Medical staff at the Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth in north London are expected to call for the resignation of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor as the hospital’s patron, following the proposal of a new ethics code banning contraceptives and abortion referrals.The new code of ethics will prevent staff from offering any service which conflicts with Catholic teaching on the value of human life and sexual ethics.
It will require doctors to refer any woman who inquires about contraception, the morning-after pill and abortion to another hospital and prevent the use of amniocentesis (prenatal test used to screen for genetic birth defects), and in vitro fertilization.
Tomorrow, the hospital’s medical advisory committee plan to tell the hospital board that opposition to the proposed rules from staff and resident GPs is overwhelming, and will suggest that a “secular” code of ethics be adopted instead. They will also call for the resignation of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor.
Dr Martin Scurr, the chairman of the hospital’s ethics committee said: "It is to be anticipated that the Cardinal will withdraw his patronage from the hospital."
The hospital will continue as a non-Catholic hospital, with a Catholic heritage, and a new ethics committee will subsequently be formed which must evolve a code of ethics which is acceptable to the secular cadre of clinicians of the hospital, in alignment with the jurisdiction of the General Medical Council."
A report in the Daily Mail stated that as far back as August 2005, the Vatican had expressed its concerns about the hospital.
St. John and St. Elizabeth had come under scrutiny after it began leasing premises to National Health Service physicians, who, as public employees, are obliged to refer for abortions and to prescribe chemical abortifacients and contraceptives.
In 2006, at the request of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a Catholic Labour peer, Lord Brennan, investigated the situation and in February of the same year informed the cardinal that the hospital was in regular violation of its Catholic ethics code.
Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor later wrote to Lord Bridgeman, the chairman of the hospital, to say that a revised code would be produced and that the hospital had to abide by it.
"There must be clarity that the hospital, being a Catholic hospital with a distinct vision of what is truly in the interests of human persons, cannot offer its patients, non-Catholic or Catholic, the whole range of services routinely accepted by many in modern secular society as being in a patient's best interest," he wrote.
A spokesman for Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor admitted that the Cardinal was likely to resign if he did not win the support of the board. "It is rightfully the board that decides," he said. "If they reject the new code of ethics then the Cardinal will have to consider his position."
Actresses including Cate Blanchett and Emma Thompson and models Kate Moss and Heather Mills have given birth at the popular hospital nicknamed “the poshest place to push”.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Clerical Whispers’ for any or all of the articles placed here.
The placing of an article hereupon does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Sotto Voce