Tag: abortion

Post-Hobby Lobby, expect these cases in the courts

The Hobby Lobby decision actually hurts most people of faith.

personhoodThe Supreme Court agreed that some companies can refuse to cover contraception. Bestowing more personhood on entities devised to mitigate personal liability than on actual women baffles me, but there it is.

The next challenges to Obamacare coverage on religious grounds are listed right in the dissent by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg:

“Would the exemption…extend to employers with religiously grounded objections to blood transfusions (Jehovah’s Witnesses); antidepressants (Scientologists); medications derived from pigs, including anesthesia, intravenous fluids, and pills coated with gelatin (certain Muslims, Jews, and Hindus); and vaccinations[?]…Not much help there for the lower courts bound by today’s decision.”

“Approving some religious claims while deeming others unworthy of accommodation could be ‘perceived as favoring one religion over another,’ the very ‘risk the [Constitution’s] Establishment Clause was designed to preclude.”

The floodgate of cases is already opening.

I tend to agree with the notion that the Hobby Lobby decision actually hurts most people of faith.

Moreover, I find it disingenuous when I discover Hobby Lobby invested in numerous abortion and contraception products while claiming religious objection.

The root of this mess, of course, is health insurance, therefore health care, tied to employment. As Charles Turecek correctly noted:

Health care should be managed by the government, as it is in almost every advanced country in the world except the U.S. People shouldn’t be forced to take or keep lousy, low paid jobs because they are afraid of losing health benefits. Get corporations out of the health insurance business and force them to pay a fair share of taxes. That’s fair, isn’t it?

There are people, notably George Takei, who have suggested a boycott of the 500 stores of Hobby Lobby, which I would support. Though in fact, I’ve never been to a Hobby Lobby and didn’t realize until the day the decision was announced on June 30 that there one in Albany County. The argument against boycotting, that the employees of HL would be economically harmed, while theoretically true, is unconvincing. I imagine there will be some people who will actually seek out the stores because of the stance of the owners, the Greens, who I am fairly sure are unrelated to me.

Now as a result of the ruling, I DON’T really expect to see this, which is an obvious parody: SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS LITTLE CAESAR’S RIGHT TO FEED CHRISTIAN EMPLOYEES TO LIONS. Sometimes, the absurdist makes the point in the best way.

When does life end, and begin?

An individual is dead when he or she “has sustained either (1) irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions, or (2) irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem.

lifeanddeathI had this very good friend in college named Lynn, who I started thinking about recently after I read two disturbing news stories. We met in the autumn of 1975, and within a year of that, she and I had made a pact that if either of us were seriously injured or ill to the point where the quality of life was gone, then the other would pull the plug, literally, if necessary. This was at a time before living wills and health care proxies and the like were common.

I was reading this terrible story about 13-year-old Jahi McMath in Oakland, CA, who has been brain dead since December 12, “three days after she underwent a tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy.” She’s been moved to a facility in New York.

As the article notes:

While laymen tend to use the words “coma” and “brain dead” interchangeably, in medicine they mean very different things.

“Coma” is the broader term used to describe a prolonged state of unconsciousness, according to the Mayo Clinic. Outwardly, it resembles sleep. Doctors may sometimes purposefully put a patient into a coma to give the brain time to heal. Comas rarely last longer than a couple of weeks…; patients can fully regain consciousness or may transition from a coma into a persistent vegetative state.

Someone in a persistent vegetative state has lost most higher cognitive function, but his or her brain shows some activity. The patient may open their eyes or exhibit small movements, but cannot speak or respond to commands, according to the National Institutes of Health. Some patients can recover from this state, according to the NIH.

A persistent vegetative state would describe the infamous case of Terri Schiavo, a “legal struggle involving prolonged life support … that lasted from 1990 to 2005,” and managed to involve Congress and President George W. Bush.

If I were in that state, I’d be OK with my health care proxy pulling the plug on me, thank you.

Both these situations are different from brain death: According to the Uniform Determination of Death Act, an individual is dead when he or she “has sustained either (1) irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions, or (2) irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem.”

What that essentially means is that the brain, an extremely complex organ, no longer helps the patient function.

Thus, brain dead, as I understand it, means DEAD. You can keep the organs going for a bit artificially, so that out-of-town family can be by the bedside and ready themselves for the loss. The ventilator, at least in the short term, also makes it possible to harvest organs for transplant.

Yes, I will be an organ donor.

I was talking with a nurse friend of mine, who notes that when the ventilator keeps blood and oxygen pumping around the body artificially to keep the organs functioning, the skin looking pink and warm, even though the person is dead. But it cannot do this for an extended period before organs start to fail.

The other case I read about:

At 33, Marlise Munoz was brain-dead after collapsing on her kitchen floor in November from what appeared to be a blood clot in her lungs.

But as her parents and her husband prepared to say their final goodbyes in the intensive care unit at John Peter Smith Hospital [in Fort Worth, TX] and to honor her wish not to be left on life support, they were stunned when a doctor told them the hospital was not going to comply with their instructions. Mrs. Munoz was 14 weeks pregnant, the doctor said, and Texas is one of more than two dozen states that prohibit, with varying degrees of strictness, medical officials from cutting off life support to a pregnant patient.
…
Her case has become a strange collision of law, medicine, the ethics of end-of-life care and the issues swirling around abortion — when life begins and how it should be valued.

In the six weeks and counting, if she is in fact brain dead, one must assume organ deterioration, which certainly must affect a not yet viable fetus.

Two sad stories, to be sure. I was talking to my PCP (doctor) a few months ago, who notes that these extraordinary, “heroic” measures are factors that drive up the cost of health care for everyone.
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Related: How Doctors Die: It’s Not Like the Rest of Us, But It Should Be.

 

P is for Pope Francis I

Pope Francis has launches reform of Vatican bureaucracy, with a cleanup of the Vatican bank.

As I have noted, I’m a Protestant with an odd fascination with Catholic popes. The accession, in March 2013, of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina, 76, to become the 266th head of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, especially when his predecessor, Benedict XVI is still alive, intrigued me.

I admit that I’ve enjoyed that he’s made some in the church hierarchy nervous, when he faults the church’s focus on gays and abortion, though that feels more like optics rather than actual change to me. He may be right, though, when he describes ideological ‘Christians’ as a ‘serious illness’ within the Church.

More interesting to me is his suggestion if it’s understood correctly in a secular press, that it’s OK not to believe in God if you have a clean conscience. For a different perspective on what the Pope may have meant, read Anthony Velez, who is studying for the (Protestant) ministry.

Dr. Anne Hendershott, Professor, Franciscan University of Steubenville had perhaps the best take on the new pontiff in the Huffington Post:
Many traditional Catholics are beginning to feel–as Time magazine columnist, Mary Eberstadt recently suggested–that they have been “thrown under the popemobile.” …

They would be wrong. While Pope Francis has said that “we cannot insist only ” on these culture war issues, most have not noticed that he also added that “the teachings of the Church are clear…and I am a son of the Church…but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.”…

And, while traditionalists maintain that we still need to talk about them sometimes, an increasing number of progressives and traditionalists are beginning to acknowledge the possibility of finding a true common ground. If Pope Francis can help us reach that common ground, then his pontificate will truly be the “one we have been waiting for.”

A few years ago,…I titled a chapter in [my book Status Envy], “A Pope Away from a Perfect Life.” The chapter suggested that progressives have always believed that they were a “pope away” from a Catholic Church that would allow full reproductive rights, female ordination, and same-sex marriage.

It is likely that progressives–and traditionalists as well–will still have to wait a while for that perfect life. Besides, Christians know that we all remain “strangers in a strange land” here on earth. There will never be a “perfect life” here. But Pope Francis is simply asking that we all work together to make that life better for each other. Perhaps it is time to start.

Frankly, I’m more impressed that Pope Francis has launched the reform of Vatican bureaucracy, with a cleanup of the Vatican bank. In September, “the bank released its first-ever financial report (it is doing quite well, making $117 million last year, more than quadruple the 2011 figure. This year’s number is projected to be substantially lower partly because of the costs of the transparency campaign).” Now, to quote someone else, THIS is a change I can believe in.

This action, tied with his simpler lifestyle, more in keeping with Scripture than some German bishops have been living, gives me some hope that some positive permanent change might come from this papacy.


ABC Wednesday – Round 13

K is for Kill

Surely, self-defense is often raised as a defense of war, just as it would be for an individual under attack.


I was attempting to have a theological conversation with my mother a few years back. She demurred, “I just follow the Ten Commandments.” Yeah, I said, but what do they mean? Take that one that says, “Thou shalt not kill?” How does one interpret that in today’s world?

For instance, according to some sources, “the Hebrew word that was used in this case for ‘kill’ (or murder) was the somewhat rare term rasah… Although its exact meaning has defied explanation, in other contexts it could refer to killing that was inherently evil… However, the same term could also have applied to unintentional manslaughter…, blood vengeance…, the legal execution of a criminal …”

Indeed, most iterations of Scripture now use the word “murder” rather than “kill” in Exodus 20:13, which I interpret as a more legalistic term.

This study suggests five topics for discussion, so I thought I’d touch on the same, though there are plenty more.

Suicide: if killing anyone is considered a sin against God, by its very nature, some consider suicide to be an irreparable sin. Yet in legal terms, one mitigates for “diminished capacity.” Would God do any less? The only suicide I can recall in the Bible was by Judas Iscariot, after turning Jesus over to the authorities.

Capital Punishment: “An eye for an eye,” the Old Testament says, but Jesus seems to modify that. Many, including me, feel quite uncomfortable with the state executing others in their name. Some even consider it murder by the state (rasah), and there are Biblical references to that being the case unless the guilt was absolutely certain.

Euthanasia: the miracle of medicine allow people to be kept alive much longer than we once thought possible. But what of the quality of that life? And certainly, one can distinguish between stopping doing everything possible to let go, and aiding the process, something most U.S. states would consider a form of murder.

War: certainly many wars were fought and recorded in Biblical times. How does that inform what WE should do? Some were expecting Jesus to be a great warrior in the military sense and were disappointed by this “Prince of Peace” fellow. And are there just wars and unjust wars? This has been argued for millennia. Surely, self-defense is often raised as a defense of war, just as it would be for an individual under attack.

Abortion: when does life begin? One would be hard-pressed to argue against the notion that at least the potential for life commences when a zygote is created. But these can be formed fairly frequently and don’t usually attach to the womb to grow. This discussion also is addressed in the stem cell debate and even some forms of birth control.

These are complicated issues. What do YOU think?

Unrighteous anger as murder?

ABC Wednesday – Round 7

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