Finally, the Catholic Church gets it. They used to say every sperm is sacred, every ovum a saint. But now, finally, they are coming around, even filing legally binding statements that embryos aren’t people. Ah, but you know there’s a catch, donchya?
Colorado Independent — Lori Stodghill was 31-years old, seven-months pregnant with twin boys and feeling sick when she arrived at St. Thomas More hospital in Cañon City on New Year’s Day 2006. She was vomiting and short of breath and she passed out as she was being wheeled into an examination room. Medical staff tried to resuscitate her but, as became clear only later, a main artery feeding her lungs was clogged and the clog led to a massive heart attack. Stodghill’s obstetrician, [She] died at the hospital less than an hour after she arrived and her twins died in her womb. …But when it came to mounting a defense in the Stodghill case, Catholic Health’s lawyers effectively turned the Church directives on their head. …
Instead, they are arguing state law protects doctors from liability concerning unborn fetuses on grounds that those fetuses are not persons with legal rights. …
As Jason Langley, an attorney with Denver-based Kennedy Childs, argued in one of the briefs he filed for the defense, the court “should not overturn the long-standing rule in Colorado that the term ‘person,’ as is used in the Wrongful Death Act, encompasses only individuals born alive. Colorado state courts define ‘person’ under the Act to include only those born alive. Therefore Plaintiffs cannot maintain wrongful death claims based on two unborn fetuses.”
Like the head gangster in Casino said, the dollars, that’s all the bosses care about. Always the fucking dollars.
So… The Church claims, quite loudly, that every fertilized egg is a sacred human life, except when it the Church might be legally liable for that position?
So clear as mud and a typically ‘fistikated feealogical argumentum’ from the Catholic crows…
“A person is a person except when they are not”
It is called wiggle room.
As such the device is triggered when they are liable…or when they are bullying…it is black and white…simples!
To be fair, I don’t think this is the Pope’s position. If it was I’d be the first to jump at a quote like that.
Fwliw, my sympathies for Stodghill’s surviving family and friends.
The Church™ did choose an appropriately named law firm for this case…
I have to hope that the discovery process includes questions about whether the traditional fresh-corpse rituals were performed one time or three – and what the ecclesiastical protocols demand in such cases. (At the risk of provoking teabagger jingoists who resist all mention of law outside the US, I’d even want to know whether the Church™ does accept such liability in nations which accept its “life begins at conception” doctrines.)
=8)-DX @ 3
The Catholic Church is by definition the extension of the Popes foibles.
I certainly do not think for one minute the popeness accepts that definition but they have screwed themselves…this could well be there undoing.
To claim that a foetus is not classed as a human being by the council of ostensibly the RCC kind of pushes the point into a situation of legal precedent.
They have agreed this is their position…’A foetus is not a human being’ …as such they cannot subsequently argue it is not…otherwise they are in contempt of court for the earlier court case where they argued it was not.
They argue it…it is de facto their position whether the poop and all his factious angels agree or not…it is now part of case law I believe although I am sure they are looking for wiggle room, but it seems tight enough to choke ’em!
Even the RCC is a cherrypicker.
The church (spit) should’ve argued that an emergency c-section would’ve endangered the life of the mother, and that’s why they didn’t do it.
Randomfactor 2 7
Yeah but… should have… would have… could have…is an opportunity long gone!
This argument they decided to use was ill conceived from their POV, probably as a knee jerk panic reaction they seem so familiar with these days as they stagger from one humiliation to the next.
They have no time to formulate coherency….their church is imploding from the revelations and dumb stupidity that is now pouring out through the cracks and holes in their scam.
This one might be the one that finally screws them to the grave stone of mythical beliefs.
They have made the attempt to save their face and have lost their major morality structure instead.
Oh dear…how sad…never mind!
It’s just the American conservative philosophy at work: All life is precious, unless it costs us money. In which case, fuck that shit.
A new dance step for the RCC – Mittens Flop.
My argument was with the “they”. This was not the RCC, or the Pope, or a bishop’s conference. This was lawyers for a (non-profit) run Hospital with so-called “Catholic values”.
Lawyers for anyone are supposed to be first and foremost concerned with what the law is. What their clients, or their client’s loosely affiliated religion thinks *should* be the law is irrelevant. Their aim is to convince the judge and reduce their client’s losses as much as possible.
Looking at widespread catholic use of contraceptives, catholics who have abortions, premarital sex, etc… The problem has never been practical situations, it’s been systematic eclesiastical and dogmatic nonsense.
I agree with your points…
It was indeed counsel acting on behalf of a Catholic polluted hospital.
But and this is the crux…if it is argued in a court of law that a foetus is not a human being, and the client of the lawyers involved are a Catholic hospital…and if their defence is accepted that indeed a foetus is not a human being…the hospital can hardly withhold treatment based on the previous premise that a foetus was a human being.
They have tied themselves to that defence…they cannot plead one way in a court and then plead another in practice.
I really think a catholic hospital pleading this case in this way…is the gap in their armour, because if there is a fundamental difference in how the RCC views reproduction and the hospital views it they have a serious incompatibility.
The hospital cannot now use the excuse of the ‘every sperm is sacred’ mantra!
They can certainly use other trumped up gobbly gook to delay or obfuscate in related matters of treatment but sooner rather then later it will become untenable…but the main prop they have thrown away so an inch at a time they fall back..with no likelihood of regaining the lost ground.
Soon it will be a rout…because this nonsense is desperation incarnate.
Much as I would love this to be the church’s position, it is not. Their lawyers have argued that under Colorado law, the fetus’s are not human and therefore, under Colorado law, the plaintiff’s are not eligible to collect damages as if the fetus were human.
That’s a different position from saying that they (the defendants) don’t believe the fetus is human. Fortunately, they do acknowledge that colorado’s law supercedes their beliefs in a lawsuit.
While IANAL, I sincerely doubt you are either. However, I feel fairly confident* in stating that a pleading in a civil case is almost certainly not going to be binding in future cases unless a settlement/decision explicitly binds a party in an action.
*Argument from Attorney, aka my partner in the next room.