Nun Excommunicated After Supporting Abortion To Protect Life of Mother

While the Catholic Church may be criticized for covering up crimes by priests and resisting efforts to discipline offenders, it seems to waste to time with errant nuns. Sister Margaret McBride has been excommunicated for the offense of approving an abortion to protect the life of a mother as a senior administrator of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix. There does not even appear to be any room for mitigating circumstances in such a case. Bishop Thomas Olmstead (left) immediately excommunicated McBride.

McBride was faced with a case involving a 27-year-old mother of four with pulmonary hypertension. The reviewing doctors concluded that she stood a serious risk of dying in child birth from the condition. As part of the Ethics Committee, Sister Margaret agreed with the medical staff that the abortion was necessary. Bishop Olmstead then promptly ruled that Sister Margaret was “automatically excommunicated.” Where was that automatic provision in the cases of serial child abuse?

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