"What we're saying is if you have a viable fetus — and there's no question in this case that these babies were viable — and a doctor negligently causes their death, that the surviving parents ought to be able to bring a lawsuit," says lawyer Beth Krulewitch, who along with attorney Dan Gerash took over Jeremy's case from Woodruff. To deny the parents that right would open up the very loophole that the wrongful-death law seeks to close, Krulewitch argues.
"The person who was negligent would basically get away with it," she says.
Fremont County District Court Judge David Thorson disagreed. In December 2010, he sided with Catholic Health Initiatives and the doctors, and dismissed Jeremy's lawsuit.
But Thorson noted that no appeals court in Colorado had taken up the issue of whether fetuses are people under the law, leaving it an open question. He also noted that the word "person" isn't defined in the statute. If lawmakers meant it to cover unborn babies, he ruled, they would have said so.
Thorson threw out the lawsuit related to Lori, as well. Based on expert testimony, he decided that the blockage of her arteries was so severe that she probably would have died whether or not the doctors had performed a C-section to save the twins.
Jeremy was crestfallen, and even though he was forced to declare bankruptcy after the doctors and the hospital came after him for $118,969 in legal fees, he decided to appeal.
Nine months later, in August 2011, Jeremy's lawyers filed a brief asking a panel of three appellate judges to reverse the district court ruling. To back their case, they cited several cases from inside and outside Colorado. One of the most important was a 1986 decision by former Colorado Supreme Court justice and then-U.S. District Court judge James Carrigan. Faced with a situation in which a nine-months-pregnant woman was killed by a drunk driver, Carrigan found that the woman's husband could sue the bar that served the driver for the wrongful death of both his wife and unborn son.
The purpose of the wrongful-death law, Carrigan wrote, is to "preserve and protect human life." That includes, he added, "a full-term, viable unborn child's right to be born alive."
The case was heard in federal court because of what's known as diversity jurisdiction, which means that the people involved are citizens of different states or countries. Since the accident happened in Colorado, Carrigan had to interpret Colorado law in making his decision. But federal court decisions aren't binding on future state cases.
Even so, Jeremy's lawyers argued that Carrigan's ruling "provides a thoughtful and persuasive framework." They also pointed out that courts in at least thirty other states have found that a viable fetus is a "person" under their wrongful-death laws, many of which resemble Colorado's law. The Colorado Trial Lawyers Association joined in that argument by filing its own legal brief, writing that "common sense, common decency and the majority of courts" support the conclusion that the law should cover viable unborn babies.
*********
The hospital and doctors continued to do battle. But there was a dawning realization in their legal briefs that the issue of fetuses-as-people could be a public-relations disaster.
"Whenever the legal system addresses the rights of the unborn, political winds swirl and passionate debate mounts," the hospital's lawyers wrote.
Soon thereafter, the lawyers for Pelner and Staples appear to have switched their tactics, encouraging the court to decide the case based on another reason altogether, which the court is allowed to do: that the OB-GYN expert hired by Jeremy's lawyers "did not know whether a C-section would have saved the fetuses." If it wouldn't have helped anyway, should Jeremy be allowed to sue the doctors and hospital for not performing it?
That's the question the three appellate judges were interested in when lawyers met to argue the case in April 2012. To prove their point, the doctors' lawyers relied on a snippet of testimony taken from the OB-GYN expert's deposition. The expert was questioned about perimortem C-section, or a C-section performed at or near the time of a mother's death. When asked if "overall, to a probability," most babies born by perimortem C-section die, he answered in the affirmative.
But Krulewitch argued that the doctors' lawyers took the expert's answer out of context. He only said yes after he was told to disregard how quickly the procedure is done. If a perimortem C-section is performed within five minutes of a mother going into cardiac arrest, the expert testified, the chances of a baby surviving are good.
Perinatologist Vern Katz, who wrote the first paper on perimortem C-sections in 1986, says the standard about when to do one is clear: Start the procedure within four minutes so that the baby can be delivered within five minutes, before brain damage begins.
"You don't listen to [fetal] heart tones, because you can't really tell," says Katz, a clinical professor at Oregon Health and Science University. That's because when an unborn baby is in distress, its heartbeat can slow dramatically, making it hard to detect, he explains. Plus, he says, the emergency room is often hectic. "There's yelling and screaming and moving the mom around. It's very chaotic, and you can't verify whether heart tones are there.
Don't cry hypocrisy. The Catholic Church has the right to do what they feel is right. The Catholic Bishops and the Catholic Church don't have to answer to ANYBODY, not the courts or the people who cry hypocrisy, or people who cry you hurt my kids or anybody but the Pope and God. That is the way it is and that is the way it always will be. We need more people like Timmy to keep the Catholic Church strong.
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Instead of crying hypocrisy, their favorite endeavor, one that actually gives them orgasms, liberals, god-haters, and assorted miscreants need to just lobby for a law that recognizes the fetus as a person. That would be the best result of this case. Instead of getting off condemning the Catholic hospital, turn this into something good. Just like the pious holy liberals rushing to ban guns over the graves of the children of Sandy Hook, use the deaths of these two boys to lobby for a law that recognizes the personhood of the fetus.
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@Timmy Would it not have been the right thing for the Catholic Church to use this case to advance the idea of fetal personhood instead of just the opposite? Why should it be up to the liberals, god-haters and assorted miscreants to do what the Catholic Church will not do in this case? Have you considered, some people could even be on your side of this issue...and still think the Catholic Church is being hypocritical by undermining your goal of protecting the unborn?
It could only, on the very outside possibility, might begin to speculate, about the merest possibility of being considered sacrilegious if I really believed that God said those things to the Catholic Church...and I don't.
And
on you other point...I agree with all my heart...the people involved
with this case are not Jesus...but perhaps we could agree that they
should not be running a business in manner that would offend Jesus.
It is the Catholic Church is making a mockery of the Catholic Church.
What non-sacrilegious explanation could inspire the Catholic Church to act as they did in this case anyway?
@slcutah You are being sacrilegious, making a mockery of this. The people involved were not Jesus, they are people running a business.
@Timmy@slcutah
Jesus once found himself in court, accused of being “King of the Jews”.
He could have won his case by claiming he was not that “person” as defined by that court (look it up in your bible, it's true). However, he decided not to go that way, even though it might triple his insurance rates.
Jesus chose to abide by his faith, his teachings and the word of God his father in the court of Pontius Pilate. And back then, it was more than just a matter of cost or legal liability. Jesus was facing the ultimate sacrifice as a penalty. Yet, for some reason, he chose not to say one thing in public, and another thing in court.....even if it meant he might lose his case.
Though it may not, and may never be the winning legal strategy, the word of God was the precedent he chose to follow. Maybe Jesus believed that his actions, his words and his sacrifice would mean something. That his day in court, and what he said in court, and how he conducted himself in court would serve as an example. Maybe he decided it was important to keep his faith and do the right thing.
But who knows?
The Catholic Church claims to know. The Catholic Church proclaims to be the personification of Christ and the temporal link to God on earth. So we must suppose they are now acting on new orders...new updates...new interpretations inspired by and received from God....new directives and strategies that they alone can hear and interpret. That only appear to us mortals without divine access, as hypocritical and contrary.
Maybe God said to the Catholic Church ...get me better lawyers than last time....say whatever it takes to win in court....and sue the damn bastards that brought the case to court in the first place..and BTW, watch out, Obamacare is coming, you need more freedom to act on your own conscience and beliefs, after all, I can't be everywhere you know.... .
If only Jesus asked himself 2000 years ago, WWTCCD (What Would the Catholic Church Do?), and won HIS day in court, we might have a better world today.
@slcutah All bets are off when you find yourself in the courts. Who knows, maybe if they had decided to just unilaterally lay down and live outside the law and pay this guy off that might have caused their insurance rates to triple. And with Obamacare breathing down everyone's neck, no one can play around. A hundred years ago, before liberals forced government into everyone's lives, and before government got control of health care, an individual hospital would have had much more freedom to just act on their own conscience and beliefs. Those days are gone, thank liberals, thank government, thank Obama, don't curse the churches for that.
@Timmy @slcutah I am sure, people of faith would be happy, even honored to risk condemnation when it comes to defending their faith and beliefs. Perhaps, people like you, who feel so strongly about their fundamental beliefs demonstrate more courage, integrity, purity and consistency of conviction the Catholic Church has exhibited in this case.
Somehow, though I may dispute, and may even be offended by much of what you say, I doubt you could be bought off for a few bucks as easily as the Catholic Church.
Or am I wrong? I have read your posts here...do you say you support fetal personhood in one place, and oppose it elsewhere? The Catholic Church does that. Are you on their side here?
@slcutah @Timmy It is just more than a little bit tiresome and annoying having to listen to self-righteous hypocritical liberals, god-haters, and assorted miscreants, constantly bash and berate the Catholic Church and other Christians, and I'm not even Catholic. But the joke is on them, they will have to stand before God one day and answer for their lives. So let them waste their entire life obsessing over all the supposed hypocrites, they will have plenty of time in Hell to think back over all that one day.
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@Timmy Are you playing with yourself???? That's a sin you know. I don't think you are going to get many to follow your advice the way you have word it.
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@Timmy @FreeAndClear Are you talking about the argument just below? Looks like you jumped up and declared yourself the wiener after things got too hot, you looked too dumb, got your butt whipped, lost your cool and then just bailed out.
If you want us to know what you are talking about, put the "game, set and match" where you claim to have won the game. You just look dumb doing it here. Maybe Germany could have won WWII if they only thought to bail out of Europe and yell "game, set match" at the South Pole.
@FreeAndClear Saying "game, set, match" merely indicates an argument won, it comes from tennis, look it up. A few of the commenters got off on tangents and this post merely summed up the issue. Since they were not able to respond, it was game, set, match. Maybe you should stop playing with yourself and read some of the posts before making such idiotic comments.
Christians are so lucky to have atheists always telling them about the bible and what Jesus would have really thought.
Also, note how many people obsess over the concept of "hypocrisy." For liberals hypocrisy is the biggest sin in the whole wide world. You can do anything you want, even kill millions of innocent babies in the womb, and all of that is excused. Only ONE sin just be confronted and all those found offending must be beat down and condemned, hypocrisy.
The problem with this is that liberals, in giving up all standards and saying that people can do whatever they want, that there is no God judging right and wrong, are hypocritical themselves in taking on the role of God and deciding to judge what THEY see, in their own twisted world view, as hypocritical.
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@slcutah @TimmyThe difference between a conservative republican dude and a liberal democrat dude getting busted in the arms of another man is that only the former rails against it. They're both homos, but only one is a hypocrite.
That's why, to answer the age old FOX news question, sex scandals don't matter for liberals/dems: Because they don't spend all of their time, the lengths of their noses and my tax money trying to legislate other people's bedrooms, sexual desires, and bodies.
Damn, it feels good to be every kind of deviant and know I can never reasonably be accused of hypocrisy. :)
@thewreckingbelle You and that other guy are really funny. Pretty serious issues here though. It is good to get a laugh even when things are seriously jammed.
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@thewreckingbelle Ummmm...I swear, I wasn't doing nothin', I was just bloggin, just bloggin....and I'm new here, maybe I don't know what bloggin is...how'd I get busted so fast?.....and besides, I don't know that Timmy guy...anyway, I don't think he likes me very much, as well as all liberals..atheists....black people... (most white people too, probably)...widowers who file lawsuits...people who live in dread of religious theocracies....and people who disagree with him...and....and...and...anyway, it was just our first date. Please don't tell my wife wreckingbelle.
@slcutah @thewreckingbelle You childish twit, go cry to your mommy, quit being such a sissy crying about how I "don't like" this or that, grow up. And you still haven't responded to my post at the top of the article. It sums up all your idiotic arguments quite nicely, and that is why you remain silent, except for this sort of childish nonsense.
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Hypocrisy is reviled by the atheist, the liberal, but even more so by the bible and, according to that record, by Jesus himself. And for very good reason.
A hypocrite erodes the very foundation of our personhood. Hypocrisy corrodes and contaminates our ability to see ourselves, and how others regard us. Hypocrisy undermines the foundation of trust and understanding that allows us, and more so, is necessary, for all of us to live simultaneously for ourselves and for others.
Our community should be more than us just living and working together; Trading commodities to obtain advantage, profit, power and celebrity over our neighbor. It must be, and if we can find it in ourselves, it will become, a genuine commitment of care and concern for our fellow human beings. As the bible teaches, and the atheist instinctually understands, can be measured by how we treat the least among us.
The religious preach about their highest ideals under threat of damnation, that which atheists offer selflessly from a pure spring of inner goodness, without threat of eternal damnation or bribes of heavenly payoff. Religious or not, we can learn to live with each other as a caring, loving community of trust. But hypocrisy is the enemy of trust. Hypocrisy is the recognition we cannot make ourselves vulnerable, we cannot open our hearts, that hypocrites do not possess fundamental goodness; They will ravage our community, and destroy the very essence and the highest expressions of our humanity...for monetary gain. The hypocrisy of the Catholic Church is manifest. But even the most unfair religious zealot cannot call an atheist a hypocrite. Now, thanks to the acts of the Catholic Church, atheists find themselves on the higher moral ground.
Here we now have the Catholic Church, with their hands, hearts and souls still dirty from their long history of greed, murder and exploitation, foundering in the current crisis resulting from priests and nuns raping, sodomizing and terrorizing the children, orphans, sick and injured; Our most vulnerable, that we once entrusted to their care and “charity”.
Yes Timmy, to the atheist, there is no greater offense than hypocrisy. But especially repugnant, is the hypocrisy of those who assert a claim moral superiority but undermine our sincere desire, hope and expectation of fundamental fairness, our communal commitment to love our neighbor, and our desire to do no harm.
@slcutah @Timmy The problem is that true hypocrisy as discussed in the bible is not the issue, the problem is that liberals deny all rules or standards or conduct, so in doing that they think they cannot therefore be hypocrites. But at the same time they self-righteously pound on those who do try to maintain and call for standards of morality in society, but sometimes, as ALL human beings do, fall short themselves. The liberal is actually using this technique to try to browbeat all Christians into giving up preaching about morality and standards of conduct, since all Christians know they could fall short themselves at some point. So the liberal remains the biggest hypocrite due to this.
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Maybe it would not be a terrible thing if Catholic organizations
followed their Christian ideals. Christianity has lasted about 2,000
years already...Why have they given up on their beliefs and ideals now? And as for
people against Obamacare, people should of course, retain the right to
refuse medical care if that is their decision. But at the very least,
even the opponents of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
will now have the option to choose life.... is that not what everyone
wants?
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@Timmy @slcutah
Is it really wrong, as you say, to condemn any religious
organization, even the Catholic Church for using the law as it is
written to defend their position?
I would not. But Isaiah and Matthew would.
Matthew 15:7-9 You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: '"This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.'”
@slcutah It is wrong to condemn any organization for using the law as it is written to defend their position. There are many laws where people are forced to live by them even though they believe otherwise. How much casholla was the husband suing for? Was he looking for a big payday? And even if all Christian orgs just gave up on all court cases and instead just followed their Christian ideals, they wouldn't last long, in the real world. Atheists would grind them into the dust. Or what about people against Obamacare, should they just refuse to be cared for and die or be judged a hypocrite?
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@Timmy@slcutah
Yes, my mother did not murder me in the womb. But,
according to CHI, the Catholic Hospital System and Saint Thomas More
Hospital, if she did...as their lawyers argued in the Stodghill case, she
would not have killed a "person". Right?
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Don't get mad Timmy.
I went back to the very beginning of your post. I admit you are right, you made a point and I did not respond.
Your point:
"Christians are so lucky to have atheists always telling them about the bible and what Jesus would have really thought."
My response:
You're welcome.
@slcutah You can stuff the plank up your rear for all I care. I am not the issue here. Whatever point you were trying to make in that long rambling post, it was not very well put. I made a point, you went off on a tangent, and then I made another point, to which you still have not actually responded. If we are talking past one another that is one thing, it doesn't make me a hypocrite.
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@Timmy@slcutah ...sigh. Methinks you do not understand what I am trying to say. Perhaps you have something in your eye. Please take a dose of Matthew 7.5 and apply...liberally.
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According to the bible, Adam wasn't alive until God breathed life into him. A biblical scholar would argue that a fetus isn't alive before it takes its first breath.
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@dillonhdillon ... as some argue that those who are not yet baptized of "original sin" will not make it to Heaven, first breath or not.
Imagine, BILLIONS of zygotes, embryos, foeti and even postpartum babies all burning in hellfire for eternity simply because some vindictive megalomaniac "god" has a self-image problem.
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@mmjfreedomusa Why are you here? Do religious hypocrites now regard weight as a target for hate?
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@slcutah ... morbid obesity -- like alcoholism or drug abuse -- is a SELF INFLICTED condition deserving of little sympathy.
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@boyoboy ... a chronic smoker who develops lung cancer deserves little sympathy for their self-inflicted suffering.
@DonkeyHotay People often do something to cause or contribute to their own cancers. Are we now claiming that those cancers are self-inflicted and deserving of little sympathy? Of course not. Addiction has a very strong heredity component. Weight does, too. The world is a little less black and white than that.
Not always. Not every case of obesity, alcoholism, drug abuse or many other ailments are self inflicted. However, failure of compassion, sympathy and understanding are true self inflicted conditions.
Nevertheless, I enjoy reading and agree with many of your posts. Keep fighting the bad guys, even if that be me.
IT IS ABOUT A RISK FACTOR DUE TO OBESE FAT! NOW THEY SHOULD SUE..HELL..NO! WHO is to say she would not have CROAKED walking to the Refrig! WHO would they sue then..KING STUPPER?
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SHE WAS 400 pounds! Two of the risk factors for the deadly condition are pregnancy and obesity, and Lori was experiencing both.Two of the risk factors for the deadly condition are pregnancy and obesity, and Lori was experiencing both. HAD SHE NOT BEEN A FAT PIG..would this have happened? HELL..O Anti- Abortionists HOW DID GOD help those babies live with out an abortion? A DOCTOR should be liable to make the babies live when SHE AND HER MATE knew OR SHOULD HAVE KNOWN the risks! I think someone should file a claim to pay for the Doctor's and Hospital costs that the SELFISH PIGS INCURRED!
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@mmjfreedomusa You sorta missed the whole point of the article. Aside from the wife, husband is claiming that the hospital should have tried to prevent the fetuses' demise. I agree that the wife and probably the fetuses would have died no matter what. But, we know the death of the wife and fetuses isn't the issue making headlines. It's the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church. They want to force women to birth rape babies under he guise of the personhood of the unborn, but when challenged on the same rights of the unborn, the Catholic Church takes the position they rail against -- that a fetus isn't a person and isn't entitled to legal protection.
