According to a WFMJ article, a Catholic medical organization that operates hospitals across multiple states will back doctors who perform abortions in emergency situations.
With locations in Ohio, Virginia, South Carolina, and Kentucky, Bon Secours Mercy Health is a nonprofit Catholic healthcare organization with its headquarters located in Cincinnati, Ohio. On its website, BSMH lists “to safeguard the sacredness of life” as one of its core principles regarding human dignity.
It is never acceptable to kill a child in order to save their mother.
WFMJ asserts that BSMH does not accept abortions that “are medically essential to preserve the life of a mother,” regardless of the profession. Reporting appears to confirm a vague statement from Mercy Health.
“Like many other national health systems, ours operates across several states and complies with local regulations in each of those jurisdictions. Despite the complexity of the political landscape, our mission requires us to treat everyone with compassion. When medical professionals and teams prioritize patient care in emergency situations and act in excellent faith, adhering to hospital regulations and medical standards of care, they can count on Bon Secours Mercy Health’s support. We comply with EMTALA regulations and encourage physicians to follow them. We also acknowledge the continued dedication of our medical staff and clinicians to providing exceptional and caring patient care.”
Mercy Health “has backed our clinicians’ strong medical judgment and decision-making since our inception,” a spokesman also told WFMJ. According to Becker’s Hospital Review, BSMH has never performed an “elective abortion” and will never do so.
That being said, the Catholic Catechism does not acknowledge the existence of any kind of “medically required” exemption to the church’s prohibition on abortion. Rather, it characterizes “direct abortion” as “a moral evil” and any abortion “intended either as an end or a means” as “gravely antithetical to moral law.” Participating in abortion procurement results in excommunication.
More than thirty years ago, in an EWTN piece on the subject, Rev. E. M. Robinson, O. P., stated that an “infant may never be slain on the excuse of preserving the mother’s life.”
CatholicVote argued that BSMH is “betraying” Catholic ideals by occasionally performing abortions. Additionally, it restated the Catholic teaching that abortion “is never morally justifiable.”
Maureen Richmond, Mercy Health’s vice president of external communications, explained to Blaze News that BSMH only allows “indirect abortions” that regrettably result from “treatments, and medications that have direct purpose for the cure of a serious pathological condition of a pregnant woman,” in accordance with the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services issued by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Mercy Health “does not and will not perform direct or elective abortions,” Richmond reiterated.
