Phoenix nun and her abortion decision

In a blast email message, Virginia-based Population Research Institute is asking people to sign a letter of support for the Phoenix bishop.

Olmsted has come under criticism for his swift excommunication of Sister Margaret Mary McBride, a longtime administrator at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix after she authorized an abortion for a 27-year-old woman.

Critics have noted that none of the Roman Catholic priests in Arizona who have been disciplined and/or defrocked for sexual abuse (including rape) have been excommunicated.

Catholics for Choice, bioethicists and numerous pundits around the country have weighed in on the story, too, saying that McBride did the right thing.

McBride apparently had learned that the pregnancy would be fatal to both the woman and the baby if carried to term. The woman was 11 weeks pregnant. The abortion occurred in December 2009.

In addition to being excommunicated, McBride was reassigned to a different job.

"The direct killing of an unborn child is always immoral, no matter the circumstances, and it cannot be permitted in any institution that claims to be authentically Catholic," the Population Research letter says.

The Catholic Physicians Guild of Phoenix is also backing Olmsted's decision.

In a question and answer press release distributed by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix, diocese officials say abortion is never permitted "as an end or as a means."

Sister McBride, "authomatically excommunicated herself from the church," Phoenix diocese officials say.

The diocese acknowledges that McBride consulted with other Catholics before agreeing to the abortion. The diocese says those Catholics have  been excommunicated, too.

The diocese says the purpose of excommunication is to repair scandal, restore justice and reform the offender.

"It is a scandal to the entire church that a woman religious would consent to and encourage an abortion," the press release says.

Catholic hospitals, including those that are part of the Carondelet Network in Southern Arizona, must follow Catholic moral teaching as outlined in the church's Ethical and Religious Directives.

Those Catholic directives have come into question locally by some residents and physicians in Sierra Vista who opposed a recent collaboration between Carondelet and the Sierra Vista hospital.

The Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center must now follow Catholic moral teaching. That means sterilizations —  and perhaps potentially life-saving abortions, too — may no longer be performed there.