Abortion hypothetical

Davidnic · Dec 28, 2010

Removing the percents the Church says maintain both lives and do everything to save both favoring neither as more valuable than the other. That is the best answer for the hypothetical.

princess_ballet · Dec 28, 2010

JimR-OCDS said:
Gwen's story is hypothetical but its in fact the true story that happened in Arizona this past year, and the Bishop stated that the abortion was immoral and the doctors, mother and nun who was on the ethics panel who approved the abortion, had excommunicated themselves.

He used the principle of double effect which is, you can not commit an evil, which the Church says all direct abortions are intrinsically evil, in order to achieve a good, the life of the mother.

So in Gwen's scenario, no, to perform an abortion would be against Church teaching and would incur grave sin and excommunication.

Jim

This situation sickens me. As pro-life as I am (no exceptions for incest, rape, whatever), I cannot see this as a just result.

What good came from it? Does anyone really believe that the mother wanted to abort the baby? Does anyone really think that was her intent?

Both were going to die so the medical team did what they could to save at least one of them. And we condemn them for that.

Sorry, I just can't stand by that.

Davidnic · Dec 28, 2010

JimR-OCDS said:
Gwen's story is hypothetical but its in fact the true story that happened in Arizona this past year, and the Bishop stated that the abortion was immoral and the doctors, mother and nun who was on the ethics panel who approved the abortion, had excommunicated themselves.

He used the principle of double effect which is, you can not commit an evil, which the Church says all direct abortions are intrinsically evil, in order to achieve a good, the life of the mother.

So in Gwen's scenario, no, to perform an abortion would be against Church teaching and would incur grave sin and excommunication.

Jim

Can you provide a quote from the Bishop that excommunicated the mother. Because I never saw one. I saw one that talked about formal cooperation excommunicating but a strong case can be made the mother does not fit the rules for formal cooperation and culpability for many reasons.

But I would like to see, since you say the Bishop stated she was excommunicated...his official words on that, because I missed it.

I know sister McBride excommunicated herself due to her role, but I never saw the Bishop address or make a case on the mother.

Davidnic · Dec 28, 2010

For those who ask, "Could you let the mother die?" Could you murder the child? And yes...a living being who is not choosing to cause any harm is an innocent, if you kill an innocent even to try to save someone it is murder.

The child and the mother are equal in dignity...it is fine to say that the child will die, but number one...we do not know that as if we are God. And number two that means if there is a reasonable chance of death then a healthier person has more worth and their life should be saved at the direct killing of another.

So what is more moral:

Try to save both even if it risks both or kill one of them?

WarriorAngel · Dec 28, 2010

Davidnic said:
For those who ask, "Could you let the mother die?" Could you murder the child? And yes...a living being who is not choosing to cause any harm is an innocent, if you kill an innocent even to try to save someone it is murder.

The child and the mother are equal in dignity...it is fine to say that the child will die, but number one...we do not know that as if we are God. And number two that means if there is a reasonable chance of death then a healthier person has more worth and their life should be saved at the direct killing of another.

So what is more moral:

Try to save both even if it risks both or kill one of them?

God can and does often keep the child intact... at the life saving measures for the mother.
Indirect death of the child is not an assault on their being and only God can choose to take either even though all measures should be done to save both if at all possible.
Sometimes the child does die, but dies safely within the mother - without violence.

benedictaoo · Dec 28, 2010

Gwendolyn said:
Now, I'm fairly competent with moral theology, but when it comes to abortion, I don't want to take any chances. Someone asked me what the Church would consider a moral option in the following situation:

A woman is pregnant. She is healthy, fit, and is essentially in good shape to handle a pregnancy. However, 11 weeks into the pregnancy, she develops a heart problem (directly caused by pregnancy) and there is a 100% chance that she will indeed die within the next 1-2 weeks if the source of her ailment - the pregnancy - is not terminated. There is no other way to remedy her heart condition, and the doctors are certain that if the pregnancy is terminated, she will regain her health with time and the right medical care. If the pregnancy is not terminated, she will die.

Does the Church mandate that this woman must die because she is pregnant?

(Yes, there is such a condition, but I cannot remember the name right now.)

I told the girl who asked me this question that I would find a workable answer for her, so "Pray that God fixes her heart and allows her to continue the pregnancy" is not what I am looking for.

anyone have any insights?

She can have what ever treatment there is to save her life... but if murdering the child is her treatment- it's a no go.

If the docs where to do some other treatment and the side effect is, the death of the baby unintended, then that is a treatment she is free to choose, but if the actual treatment is an abortion, no.

What I would do? Go until I can't no more, until I could not wait any longer to deliver and try to save the baby. I would try to wait until the baby had a chance to live outside the womb. I would risk my life.

Would you murder a innocent person as the treatent to save your life?

When we choose abortion as the treatment to save Mom, we are saying one life has a geater value.

If you knew directly killing another person would save you, would you do it?

Would you directly kill a 2 year old child of yours to save yourself? Of course not, so why is your unborn different?

benedictaoo · Dec 28, 2010

Davidnic said:
For those who ask, "Could you let the mother die?" Could you murder the child? And yes...a living being who is not choosing to cause any harm is an innocent, if you kill an innocent even to try to save someone it is murder.

The child and the mother are equal in dignity...it is fine to say that the child will die, but number one...we do not know that as if we are God. And number two that means if there is a reasonable chance of death then a healthier person has more worth and their life should be saved at the direct killing of another.

So what is more moral:

Try to save both even if it risks both or kill one of them?

I would stay pregnant until I could not any longer then deliver the baby- let it be born and hope the baby (and me) can be saved.

An abortion would be out of the question and I don't care what the medical community says about the cost.

They push abortion because it's cost effective, period.

It would be much more expensive to try to deliver a baby and then try to save it.

Gwendolyn · Dec 28, 2010

Oh, I didn't know that the hypothetical given to me was a real case.

Could the woman be induced into labour, then? Or is that considered an abortion as well?

Davidnic · Dec 28, 2010

Gwendolyn said:
Oh, I didn't know that the hypothetical given to me was a real case.

Could the woman be induced into labour, then? Or is that considered an abortion as well?

Jim is referring to the AZ case with Sister McBride. An induced labor would not be considered an abortion as long as the fetus was viable. Now, even if the fetus was not normally viable and they would try some radical methods to save the child because the mother at that point was about to die...it would not be an abortion.

There are whole threads from when the Sister McBride issue happened that go over the whole thing.

The doctors admit no effort was made to save the child because they wrote the fetus off as a lost cause. And many Catholic physicians, while stressing they do not know the details of the case, commented that unless something was very unusual the condition being addressed is not some automatic death sentence as was described.

The one you see most often in that respect:

However, Dr. Paul A. Byrne, Director of Neonatolog[bless and do not curse]y and Pediatrics at St. Charles Mercy Hospital in Toledo, Ohio, disputes the claim that an abortion is ever a procedure necessary to save the life of the mother, or carries less risk than birth.

In an interview with LifeSiteNe[bless and do not curse]ws, Dr. Byrne said, I dont know of any [situation where abortion is necessary to save the life of the mother].

I know that a lot of people talk about these things, but I dont know of any. The principle always is preserve and protect the life of the mother and the baby.

Byrne has the distinctio[bless and do not curse]n of being a pioneer in the field of neonatolog[bless and do not curse]y, beginning his work in the field in 1963 and becoming a board-cert[bless and do not curse]ified neonatolog[bless and do not curse]ist in 1975. He invented one of the first oxygen masks for babies, an incubator monitor, and a blood-pres[bless and do not curse]sure tester for premature babies, which he and a colleague adapted from the finger blood pressure checkers used for astronauts[bless and do not curse].

Byrne emphasized that he was not commentati[bless and do not curse]ng on what the womans particular treatment should have been under the circumstan[bless and do not curse]ces, given that she is not his patient.

But given just pulmonary hypertensi[bless and do not curse]on, the answer is no to abortion, said Byrne.

The reason Byrne is so often quoted is he is an expert at dealing with premature and births considered non-viable. For him to make the statement that he knows of no situation where an abortion is necessary to save the life of the mother is telling. And he is not the only one to say that.

Of course he is not the doctor of the woman in question, but he has seen thousands of cases both personally and in case study. If such a thing was even very uncommon he would not say he knows of no situations. A statement echoed by others.

scraparcs · Dec 28, 2010

Let's call this a crazed killer then. The crazed killer tells you that if you kill two other people, he will not kill you. However, if you refuse, he will have to kill you and the two other people. What do you do?

princess_ballet · Dec 28, 2010

scraparcs said:
Let's call this a crazed killer then. The crazed killer tells you that if you kill two other people, he will not kill you. However, if you refuse, he will have to kill you and the two other people. What do you do?

Legally you have no right to kill the other two people.

But in this case, even if the baby was extracted, it would still die. It was only 11 weeks old. There was no way it would survive....our technology is not there yet.

princess_ballet · Dec 28, 2010

Btw, excommunication was extreme and completely out of proportion to what happened.

Davidnic · Dec 29, 2010

princess_ballet said:
Legally you have no right to kill the other two people.

But in this case, even if the baby was extracted, it would still die. It was only 11 weeks old. There was no way it would survive....our technology is not there yet.

So extracting and trying is worse than killing the baby? If they are going to go in and kill the baby, attempting extraction and attempt saving a life...even in a hopeless cause. I think that bears some thought too. At what point do you write off a life and then kill someone.

JimR-OCDS · Dec 29, 2010

Davidnic

Can you provide a quote from the Bishop that excommunicated the mother. Because I never saw one.

Yeah, unfortunately, its from Lifesitenews, but technically, they would be correct.

Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted said the excommunications apply to all involved

Bishop Says Nun is Automatically Excommunicated for Rubberstamping Hospital Abortion | LifeSiteNews.com

Jim

benedictaoo · Dec 29, 2010

princess_ballet said:
Btw, excommunication was extreme and completely out of proportion to what happened.

Since you are pro life, maybe you can understand why it's not an option. We just can not use murder and abortion is that, murder as a treatment.

As long as an abortion is not the "life saving treatment". That is the issue, using abortion as a treatment. To do that, we are saying the baby in the womb has no value and one life is more important then another. It goes against the dignity of the human person.

There are other ways as pointed out. Go to as many weeks as one can and deliver the baby and try to save it. This way you are not treating the child as if, A) it's not a child that matters and B) as if its some kind of aggressor that you need to kill in self defense.

A Baby is a life too and it's needs to be treated as such, as if it matters in all this and not be sucked into a sink and discarded in the trash (that is what abortions are and does).

Respect life, see the value in all life, from the moment of conception to natural death.

JimR-OCDS · Dec 29, 2010

Davidnic

For those who ask, "Could you let the mother die?" Could you murder the child? And yes...a living being who is not choosing to cause any harm is an innocent, if you kill an innocent even to try to save someone it is murder.

The child and the mother are equal in dignity...it is fine to say that the child will die, but number one...we do not know that as if we are God.

The doctors were 100% certain the mother would die. What you're proposing is akin to Jehovah's Witnesses, that the doctors should've just left it in God's hands.

At that stage of life, 11 weeks inside the dying body of its mother, the fetus does not have equal status. The fetus can not survive without the mother, but the mother could survive with the fetus removed. The mother has four other children and a husband. Her value in life far outweighs the fetus in this circumstance.

I believe theologians and moral ethicist in the Church are going to be debating this for some time now.

My guess is that they are going to define such abortions as indirect, being, the intention was not to abort the child, but to save both mother and fetus, but when that option runs out, you have to save one, in this case, the mother.

Keep in mind the Double Effect Principle is a guide, its not infallible. In fact, when Ambrose wrote it, he was applying in justified self defense.

In those days, a woman's life was pretty much 2nd rate when it came to making decisions about reproduction.

Heck, they believed it was the woman who determined the sex of the children she conceived and she was often blamed if he didn't produce a son.

Not Catholic doctrine, but it was the mindset of the day.

Jim

JimR-OCDS · Dec 29, 2010

Gwendolyn said:
Oh, I didn't know that the hypothetical given to me was a real case.

Could the woman be induced into labour, then? Or is that considered an abortion as well?

I believe inducing labor would've killed the mother. The woman was seriously ill with pulmonary hypertension. Labor would've been a problem for her.

Jim

benedictaoo · Dec 29, 2010

princess_ballet said:
Legally you have no right to kill the other two people.

But in this case, even if the baby was extracted, it would still die. It was only 11 weeks old. There was no way it would survive....our technology is not there yet.

So suck it into a sink, rip it limb from limb from the mother and throw it in a incinerator or a trash dump?

Or treat it as if it is YOUR child and the person that you procreated, with God?

Hmmm... really? which would a Christian choose?

Have you ever seen one of those safe, legal, "D&C" abortions? They aren't pretty, the baby literally comes out the mother in pieces and a nurse has to go back and put the body parts together to make sure they got all the baby, no parts left.

I would not want my life to be saved if that is what it would take. It's a massacre in the womb and I'm sorry but this can not be used as a "treatment" to save the mother any more then PBA can be used to "save Mom."

JimR-OCDS · Dec 29, 2010

Davidnic;

The doctors admit no effort was made to save the child because they wrote the fetus off as a lost cause.

David, this is not factually true. The Doctors said their goal was to save both mother and child, but when the options ran out, they had to save the mother.

Fact is, what would've happened had the Doctors followed Church teaching and let the mother die?

The medical board would have reviewed the case and the doctors and hospital would be charged with negligent manslaughter.

We'd be seeing threads on how to get the doctors out of jail.

Its easy to debate the issue on an intellectual leve. Its another to be living with the situation in front of your, or going through it yourself.

The mother, opposed the abortion, but when told she would die with the baby, she had no other choice but to save her own life.

Jim

Davidnic · Dec 29, 2010

JimR-OCDS said:
Davidnic

Yeah, unfortunately, its from Lifesitenews, but technically, they would be correct.

Jim

No Jim I want a quote from the Bishop saying the mother was excommunicated. Because she was not by any statement he made. And for a very good reason in moral theology. So I want to see the Bishop directly address that.

His statements, from the diocese are all available and not one excommunicates the mother or says she excommunicates herself. And there are reasons for that. He states formal cooperation is the factor and that means the mother needed to know it was wrong. Also to be automatically excommunicated you need to know the penalty. That is why it all fell on Sr. McBride.

Official Statement:

The Most Rev. Thomas J. Olmsted, Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix, released the following statement today in response to the acknowledgement by officials at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center to the media that an unborn child was killed several months ago at St. Joseph's through a direct abortion:

I am gravely concerned by the fact that an abortion was performed several months ago in a Catholic hospital in this Diocese. I am further concerned by the hospital's statement that the termination of a human life was necessary to treat the mother's underlying medical condition.

An unborn child is not a disease. While medical professionals should certainly try to save a pregnant mother's life, the means by which they do it can never be by directly killing her unborn child. The end does not justify the means.

Every Catholic institution is obliged to defend human life at all its stages; from conception to natural death. This obligation is also placed upon every Catholic individual. If a Catholic formally cooperates in the procurement of an abortion, they are automatically excommunicated by that action. The Catholic Church will continue to defend life and proclaim the evil of abortion without compromise, and must act to correct even her own members if they fail in this duty.

We always must remember that when a difficult medical situation involves a pregnant woman, there are two patients in need of treatment and care; not merely one. The unborn child's life is just as sacred as the mother's life, and neither life can be preferred over the other. A woman is rightly called 'mother' upon the moment of conception and throughout her entire pregnancy is considered to be 'with child.'

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.

As our late Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, solemnly taught in his encyclical 'The Gospel of Life,' a 'direct abortion, that is, abortion willed as an end or as a means, always constitutes a grave moral disorder, since it is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being' (The Gospel of Life #62).

The Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Healthcare Institutions (ERDs) are very clear on this issue: 'Catholic health care ministry witnesses to the sanctity of life from the moment of conception until death. The Church's defense of life encompasses the unborn and the care of women and their children during and after pregnancy.' (ERD, Part Four, Introduction) The ERDs further state that 'Abortion (that is, the directly intended termination of pregnancy before viability or the directly intended destruction of a viable fetus) is never permitted. Every procedure whose sole immediate effect is the termination of pregnancy before viability is an abortion. ... Catholic health care institutions are not to provide abortion services, even based upon the principle of material cooperation. In this context, Catholic health care institutions need to be concerned about the danger of scandal in any association with abortion providers.'" (ERD 45)

Bishop Olmsted, by virtue of his office, is the authoritative voice on faith and morals in the Diocese of Phoenix. This includes every official Catholic institution of the Diocese.

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