Why are Inquisition dictates guiding 21st century medical care?
Why are Inquisition dictates guiding 21st century medical care?
The Catholic Church has never reckoned with the brutal historical context that spawned the church’s beliefs governing pregnancy complications.
At the same time that Catholic authorities and priests were taking the lives of laboring pregnant women through forced cesarean surgeries for the purposes of baptizing embryos “no larger than a grain of barley” by dropping them into a glass of water [1] [2] and as a coercive means of spiritually colonizing native peoples [3], the Catholic Church's heretic-hunting arm, the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition, was issuing dictates regarding pregnancy complications. [4] Yes - THAT Inquisition.
The Congregation emphasized a “prohibition on all direct abortions — even with the noble goal of saving the mother’s life — and clarified that this prohibition included craniotomy (1884) or any other surgical procedure that would directly kill the child (1889), the [vaginal] expulsion of a living child that would result in death from immaturity (1895), and the extraction of an immature ectopic child (1902)” (emphasis mine). [5] The dictates from this era of forced cesarean surgery — an era that demanded the physical death of the woman for the sake of the embryonic spirit — still govern Catholic medical care today. [6] [7]
In 1908, the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition was renamed the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, which was then renamed the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1965. Although the name of the Catholic Church’s inquisition arm has changed with time, the Catholic Church has never reckoned with the brutal historical context and novel beliefs that spawned the church’s dictates governing pregnancy complications.
Next week, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the consolidated cases Idaho v. United States and Moyle v. United States. The Supreme Court is widely expected to, in effect, nullify federal protections for the health and lives of pregnant patients who require emergency abortions to prevent disability and death - guaranteed to patients by the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA). I’m hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst.
Across the country, many Catholic hospitals “violate both medical standards and their legal obligations” under EMTALA “by denying necessary care to patients who are in the midst of a miscarriage or experiencing other pregnancy complications prior to viability—and who face increased risks with each passing day.” [8] Catholic hospitals have been reprimanded by the federal government on numerous occasions for violating EMTALA. Thus, Catholic hospitals provide an example of what pregnant patients can expect in a state/country without EMTALA’s protections.
Because of this, and to prepare you for the next newsletter, I am re-posting (below) a previous newsletter, “The Principle of Double Effect: The Roman Catholic dogma animating the anti-abortion movement.” The next newsletter, which builds upon information in the newsletter embedded below, will be published either tomorrow or Thursday.
Citations:
[1] Cangiamila, Embriología sagrada, 225.
[2] O’Brien, E. (2023). As Small as a Grain of Barley: The Catholic Enlightenment and the Cesarean Operation, 1745-1835. In Surgery and Salvation: The Roots of Reproductive Injustice in Mexico, 1770–1940 (Studies in Social Medicine) (p. 33). chapter, The University of North Carolina Press.
[3] O’Brien, E. (2023). As Small as a Grain of Barley: Colonialism and the Cesarean Section in New Spain. In Surgery and Salvation: The Roots of Reproductive Injustice in Mexico, 1770–1940 (Studies in Social Medicine) (p. 47-48). chapter, The University of North Carolina Press.
[4] Medical Interventions During Pregnancy in Light of Dobbs. (2022). Ethics & Medics: A Commentary of The National Catholic Bioethics Center on Health Care and the Life Sciences. August 2022 Volume 47, Number 8.
[5] Ibid. 4
[6] Ibid. 4
[7] O’Brien, E. (2022, March 24). The religious history of caesarean surgery and what it means for the abortion battle - The Washington Post. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/03/24/religious-history-caesarean-surgery-what-it-means-abortion-battle/
[8] Health Care Denied - American Civil Liberties Union. 2016, https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/healthcaredenied.pdf.
The Principle of Double Effect is just an excuse for the continuance of the Catholic church’s barbaric practices on pregnant people. It seems as though they violate the tenets of the standard they are supposed to be practicing. Some of them even sound circular to me. What is noble about allowing both fetus and woman die when at least one can be saved? A non viable fetus cannot be saved when its mother can. The Catholic Church has always denied science and medicine. This has gone on for centuries with them. There are reasons why we have Protestant churches. I don’t hate Catholics but I do not approve or agree with their authoritarian views and ideology.