FIrst, prayers for BIshop Mengeling of Lansing, still serving at the age of 76, just diagnosed with bladder cancer.

Speaking of Michigan bishops, they have issued a statement urging immigration reform.

Questions are raised and confusion surrounds the actions in bishops in Wisconsin and Connecticut, Catholic hospitals, rape victims and emergency contraception:

Lifesite news provides some theological context.

The fundamental questions revolves around the state requiring hospitals to provide emergency contraception to rape victims, with no exceptions for Catholic hospitals.

The Wisconsin Catholic Conference links to all the testimony and statements they have made in relation to the issue, and there it comes down to the pregnancy test. The WCC says Wisconsin Catholic hospitals have been providing emergency contraception if a pregnancy test shows the victim is not pregnant. They dropped opposition to the bill after this possibility for Catholic hospitals was retained.

The Connecticut bishops’s argument was similar, but it seems to me the test they wanted to proffer was an ovulation test, not a pregnancy test. The previous link takes you to an op-ed from David Haas of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, who writes:

Again, the Catholic Church permits the use of medication to prevent fertilization. A simple test on the fluids collected will tell doctors whether the medication they are considering administering will have its desired effect. If ovulation has already occurred, the drug will not have its anti-ovulation effect. Why, medically speaking, would one even administer a drug before determining with a simple test whether the drug will have the desired effect?

This new Connecticut legislation forbids the administration of a simple test to guide the physician in the treatment of the victim. Doctors should be objecting to such legislation since it could prevent them from acting in accord with their best medical judgment.

The debate surrounding this legislation was not over emergency contraception. That had already been permitted in Catholic hospitals. The debate was about abortion. That is the truth of the matter, even if the proponents of the Plan B legislation did not want to use that language.

The proponents of Plan B wanted the drug administered regardless of the effects it might have. This is something the Catholic bishops could not allow. The supporters of the bill offered what was supposed to be a compromise: "Look, let a third party who is not an employee of the hospital come in and give the drug, which may cause an abortion." The bishops of Connecticut concluded it would be wrong for a Catholic hospital to help a third party do what the Catholic hospital itself considered immoral. Is this so difficult to understand?

The issue now is whether the state will force Catholic hospitals to help third parties do what the hospitals cannot in good conscience do.

During the debate, the bishops of Connecticut were portrayed as being out of step with the rest of the church. It was maintained that the bishops of several states did not object to the law requiring the administration of the drug with no testing as to the effect it would have. That simply is not true. The bishops of every state but New York fought the sort of law that is being advanced in the Connecticut legislature. New York, for some reason, was the only state where Catholic lobbyists had no objection to such a law.

Despite the appearance of compromise, it was the Connecticut legislature that showed itself to be inflexible. Colorado recently passed such a law and provided conscience and religious exemptions. The legislators of Connecticut might learn some tolerance from those of Colorado.

Bishop Lori of Bridgeport, who, as it turns out, now has a blog, adds:

About 50 to 60 victims of sexual assault are served at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Bridgeport each year. They receive respect, kindness, and compassionate care that includes listening to their stories, counseling, and the administration of a powerful contraceptive known as “Plan B”. The Church, which opposes contraception under normal circumstances, allows it in the tragic and gravely unjust case of a sexual assault. Like all hospitals, Catholic hospitals administer a pregnancy test prior to giving the Plan B medication. Our Catholic hospitals in Connecticut also administer (in one and the same procedure) an ovulation test. In the case of a just-fertilized ovum, the Plan B medication functions not as a contraceptive but as an abortifacient by preventing the implantation of the fertilized ovum in the wall of the uterus. In other words, our Catholic hospitals, because of their respect for all human life, will not risk inducing an early abortion.

But the risk is remote. To my knowledge, no Catholic hospital in Connecticut has ever denied an assault victim Plan B – a medication that can be readily obtained over-the-counter. In addition to providing this medication, Catholic hospitals reach out to assault victims and their families with counseling, spiritual guidance, and many other forms of assistance. St. Vincent’s brings to this ministry the special gentleness and love for the poor that characterized its patron, St. Vincent de Paul.

As of this writing, however, the long arm of the law is about to reach into our Catholic hospitals to stay their hand. Under legislation which seems likely to be passed by the Connecticut General Assembly in the next few days, the four Catholic hospitals in our State will be forbidden to administer the ovulation test. In spite of their record of compassionate care, Catholic hospitals in Connecticut will be legally restrained from learning information about a group of patients they have always served so well. For that matter, this legislation will deny to the patient herself information about her own body that she may wish to know, thus hindering informed consent.

Physicians and other health care professionals now face the prospect of the State of Connecticut’s preventing them from performing a specific medical test; they are about to be commanded to know less not more about their patients. And principle of religious liberty – acknowledged and guaranteed by both the Federal and the Connecticut Constitutions – is about to be trampled as the State runs rough-shod over the ethical standards that our Catholic hospitals have a God-given right to maintain. So with the stroke of a pen, the Legislature is poised to deny individual freedom, provider freedom, and religious freedom here in the Constitution State.

The issue in the Connecticut bill is third parties – the proposed "compromise" calls for a third party to come into the Catholic hospital to administer the Plan B medication, and the hospitals would be forbidden from administering the ovulation test.

(For a party of the first part that has been, in general rabidly against any state involvement in the abortion process and has scorned at the PBA which tells doctors which medical procedures they may or may not do, this is…well…expected, I guess.)

From an editorial in the Catholic Transcript by Deacon Tom Davis:

The Connecticut protocol identifies the likely mode of Plan B operation by testing for the presence of leuteinizing hormone (LH), which, if positive, indicates that a woman has entered the LH surge of her cycle. Once a woman enters LH surge, ovulation is highly likely to occur, regardless of the administration of Plan B. LH surge is measured by a simple urine dip test. The onset of LH surge may be any-where from 12 to 24 hours prior to actual ovulation, and a positive LH test does not indicate how far into the LH surge a woman is. Nonetheless, what is clear is that a positive LH surge test negates the likelihood, previously existent, that Plan B will suppress ovulation, and its new principal mode of action is most likely that of impeding implantation. But even in that case, Connecticut Catholic hospitals will inform a victim about Plan B and its availability at other locations and will facilitate transfer of the patient to a secular hospital emergency room. Since there is a secular hospital emergency room within 10 minutes of every Catholic hospital in the State, it is evident that no compelling government interest supports the burden on religious freedom embedded in the pending legislation. In fact, whatever government interest may exist can be met by such transfers or by a mobile intervention team that can provide Plan B to a rape victim off-site of Catholic hospitals.

Lifesite has its take:

The bishops are basing their decisions on an interpretation of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops document: Ethical and Religious Directives (E.R.D.) for Catholic Health Care Services which states at no. 36 with regard to a woman who has been raped:  "If after appropriate testing, there is no evidence that conception has occurred already, she may be treated with medications that would prevent ovulation, sperm capacitation the process by which spermatozoa in the ampullary portion of a uterine tube become capable of going through the acrosome reaction and fertilizing an oocyte."  However, the document adds: "It is not permissible, however, to initiate or to recommend treatments that have as their purpose or direct effect the removal, destruction, or interference with the implantation of a fertilized ovum." (see the document: http://www.usccb.org/bishops/directives.shtml )

The only public Vatican statement on the morning after pill condemns its use outright.  The Pontifical Academy for Life states that "the absolute unlawfulness of abortifacient procedures also applies to distributing, prescribing and taking the morning-after pill. All who, whether sharing the intention or not, directly co-operate with this procedure are also morally responsible for it." (see the full Vatican statement here: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_academies/acdli… )

The problem lies not so much in theology but in science.  What the US Conference document is aiming at is preventing conception after rape, rather than abortion.  However, pregnancy occurs not at implantation of the unborn child in the uterus, but at fertilization which can occur within minutes after intercourse.  Further, normal pregnancy tests based on a hormone known as hcG is accurate only if a woman is at least one week pregnant by the time of the test, since the body’s chemical changes resulting from pregnancy which are picked up by the devices must be at a detectable level. This takes at least five days rather than minutes or hours.

What I remain confused about is the fate of the third-party solution in the CT bill. Clarifications?

And in Mexico:

The Archdiocese of Mexico City has warned health-care workers that they could be excommunicated for performing abortions.

In the fact of new legislation making the procedure legally available in the capital district, the archdiocese issued a statement urging all Catholics, and others of good will, "not to be responsible for this abominable act." The statement went on to remind health-care workers that "they can invoke their human right to conscientious objection."

The Church statement appeared likely to cause a showdown with local government officials, who insisted that doctors would be obliged to perform abortions. Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, a strong supporter of the new abortion law, said that Catholic doctors could not be exempt. "Doctors must adhere to the law notwithstanding their religious convictions," the mayor said. "We have to serve the public," he insisted, adding that doctors must do "what the law orders them to do."