PHOENIX - A local nun made a decision that ultimately saved a woman's life but involved an abortion and now she has been excommunicated from the Catholic Church for that life or death decision.
Is abortion ever right? If you ask most Catholics, they would say no but one Valley nun decided otherwise and has been excommunicated from the Catholic Church.
A woman who was 11 weeks pregnant was forced to make a choice between her life or the life of her unborn child. Last December that woman went to the hospital and had an abortion.
Sister Margaret McBride, who is also an administrator at St. Joseph's Hospital, gave the go ahead for the procedure. Now she has been excommunicated.
The Catholic hospital said in a statement that their professionals "face life and death decisions every day."
St. Joes follows "clinical and religious directives" but not everything is spelled out and that is when an "ethics committee is convened."
McBride was part of that committee and helped make the decision to abort "in consultation with the patient, her family, her physicians."
Bishop Thomas Olmstead, head of the Phoenix Diocese, said in response that, “An unborn child is not a disease.
While medical professionals should certainly try to save a pregnant mother's life, the means by which they do it can never be by directly killing her unborn child. The end does not justify the means and "if a Catholic formally cooperates in the procurement of an abortion, they are automatically excommunicated by that action."
3TV spoke to another woman at that store, who did not want to go on camera. She has five kids and told 3TV that Sister Margaret McBride should not have been reprimanded because she would have done the same thing.
McBride is still employed at St. Joes Hospital but she has been transferred to a different department.
