Fox's Favorite Priest Outraged Catholic Hospitals Might Be Forced To Save Lives

Fox News has a religion correspondent on the payroll, because whenever you're discussing important issues of the day, it's handy to have a rightwing lunatic appear in religious garb to explain why disagreeing with his political positions pretty much guarantees your non-stop one-way flight directly to hell. Like, if you need someone to explain why God thinks the Duggars should keep their reality TV show , even though eldest son Josh finger-fucked his kid sisters, and his parents knew about it and covered it up, because it's not like sexually molesting kids, and then covering it up, is that wrong. Or, say, if some Oklahoma satanists have the audacity to arguethe First Amendment protects their sincerely held religious beliefs. In such cases, Catholic priest Jonathan Morris is your guy.

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So who shoved his rosary beads right up Father Fox News's butt this time? Why, it's the godless heathens at the ACLU, trying to force Catholic hospitals to provide emergency healthcare, almost as if they are hospitals that are legally and ethically required to provide healthcare. See, Trinity Healthcare Corporation operates more than 80 hospitals according to the medical dictates of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Which means that if you have the misfortune of being rushed to one of its emergency rooms for healthcare a bunch of not-doctors have determined makes Jesus cry -- like, say, you're having an excruciating and life-threatening miscarriage and you need the dying fetus removed from your body so it doesn't kill you -- well, too bad for you, fuck off and die . Literally. Because religious liberty.

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Refusing to administer life-saving care is not only just about the most immoral and non pro-lifey thing you can imagine, but, as Jessica Mason Pielko lawsplains at RH Reality Check, it's also NOT LEGAL, MOTHERFUCKERS. Several federal laws, including Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act and the laws of human decency, require hospitals to treat patients when their health or life is in jeopardy, no matter what. Which is why the ACLU is rightfully suing the shit out of Trinity, because "don't wanna" is not an acceptable legal excuse for refusing to provide emergency healthcare.

Naturally, Father Morris knows the ACLU's lawsuit is really about its evil scheme to force hospitals to save lives, even if that is a gross violation of the Catholic Church's First Amendment right to pick and choose whose lives are worth saving, and who should just take their dying asses home and, dunno, pray or something. Because even though the ACLU is suing over inadequate care for "incomplete miscarriages" -- whether the fetus is already dead inside the womb and needs to be removed -- well, pffft, it's still "abortion," when you could just leave that dead fetus right where it is until God decides to abort it Himself, so like "but it's already dead" is even a good reason.

"There's always going to be an explanation," he says, "and it's always going to be the most digestible explanation possible." The ACLU is only saying "you shouldn't be allowed to not help a lady if it means she's going to maybe die" is just one of those convenient explanations, but let's get to the more important point, in Father Morris's opinion:

It's not that a Catholic doctor or a Catholic institution has to say, “Oh no! I have to protect the fetus above the mother, protect the child against the mother.” No. It's take care of the patient.

But the problem is, the ACLU doesn't believe that the baby inside the mother's womb is also a patient.”

Actually, the problem is that Father Morris is a goddamned A Idiot, and he doesn't understand that when the fetus is already dead , it's not a patient whose life can be saved. It's a corpse, and it's threatening the life of a patient who requires immediate medical attention who isn't dead. Yet. Which the Fox guy tries to explain by pointing out that "in "all of these cases, the fetus is dead." But Father Morris has a terrific response to that:

No, that's not [the ACLU's] argument. Their argument is that a doctor, a hospital, should be required to kill the fetus if that's what the patient wants. In order to protect the life of the mother.

These Catholic institutions are saying, “We will never intentionally kill a human being. We will try to save the life of both.”

No, Father Morris, wrong again. These hospitals are not trying to save any lives at all. They're simply refusing care to patients whose medical emergencies have been officially categorized as "too bad, sucks to be you, musta been God's plan" by the evil motherfuckers who make the rules these hospitals are required to follow. Same evil motherfuckers who've been covering up all that kid-raping. Same evil motherfuckers who say pro-choice politicians should be denied communion, if not outright excommunicated, but never say diddly fuck all jack squat about politicians who support the death penalty.

We are talking eleventeenth ring of hell evil . But then, you'd have to be that kind of evil to support a rule that says it's A-OK with Jesus to let women die, so long as no one lays a finger on the sacred dead baby inside her. Because "pro-life."

[ Crooks and Liars / RH Reality Check ]