To Call Abortion ‘Health Care’ Defies Logic

An Ohio health care system is trying to hide its entry into the death business under a thick layer of illogical euphemisms

Bishop Daniel E. Thomas
Bishop Daniel E. Thomas (photo: ToledoDiocese.org)

ProMedica’s Board of Trustees’ recent decision to enter into a transfer agreement with Capital Care Network, Toledo’s last remaining abortion facility, defies logic. The hospital states that entering into this agreement aligns with their mission and values in the belief that “no one is beyond the reach of life-saving health care.” But in fact, because their partnering with the abortion clinic facilitates the denial of “life-saving health care” for the most vulnerable, unborn babies, their very decision defies logic. To say, as Toledo Blade editor Keith Burris has, that on the one hand no one could deny as a matter of science that abortion is the taking of a baby’s life, and on the other hand that ProMedica’s decision is “a gutsy, pro-life act of leadership,” also defies logic.

Logic is the science of good or valid reasoning, a reasoning based on wisdom and common sense. To say that a health care system’s mission is to improve the health and well-being of its patients is logical. To say that its mission includes partnering with a clinic whose reason for existence is the direct killing and dismemberment of innocent human life, is simply illogical. To say that abortion is health care defies logic. It makes no sense.

It’s logical for people of good will, no matter their religion, to expect that anyone, in particular a pregnant mother experiencing a medical emergency, should be able to receive lifesaving treatment at a hospital. It is not logical for people, no matter their religion, to expect or insist that in order to provide care for a woman in a health crisis, a respected hospital should partner with a clinic whose aim is life destroying “treatment.” In fact, ProMedica rightly would have treated any woman coming to their emergency room doors in need or in crisis, without a “transfer agreement”.

The reasoning that a hospital’s task is to “save every life you can” is perfectly logical. But the reasoning that a hospital should enter into an agreement in order to address the sad possibility of treating the rare patient who might be transferred from Capital Care, versus the sadder reality of the hundreds of innocent babies whose lives will be snuffed out each year in that clinic as a direct result of the agreement, is perfectly illogical. It makes no sense.

That good, dedicated and competent doctors, nurses, staff and volunteers of a hospital daily pour themselves out to heal and save life is more than logical, it’s commendable. That members of the board of trustees of a hospital, whose doors are open to heal and save life, would unilaterally make a decision which keeps open the doors of a clinic that destroys and terminates life, is more than illogical, it’s deplorable. There is simply no getting around it: the decision of ProMedica’s Board of Trustees to sign the transfer agreement means that unborn babies will continue to be slaughtered in Toledo at Capital Care.

Logic is all about sound reasoning. As a health care system, ProMedica’s decision to partner to keep open a clinic whose purpose is the opposite of health care, is an example of flawed logic. That decision does not reflect the purpose and mission of a hospital, to heal and sustain human life. That decision instead facilitates the very destruction of the weakest of our human family, the unborn in the womb. I invite all people of good will, who understand and value logic and life, to join me in petitioning the members of the ProMedica Board to overturn their hasty decision and to renew their commitment to the logic and life worthy of their health care system.

As Pope Francis states: “In all its phases and at every age, human life is always sacred and always of quality. And not as a matter of faith, but of reason and science.” This is the logic of life.

Bishop Daniel E. Thomas is the Bishop of Toledo, Ohio