A dispassionate fair-minded summary of the medical findings would sure be welcome. I hope, and assume, that the Bishops made their decision only after a diligent analysis of such findings, but if not then such a summary is even more important.
I would also hope that blog commentators would keep an open mind. It is quite possible that the findings will not be fully conclusive, in which case we must navigate difficult waters that require thoughtful application of Catholic moral theology. Dismissive simplistic one-liners would not advance the ball in this case.
Mike Petrik | 10.01.07 - 8:22 am | #

I think the Connecticut Catholic Connecticut Conference threw in the towel in.
the warrior | Homepage | 10.01.07 - 9:04 am | #

Dear Thomas, Please keep us up-to-date on this. Given the seriousness and gravity of this scandal I would hope that Rome will soon offer some direction/statement. Funny, haven't heard a peep from these CT Bishops since this statement was released...
Fr William J Kuchinsky | 10.01.07 - 10:20 am | #

Thanks for posting about this. I am running videos for 40 Days of Life on my video blog every day. If you know of any videos related to this issue, please let me know.
Travis | Homepage | 10.01.07 - 10:46 am | #

Kudos to this blog and Vox Nova and such of its commentators who are carrying the heavier loads in this issue. In the background apart from the medical facts is the issue of doubts of fact not really doubts of law....and how does one act when there are doubts of fact. As anyone knows who has read moral theology in this area, this aspect itself is complex. Such tomes start with the fact that one cannot act in doubt but then proceed to the next step when something must be done one way or the other and how does one resolve a doubt. Germain Grisez was a conservative moral theologian from
Mount St. Mary's College in Maryland who wrote moral theology tomes for seminaries (The Way of the Lord Jesus..1983 reprinted in 1997) and it seems he would have disagreed with Connecticut Bishops if Plan B causes non implantation at all. But Mary's point that two pills in a day's period could not vitiate the lining given a process that takes 28 days to make the lining hospitable might even
change his mind. But here he is on doubts of fact from volume one of the above named series of tomes:

" In some cases, uncertainty about matters of fact leads to doubt about the gravity of an act recognized to be immoral....one takes a pill to prevent birth, not knowing whether it works by abortion. When the doubtful fact bears on settling an issue of this sort, one should assume that the true state of affairs is that which renders the act more seriously wrong...."

So Grisez is saying that we should assume the worst facts but he is on the rigorist side of the spectrum of Catholic moral theology; but that view also disregards the process of developing research which vitiate that assumption of the worst....like the monkey related results that Mary cited inter alia.
Grisez also does not distinguish between doubt of fact and suspicion of fact. My sister in law used to get very worried about every new notice on TV as to what was cancerous.
Were one to hold oneself bound to avoiding everything that has been suspected to increase cancer, one would be a vegan living on a mountain top despite Peter's vision in Acts from God Himself that meat was ok.
Mary's point that two pills in one day could hardly work against a thickness of the lining that was 28 days in developing does seem to reduce a doubt of fact to a suspicion
given the exaggerations that the medical field takes in warnings in general....nowadays with a view to lawsuits. I had radical dizziness several years ago; was taken by ambulance to a hospital that did $38,000 worth of tests which tests could find no source problem...and I was released but they were covered legally by such a surfeit of tests... and my regular doctor a week later told me that it was an inner ear infection and he gave me a pill and it never returned. And everyone's insurance went up at the micro level. Is the warning on the Plan B box based on science or on a lawyer's advice on covering all bases? This should be a
bill bannon | 10.01.07 - 11:01 am | #

bill,
Thanks for a well-reasoned post.

And with all due respect to Fr. Kuchinsky (which is enormous), I honestly don't that think truth is served by calling the bishops' statement a scandal when the whole point of the exercise should be to determine whether it is (intentionally or not).
Mike Petrik | 10.01.07 - 1:54 pm | #