I Would Like to Say This Is Unbelievable...

...but of course it is eminently, rage-makingly believable:

A Catholic nun and longtime administrator of St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix was reassigned in the wake of a decision to allow a pregnancy to be ended in order to save the life of a critically ill patient.

The decision also drew a sharp rebuke from Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted, head of the Phoenix Diocese, who indicated the woman was "automatically excommunicated" because of the action.

What was the action, exactly? It was terminating an 11-week pregnancy with the patient's consent because the patient "had a rare and often fatal condition in which a pregnancy can cause the death of the mother."

The choice here, to be crystal clear, was terminate the pregnancy, or let the woman die, naturally taking the fetus with her.

James J. Walter, professor of bioethics at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, a Catholic university ... said a pregnancy may be terminated only in limited, indirect circumstances, such as uterine cancer, in which the cancer treatment takes the life of the fetus.

Catholic teaching, he said, is that a pregnancy cannot be terminated as a means to an end of saving the life of a mother who is suffering from a different condition.

Asked if the church position prefers the mother and child to die, rather than sparing the life of one of them, Walters said the hope is that both would survive.

Which really isn't much of a fucking answer, now, is it?

[Thanks to everyone who passed this along.]