Connecticut Catholic Hospitals: Buying into Pro-Death Verbal Engineering?
Wed, 03 Oct 2007
Many are still wondering why the Connecticut Catholic hospitals changed their position this week to allow emergency contraception. New insights have come to light through interviews of the hospitals’ lawyer, but they tend to confirm the dangerous character of the new policy.
LifeSiteNews.com interviewed spokesman Barry Feldman, general counsel for St. Francis Hospital in Connecticut. LSN called Feldman’s attention to a condemnation of emergency contraception by the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life in 2000, in which the Academy rejected the “morning after-pill because it interferes with an embryo’s implantation, and condemned the abortion industry’s attempt to characterize such drugs as non-abortive.
Feldman’s response was to characterize such drugs as non-abortive. He denied that Plan B, the drug that Connecticut hospitals will now use, falls under the Academy’s condemnation. When LifeSite pointed out that there’s no difference between the MAP and EC, and that the Academy explicitly condemned “progestin-only” drugs (which is what Plan B is), Mr. Feldman persisted that the “morning after pill, [condemned by the Vatican] has the direct intended effect of causing an abortion,” but Plan B is “not an abortion pill, its intended to prevent pregnancy and [does] not constitute an abortion.”
This response is troubling because since the 1960’s, the primary strategy to promote chemical abortion has been to redefine language, changing the definition of “conception” and “pregnancy” from fertilization (when an embryo begins) to implantation (two weeks later, when it nests in the uterus). This was the mantra I heard when I testified on a nearly identical bill in Wisconsin last month. The bills themselves pretend to protect human life by providing for a “pregnancy test,” even though pregnancy is not defined, and the embryo exists before it registers on that test later, around the time of (surprise) implantation.
The Connecticut statement that Feldman is defending seems to succumb to this verbal engineering when it says that to protect against embryo killing “a pregnancy test to determine that the woman has not conceived is sufficient.” This makes no sense, unless one thinks that pregnancy begins at implantation. Feldman’s comments tend to confirm this misunderstanding. He is justifying the use of Plan B at a time when its anti-ovulation mechanism has been negated by an ovulation test, on the basis that it “is intended to prevent pregnancy and . . . [is] not . . an abortion.” This view abandons the lives of human embryos prior to implantation.
The second insight that can be gleaned from Feldman’s comments relate to who was consulted in changing the policy. Disturbingly, his response to LSN’s inquiry was a legalistic refusal to answer based on confidentiality. Such an important issue requires transparency and open debate. Feldman did indicate that among those who agree with his view is the Catholic Health Association, a network of Catholic Hospitals.
The position of CHA is well known and seriously flawed. It basically presents “emergency contraception” as permissible even after a positive ovulation test. To get there it shamelessly adopts the definition of pregnancy at implantation, and broadly justifies acts that prevent “pregnancy.”
CHA even has the gall to insert the death industry’s verbal engineering into official Catholic teachings. The U.S. Bishops have directives to protect the sanctity of human life.