Providence handles guidelines right
Alaska Right to Life doesn’t need to stand up and cheer Providence Health System’s new guidelines for handling difficult decisions on early induction of labor. The guidelines are Catholic, and Right to Life isn’t. However, Alaska Right to Life should respect the health system’s stance as well as the process that Archbishop Roger Schwietz initiated to develop the new guidelines.
Early last year, when Alaska Right to Life voiced its concerns about early induction in cases involving fetuses with anomalies incompatible with life, Providence’s top people listened and answered questions openly and honestly.
Archbishop Schwietz responded in the same way. When Right to Life members told him they thought Providence Alaska Medical Center was performing something akin to abortion, the archbishop immediately asked the hospital to cease the procedure while he looked into it. After reviewing the hospital’s guidelines for early induction, the archbishop disagreed with Right to Life’s assessment and lifted the moratorium on the procedure.
However, he also saw room for improvement in the hospital’s written policies on early induction. So he asked the Catholic health system to work with the National Catholic Bioethics Center — a respected organization that frequently provides consultation to the U.S. bishops’ conference — to refine the policies, which Providence did.
The ethicists, philosophers and theologians involved in writing the new guidelines consulted widely with the health professionals who are facing these challenging situations firsthand.
Providence now has detailed guidelines based in Catholic principle to govern the rare and tragic cases involving babies who will be stillborn or die very soon after birth. The guidelines articulate in writing what has long been Providence’s policy of ensuring that each case follows Catholic standards. Only when the mother requests early induction and all the ethical criteria are met can labor be induced.
The guidelines are confidential, but we do know that they are based directly on the U.S. bishops’ Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services. These directives draw upon the ancient moral tradition of the Catholic Church to provide direction on modern moral issues in health care. And they allow for early induction in certain cases.
Alaska Right to Life may not like that, and it is free to disagree with Providence, Archbishop Schwietz and the bioethics center. But claims that the hospital is performing abortion or something just like it will be even harder to believe now, in light of the thorough process that produced the new guidelines. The Catholic Church is not ambiguous about abortion.
We hope the good, sincere folks at Right to Life will have enough respect for the church — which after all has led the ethical defense of life for decades in this country and throughout the ages worldwide — to cool their rhetoric about "abortion" at Providence.