concerned about? In this case, religious status was indeed invoked, to, kill the fetus! Precisely the result they would dictate as “doing the right thing”. This is a big publicity ploy for them to demonstrate how anti-Catholic they really are, and, an invitation to the haters to, get on their bandwagon (can anyone say “donate”)? Where was the aclu at my secular college when I wrote a newspaper article about pro life and forthwith endured the open, unabashed wrath (shouting) of my (both male and female) professors? Wasn’t that a commercial transaction? Did they have a copyright or ownership rights on “learning” and “education”. Certainly the aclu couldn’t care less. The aclu’s not-for-profit lawyer is making her dramatic plea to the aclu donors to justify her paycheck.
ACLU = PP = Komen = abortion/pill contraceptives (which are class 1 carcinogens)
It’s all a giant money cycle of the NWO. Objective: population-controlled, global luciferianism ruled by quasi-benign (careful!) elite class.
This is a fight they really don’t want to have. If Catholic hospitals were to close their doors, the current system would collapse upon itself. Much like Catholic schools, the public sector cannot sustain the needs of Americans. So while this is a nice show the ACLU is putting on, their threats are more of a straw man.
God bless Bishop Olmsted.
If this involved a muslim hospital (not sure if there are any in the US) the ACLU wouldn’t let out a peep. They value their heads more than their principles. By the way, the ACLU lawyer has a name which indicates she could be a Catholic, albeit just another fake one, in the same vein as Nasty Pelosi.
ACLU: The Anti Catholic Litigation Union
It’s really quite simple.
If you go to a Mormon Hospital, don’t expect you’re going to get a blood transfusion
If you go to a Jewish Hospital, don’t expect you’ll receive a pig heart transplant or be fed pork and lobster lunches, no matter how much you bribe the attendants.
If you go to a Christian Science Hospital, don’t expect that they’ll do anything other than pray for you.
If you go to a Catholic Hospital, don’t expect you’re going to get an abortion.
When you enter the hospital, you already you what you’ve signed up for. If you go to a Mormon hospital and receive a blood transfusion, or go into a Jewish hospital and receive a pig heart transplant, or you go into a Christian Science hospital and they actually try to cure you, your rights have been violated (e.g. fraud has been committed, ….), even if the intervention was made to save your life.
The ACLU doesn’t have a leg to stand on, especially when they have fought for “Do not resuscitate” contracts. The only thing that they can claim is that the average patient doesn’t know the Catholic position on abortion. Fair enough. Force Catholic hospitals to put up a pro-life signs and posters outside the hospital and inside…big enough to make sure that anyone in the area knows that this hospital values life….And force them to advertise everywhere, especially in the universities. Make it impossible for people not to know what Catholics believe.
I’m sure the ACLU would be satisfied with this.:-)
The temptation to invoke Shakespeare is just too great.
God bless the Bishop.
Here’s a thought – maybe if we start acting like the Muslims and simply kill the people that disagree with us, maybe they’ll shut up. Maybe? Probably not. Bad idea. Oh well. Still, it’s time for Catholics to stop being so docile and stand up for the Truth. We have It, we might as well act like it.
@anilwang – I totally agree.
This is OUR BISHOP!!! The DEFINITION of backbone and grace at the same time!
Ya’ll do know what ACLU stands for, right? Anti-Catholic Litigation Union. Nothing surprising here. They oppose almost every point of Catholic Church teaching.
\\If you go to a Mormon Hospital, don’t expect you’re going to get a blood transfusion\\
I think you’ve confused Mormons with Jehovah’s False Witnesses.
\\If you go to a Jewish Hospital, don’t expect you’ll receive a pig heart transplant…\\
As a matter of fact, halakha allows the implantation of a porcine valve in a human heart; it’s considered necessary to save a human life.
I imagine Bishop Olmstead is up to this challenge.
We do have several bishops in this country with the spirit of St. John Fisher. He is one of them.
If the anti-Catholic-litigation-union wants to sue the Catholic hospitals, then let them shut down and then ‘sisters’ like Keehan might not be able to draw their million dollar salaries. Naw, they will just continue to work for the secular systems with no moral to contend with.
this is part of a well laid out strategy to destroy/remove the Catholic from Catholic hospitals. The ACLU for years has been suing small hospitals for not doing elective tubal ligations because it was inconvenient for the mother, and several states have laws that mandate giving the “morning after pill” in the emergency room to “rape” victims.
In this case, the danger is that mom could easily have deteriorated after an abortion or a delivery (the main danger is acute respiratory failure postpartum ).
The three medical choices were
1) abort her (take 70 years of life from the kid to give mom 3 years of life, or maybe precipitating respiratory failure and death post abortion).
2): carry her to 28 weeks and deliver her, knowing that the delivery might cause death.
3) if she is that bad, refer her for a heart lung transplant. This is the only way to cure mom, and gives the kid a 30 percent chance of life.
Finally, the choice is legally mom’s, but for such a high risk patient, she should have been cared for at a university hospital. In other words, they should have transferred her to the nearest university and let them discuss the pros and cons with her, and voila, no Catholic problem.
Indeed, there is a good argument that the hospital involved should not have cared for this complicated patient, since they could not offer “state of the art” or experimental treatments.
I mean, it wasn’t as if this was the only hospital or that the abortion was an emergency. This was in Phoenix, where transfer could have easily and quickly been done, and should have been done.
It makes no sense for this person from the ACLU to be going after the bishop. If the bishop revokes the hospital’s Catholic status, there will be one less hospital who could invoke its religious status to jeopardize the health and lives of pregnant women.
“The pro-abortion wing of the advocacy group had already written to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in July of this year urging them to investigate Catholic hospitals that refuse to perform direct abortions as a matter of Catholic moral principle.”
And what are they going to “investigate” … whether the patients are getting nutritious and tasty meals? No, no, no, my dears; the word you’re looking for is “persecute”.
The great challenge in the legal battle will be to convince the lawyers & judges of the merits & nuances of the Catholic teaching on abortion.
I am stunned by the level of moral, philosophical & theological ignorance of many lawyers regarding Catholic teaching – or the merits of any system of religious belief. Otherwise highly educated persons display a fifth grade understanding of religion, and are openly dismissive of it because of this ignorance.
The Pew Forum study on religious knowledge showed that atheists know basic theological terms better than the average believer. I know from personal experience speaking with people in the highest levels of the legal & academic world, that that beyond knowledge of those basic terms their understanding is as deep as a rain puddle.
That such people will sit in judgment of a Catholic hospital disturbs me greatly.
TORCH 621: Well, out with it…Which Shakespeare quote did you mean?
Wouldn’t it be hoot if the ACLU were counter-sued for trying to impinge on the Bishop’s religious liberty? Pro-life, pro-bono attorneys, anyone??
When was the last time that they stood up for the civil liberties of pro-lifers? Or of the unborn? Or of Prohibitionists? Or of those who want to eliminate no-fault divorce?
Or, when did they last accuse any non-Christian religious group of trying to impose their morality? Don’t Orthodox synagogues as well as mosques require women to sit apart from the men? What sexism! What barbarity! Why, people like that probably believe in things like Absolute Right and Wrong, and everyone knows that’s bad whenever it says anything not related to increasing drug use, divorce, and abortion!
Aren’t the Sunday “blue laws” against selling alcohol just an extension of Calvinist ‘austerity’? I mean, stop and think of the fallout from this delicious hypothetical: imagine a Catholic governor imposing a Lenten tax on candy and a Friday tax on meat of beast or fowl. The ACLU’s collective head would explode.
Your Excellency, my prayers are with you!