Would you let a loved one receive care at a Catholic hospital?

In late 2009, a critically ill woman with severe pulmonary hypertension had an abortion at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix. She was 11 weeks pregnant, and doctors determined that continuing the pregnancy would kill her. Therefore, the hospital ethics committee allowed the abortion to proceed.

Now, a nun on the ethics committee has been excommunicated and transferred to a different position at the hospital. Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted, head of the Phoenix Diocese, issued this statement: “I am gravely concerned by the fact that an abortion was performed several months ago in a Catholic hospital in this diocese. I am further concerned by the hospital’s statement that the termination of a human life was necessary to treat the mother’s underlying medical condition. An unborn child is not a disease. While medical professionals should certainly try to save a pregnant mother’s life, the means by which they do it can never be by directly killing her unborn child. The end does not justify the means.”

The hospital operates under a medical directive stating that “abortion is defined as the directly intended termination of pregnancy, and it is not permitted under any circumstances – even to save the life of the mother.” A Catholic bioethicist has been quoted as saying that “a pregnancy cannot be terminated as a means to an end of saving the life of a mother who is suffering from a different condition.” (When asked if the church position prefers the mother and child to die, rather than sparing the life of one of them, he said the hope is that both would survive.)

Given this position, what would you do if your loved one was ill or injured and an ambulance wanted to bring him or her to a Catholic hospital? Would you allow that, or ask to be taken to a different facility? Should this type of thing be allowed by the state, particularly if a patient is not of the Catholic faith?