Saving Savita from Gravely Misleading Abortion Politics - By Kathryn Jean Lopez - The Corner - National Review Online

Link: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/333543/saving-savita-gravely-misleading-abortion-politics-kathryn-jean-lopez (via shareaholic.com)

"The lack of precise medical details included in media coverage of the Savita Halappanavar case does indeed make it difficult to offer a cogent moral analysis of what transpired," Reverend Tadeusz Pacholczyk, director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center cautions. "If it were the case, for example, that she suffered from a serious placental infection unable to be controlled by other remedies, it would have been allowable to induce labor under a proper application of the principle of double effect. Such an action would not constitute a direct abortion, but maternally directed therapy to remedy the infection, with the secondary, unintended effect that the life of the child would be lost."
As is so often the case in tragic situations, one family's tragedy has become a cultural one too, leading to misrepresentations and pouring salt in painful wounds. In being a leading defender of the lives of the most vulnerable, the Catholic Church does not insist on the forgoing of medical treatment to suffering women. We do no one any good by adding a myth-based debate over the Catholic Church to an already awful situation.