Articles by Robin Peterson

Source: In These Times

The swift excommunication of a nun for approving an abortion has triggered a debate over church doctrine—and raised questions about whether Catholic hospitals routinely break federal law.

Earlier this year, Sister Margaret McBride was excommunicated from the Catholic Church for approving an abortion needed to save a woman’s life. An administrator at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix, McBride was part of the hospital’s ethics committee that decided in November 2009 to allow a 27-year-old woman with pulmonary hypertension, or high blood pressure in the arteries that supply blood to the lungs, to terminate her 11-week pregnancy. Due to her condition, the woman would almost certainly have died without the abortion. read more