ACLU Sues Bishops Over Abortion in Catholic Hospitals

ACLU Sues Bishops Over Abortion in Catholic Hospitals December 3, 2013

I remember the days when pro abortion people were pro choice.

I mean, actually pro choice in that they didn’t push to force everyone else on the planet to participate in their “choice.” That has devolved, along with most of the rest of the culture, into a caricature of itself.

I also remember the days when the American Civil Liberties Union concerned itself with civil liberties. Sadly, it has, along with so much of the rest of our society, become a caricature of itself. The ACLU has increasingly become all about using  the Constitution as an instrument of coercion and the power of government as a means of forcing people to do things against their conscience.

A case in point is the recent lawsuit filed by the ACLU against the nation’s Roman Catholic Bishops. The lawsuit seeks to force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions under the guise of good medical practice.

The lawsuit appears to be based on a single case concerning a woman in her 18th week of pregnancy. According to the vague descriptions I read on the ACLU web site, the woman’s membranes evidently ruptured during the 18th week of her pregnancy and the ACLU has decided the hospital erred by not referring her for an abortion. Ipso fatso, as Archie Bunker used to say, it’s time to make some new Constitutional law.

I have experience with a situation like this from one of my own pregnancies. The statement on the ACLU web site doesn’t give enough detail about the medical situation for me to have an opinion about this woman’s medical care. But I am here to tell you — as is my 23-year-old, 6’3″ hulk of a son — that if the ACLU is claiming that ruptured membranes in the second trimester of pregnancy are an automatic reason for an abortion, or that it means the baby has no chance of survival, they’ve got their heads stuck up something or the other.

That’s just not true.

I don’t think this is a legitimate lawsuit. I certainly don’t think it’s a case of violation of civil liberties.

I think it’s the ACLU, trying to coerce the whole wide world to live by what has become their actual credo (which has nothing to do with civil liberties) that a certain slim slice of American thinking should be not only pre-eminent, but enforced and coerced by the government on everyone, everywhere.

All these attacks on the Church and religious freedom are obviously coming from a playbook of sorts. From forcing people to bake cake and take photos against their will, to suing the bishops for refusing to sanction abortions, the message is the same: Government force should be used to coerce people to violate their faith.

It’s an old idea. The Romans pioneered it against Christians when they demanded that Christians bow down to idols or die. Nebuchadnezzar got some of the same action with his golden idol and Shadrack, Meshack and Abednego.

There is, as Ecclesiastes tells us, nothing new under the sun. Christians today, like Christians in the past, are being threatened with government reprisal if they won’t kiss Ceasar’s ring.

Nebuchadezzar, Ceasar, the American courts and the ACLU: It’s all the same lie told by the same dark lord.

From The New York Times:

The American Civil Liberties Union announced on Monday that it had filed a lawsuit against the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops, arguing that their anti-abortion directives to Catholic hospitals hamper proper care of pregnant women in medical distress, leading to medical negligence.

The suit was filed in federal court in Michigan on Friday on behalf of a woman who says she did not receive accurate information or care at a Catholic hospital there, exposing her to dangerous infections after her water broke at 18 weeks of pregnancy.

In an unusual step, she is not suing the hospital, Mercy Health Partners in Muskegon, but rather the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Its ethical and religious directives, the suit alleges, require Catholic hospitals to avoid abortion or referrals, “even when doing so places a woman’s health or life at risk.”

The suit opens a new front in the clash over religious rights and medical care.


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