WWJD??? Germany’s Catholic Church Turns Away Rape Victims
On December 15, a 25-year-old woman came to an emergency medical facility in the Nippes neighborhood of Cologne, claiming that she had been raped. The doctor on duty, Irmgard Maiworm, treated the victim. She notified the police and prescribed the morning after pill.
Maiworm then informed the nearby St. Vincent Hospital, which is run by the Cellitine order, that she was transferring her patient there for evidence-gathering purposes. But her Catholic counterparts refused to help. The Hospital of the Holy Spirit, also run by the nuns, likewise turned down Maiworm’s request. The doctors at the church-run hospitals told her that their ethical guidelines required them to reject the patients. “I could hardly believe it,” Maiworm says.
The Catholic doctors’ reluctance is in keeping with the policies of Joachim Meisner, the conservative archbishop of Cologne. “Rape victims are transferred to other facilities,” says his spokesman, “if the intention to take the ‘morning-after pill’ is evident.”