[podcast]While serving on the hospital ethics committee in 2009, Sr. Margaret encountered a young mother of four, 11 weeks pregnant, presented in extremis due to pre-existing pulmonary hypertension the medical experts involved felt the woman would die if the pregnancy wasn’t terminated within 48 hours. Further, she was too sick to transfer to another facility. Faced with two deaths, mother and child, or one, Sister Margaret, with the rest of the ethics committee, voted to abort the fetus in accordance with the mother’s wishes. Based on this decision, Bishop Thomas Olmsted ex-communicated Sister Margaret. In addition, the bishop required the sister to resign her position as a mission leader and mandated education for others so that a similar event did not happen again. The bishop saw the decision as black and white. If it was God’s will for both mother and child to die, so be it.