To the Editor:

You believe that only non-Catholic-supported Hospitals should give
life-saving emergency abortions to women .

First, you are assuming that there are such Hospitals nearby.  Do you
believe that the ambulance  taking a woman who is in critical condition,
like that 27 year old Phoenix, Arizona, woman who would have died had she
not obtained an abortion right away, would waste  precious time  risking
her life by driving further away to such a hospital? Does it not make sense
that with 15% of Hospitals in the country being Catholic-supported, there
may not have been such a hospital in that area or at least not within
  reasonable distance?

Again, you are giving more importance to a religious  dogma than to saving
women’s lives.  St. Joseph’s Hospital  realized that saving women’s lives
is  more important than adhering to a religious dogma and watching them die
along with their  fetuses. If St. Joseph’s and other Catholic-supported
Hospitals were to refuse this life-saving procedure to women and told  them
to go to a non-Catholic Hospital further away and the women died before
reaching it,  would that not constitute murder?

Health Care is gender specific. This means that women need the health care
that is required by the fact that they unlike men, are born with
reproductive organs. Women’s lives are very much affected by those
especially when they become pregnant. That is why abortions are part and
parcel of women’s Health Care and denying them that  is discriminating
against them while denying them their gender specific Health Care. Making
contraceptives illegal and unavailable and then  banning abortions, forces
women to become pregnant and carry to term against their will or welbeing.
That boils down to government control and intrusiveness in a Democratic
country where all people are supposed to  have constitutional rights.The
unborn are not the only ones that have personhood, feel pain and need to be
protected. Women and girls are the most physically and mentally abused
beings on earth in developing countries. Depriving women of their gender
specific Health Care is cruel. What is our excuse for doing that to our
women? Let us give them the priority that in the eyes of pro-lifers they
have lost by being born.  Women should not be turned into the victims of
their gender.

Sincerely, Liliane Stern