The last I knew, if an Othodox Christan woman whose life is at risk if she were to carry a pregnancy to full term, and has other children, chooses to have an abortion to save the Life of her children's mother, then she is not to be prohibited from receiving Holy Communion, even though serious penance ought to be undertaken in such a case.
But what of the aborted child in this case? Did he or she not suffer martyrdom? Was their own life not sacrificed for the sake of their brothers and sisters.
Decades ago a child was aborted by his mother, and other physicians chose at that time to use stem (base) cells from that child to propagate more such cells, in order for them to have human cells upon which to conduct tests. Many such tests have been instrumental in the development of various medicines.
I wonder, are physicians who work to save others using living cells from a child who was aborted really any worse than the mother who worked to stay alive for the sake of her other children? Are we any more evil than she is because we tolerate the sacrifices that were made by each of these two aborted children for the sake of others. Are we personally guilty of murder if we allow such a woman to Commune with us in the Church, or if we allow physicians to apply such medicines developed through human stem cell research, or if we receive such medicines?
I don't believe that it's an open and shut case, as some moralists think and would have us think. The truth is far more nuanced than extremists on both sides of the controversy are prepared to acknowledge.
I like a lot of stuff you write, and it's late for me so I may be experiencing a case of being stupid and tired, but I am honestly flummoxed by the ethics in the above post.
How are scientists, who research for money, who take the cells from some one else's dead child, in order to make money...somehow doing something ethical? The fact that a woman who gets an abortion, even to save her own life when there are other children involved (I am not aware of a real situation of this, the abortions to save this or that person's life is more of a fiction of the pro killing infant murder cult movement than an actual concrete medical reality), would have a penance indicates that there is something she is doing that is wrong.
Your situation, in its most sympathetic assessment, would be like me killing a man who breaks into my house at night. Technically, I'd have to serve a penance. If I were a priest or bishop, I'd be defrocked (at least canonically). It would not matter if I was protecting my own wife and children (or in a bishop's case, let's say whomever else was in the building he was sleeping in.) In this whole scenario, I do not profit from killing the person. And, I don't take the person's body parts and then sell them (which would save the lives of those who need transplants.)
The fact we do not take prisoners on death row and carve them up for organs (though Jean Claude Van Dam's "Death Warrant" was a movie with such a premise) because we would find this disgustingly immoral, I think lays bare that what you are positing here is unintentionally the height of moral repulsiveness. If we would not dare murder the guilty in order to save lives, nor sell the organs of people we kill in self defense, how are the organs of a completely innocent child fair game?
The fact of the matter is we have dehumanized the children. The fact that it has saved lives has been used by Satan to morally decieve us. Mengle's research on hypothermia has likewise saved lives. There is no utilitarian ethical approach to justify either.
However, the Church has taken the approach that once the doctor's have gone through with the dirty deed, that the sin is their own but not those who take the medication. This makes some sort of sense...It'd be like benefitting from medical treatments that were devised using inhumane research. We would not repeat the research, nor should we dis-invent what it came up with.
So, the Moderna or Oxford vaccines are produced without using fetal tissue. One could take the vaccine with zero moral scruples (technically). Granted, it was developed using this tissue--that's already done though. Not taking it does not take that way. The RNA vaccine technology might end up having terrible long term effects--it may even affect the passions (as some vaccines, like those to get rid of nicotine addiction, do). So, it might end up being really bad. But, it does not depend upon the further exploitation of an innocent life.
