Abortion hypothetical

2WhomShallWeGo · 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 you allow him or her as much life as you can.

2WhomShallWeGo · 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.

we will all die and shortly. So saying that some one will die anyway doesn't justify killing them anymore than it would justify killing you or me

2WhomShallWeGo · Dec 29, 2010

JimR-OCDS said:
Davidnic

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.

If I could extend the length of my life by killing you would it me morally permissible? I know with 100% certainty you will die. all men do. No doctors can save you. but If I'm starving I can kill you and your flesh will prolong my life. otherwise I will starve.
value in life far outweighs Jims in this circumstance.

benedictaoo · Dec 30, 2010

kittycat7 said:
Thanks for answering my question. I'm glad to hear that the mother's life can be saved. However, if the doctor doesn't attempt an embryo transferal, I'm not sure how an indirect abortion is any different than a direct abortion? If abortion is murder, this seems kind of like saying that while it's wrong to stab someone, it's okay to put a little cyanide in their coffee because you don't know if there's enough to kill them. (Sorry for the bad analogy, but it was all I could think of.) I'm not trying to be rude or anything, I just don't understand why having an abortion indirectly is any different. It seems like using a loophole to me.

Because abortion, the act itself, is a violent act. They take the baby and suck it out, dismembering it.

and a baby, is not cyanide poison, it's a life and we must begin to see that and treat it as if it has equal valve.

benedictaoo · Dec 30, 2010

rawson said:
The doctors must do all they can to save the lives of the mother and child .
It is , however , the will of God that the child must not be killed to save the mother .
That is a mighty heavy cross to bear , especially for the family involved .
May God give them all the help they need in their agony .

Exactly, as with all these threads, as always, it leaves me asking... what ever happen to God's will?

People get sick all the time, terminally sick. They do all they can but at the end of the day, guess what good Catholics?? You resolve yourself to accept, this is God's will.

So simple, but yet, so hard. God's will. His will does not involve slicing and dicing your baby in the womb to save your life.

benedictaoo · Dec 30, 2010

WarriorAngel said:
I almost died.. but God pulled me through.
I would have willingly and even told my doctors umpteen times - save the baby first.

My son is adorable... and his laughter is contagious. He is now 10 years old.

Had i died, i know it would have been the right thing to do.
So i often base these 'hypotheticals' on genuine experience.

Moms should have a maternal drive that allows them to lay down their lives for their children.
In my mind - hey i lived my life... and maybe my child has a more important task.

I almost died having a baby too, but it was after he was delivered, he was never at risk, just me.

These things happen, people act like no mother ever died and left young children behind. Many have.

It's the saddest thing in the world, but it happens and it always will. Thanks be to God, we have come so far and can do amazing things to save people, but abortion was not one of these God-sends given to the doctors as a way to save a mother.

Once again, man with his smarter then thou self has crossed the line.

kittycat7 · Dec 30, 2010

benedictaoo said:
Exactly, as with all these threads, as always, it leaves me asking... what ever happen to God's will?

People get sick all the time, terminally sick. They do all they can but at the end of the day, guess what good Catholics?? You resolve yourself to accept, this is God's will.

So simple, but yet, so hard. God's will. His will does not involve slicing and dicing your baby in the womb to save your life.

Cancer is always fatal if left untreated. Ectopic pregnancies are always fatal if left untreated. (And to the baby as well.) If you had cancer, would you refuse treatment because you figured that was tampering with God's will?

benedictaoo · Dec 30, 2010

kittycat7 said:
Cancer is always fatal if left untreated. Ectopic pregnancies are always fatal if left untreated. (And to the baby as well.) If you had cancer, would you refuse treatment because you figured that was tampering with God's will?

Knew a woman about 17 years ago, Aborted her baby at 3 months to treat cancer and she died anyway.

God did not give us abortion to cure illnesses. Abortion is evil and we can not use evil to do good.

Davidnic · Dec 30, 2010

kittycat7 said:
Cancer is always fatal if left untreated. Ectopic pregnancies are always fatal if left untreated. (And to the baby as well.) If you had cancer, would you refuse treatment because you figured that was tampering with God's will?

I don't think Bene is referring to an ectopic because that is not an abortion. Do you mean cancer treatment while pregnant that may kill the baby or just treating a disease in general.

if in general it is not an analogous situation because the baby is not cancer and has to always be treated as a person. And that is where the problem is in the cases the thread predominantly discusses the child was treated more like a tumor or disease to be removed. Rather than the death being an unintended consequences.

kittycat7 · Dec 30, 2010

Davidnic said:
I don't think Bene is referring to an ectopic because that is not an aboriton. Do you mean cancer treatment while pregnant that may kill the baby or just treating a disease in general.

if in general it is not an analogous situation because the baby is not cancer and has to always be treated as a person. And that is where the problem is in the cases the thread predominantly discusses the child was treated more like a tumor or disease to be removed. Rather than the death being an unintended consequences.

I just meant treating a disease in general. And I was only talking about the ectopic thing.

benedictaoo · Dec 30, 2010

kittycat7 said:
I just meant treating a disease in general.

you can treat a disease and some treatments might be dangerous to your child. You are still free to under go that treatment.

Treatment- not abortion. Abortion is not treatment- it is abortion.

Abortion can not be used as a solution to your medical condition.

Why? because it is murder.

The act of murder can not been seen as treatment to illnesses.

It is evil, always, in of it's self, 100% evil. at no time or under any circumstance would ever make it not evil. It is 100% evil and we can not use evil to do good.

It just does not work that way.

This is where, when you have gone as far as you can without crossing lines, you just have to resolve yourself to God's will.

Davidnic · Dec 30, 2010

kittycat7 said:
I just meant treating a disease in general.

Well we are allowed to treat diseases, we do not have to rely on the hand of God in a direct sense and avoid medical science. But if the treatment is immoral (requires the death of another be it by abortion, harvesting embryos or some other methods that is considered immoral) then we can not use that method and need to find an alternative. And example would be say there is a treatment that destroys embryos for stem cells...that treatment would not be allowable. But if there was an alternate that used adult stem cells it would be.

The basic line of logic used is that all human life, no matter the state of health or development, is equal to all other human life. And one can not be taken to save another. We also can not use numbers to make it proportional because one life is of inestimable dignity so even one innocent killed to save many is not right.

Now, this does not discuss someone sacrificing themselves for others, only when the life is taken from an innocent who is not an unjust aggressor without consent.

Even in the case of unjust aggressor, other methods available must be tried first if possible.

benedictaoo · Dec 30, 2010

kittycat7 said:
I just meant treating a disease in general. And I was only talking about the ectopic thing.

the ectopic thing is an ectopic thing. It is not abortion.

That is the difference.

Using abortion (sucking the baby out- limb from limb, etc,) is not a way you can use to treat an illness.

kittycat7 · Dec 30, 2010

benedictaoo said:
the ectopic thing is an ectopic thing. It is not abortion.

That is the difference.

Using abortion (sucking the baby out- limb from limb, etc,) is not a way you can use to treat an illness.

I'm still unsure about the difference, but other than that your post sounds very reasonable.

benedictaoo · Dec 30, 2010

kittycat7 said:
I'm still unsure about the difference, but other than that your post sounds very reasonable.

One is a situation where the baby has to be removed in order to survive and to save mom.... the baby is removed but 10 times out of 10, the baby dies in the process. The intent was never to kill the baby to save mom. It was to remove the baby from the tube. They did, it died.

But abortion to "save mom". What is the intent? To kill the baby in order to save Mom. Not to remove it, not to treat mom with some other treatment, it was to end the pregnancy.

benedictaoo · Dec 30, 2010

let me put it this way.... you are pregnant and you find out it is a tube pregnancy... the doctor does not (or should not) say, we have to terminate the pregnant so you can live. If we don't, both of you will die.

Instead, the doc says, you have tube pregnancy... we have to remove the embryo from the tube and it can not be replanted, it will die inadvertently. If we do not remove it now, you can die.

Now you have some illness if you go past a certain amount of weeks, both might die. There is never a 100% chance anyone will die, just that it's likely, keep that in mind.

The doc says, we have to terminate your pregnancy if you want to live, if not- neither will.

So the intent is to terminate the pregnancy which is medical jargon for kill the baby.

You see that difference?

If it were me, I would say, I will go as far as I can, deliver the baby and we will try to save it. If it dies, it was not the intent.

The last thing I would do is have it sucked out with a vacuum cleaner and thrown in a trash bin.

Davidnic · Dec 30, 2010

benedictaoo said:
One is a situation where the baby has to be removed in order to survive and to save mom.... the baby is removed but 10 times out of 10, the baby dies in the process. The intent was never to kill the baby to save mom. It was to remove the baby from the tube. They did, it died.

But abortion to "save mom". What is the intent? To kill the baby in order to save Mom. Not to remove it, not to treat mom with some other treatment, it was to end the pregnancy.

Yep, to elaborate on this in one the baby is a co-victim of the situation a fellow human. In the other the baby is viewed as the source of the problem and almost like a disease or tumor to be extracted directly by method and intention. In one the removal of the tube kills the child in the other the doctor goes in and kills the child as a proposed method of healing.

To many the distinction may not be very clear or be viewed as too fine a point or even not a real distinction. But the acts are totally different.

A quote from my link in post #56 shows the distinction between different methods of treatment for an ectopic and may help to highlight where we see a difference:

Proposed Treatments

Catholic Theologians typically discuss the morality of three common treatments for ectopic pregnancies according to the principle of double effect.[4] One approach utilizes the drug Methotrexate (MTX), which attacks the tissue cells that connect the embryo to its mother, causing miscarriage. A surgical procedure (salpingostomy) directly removes the embryo through an incision in the fallopian tube wall. Another surgical procedure, called a salpingectomy, removes all of the tube (full salpingectomy) or only the part to which the embryo is attached (partial salpingectomy), thereby ending the pregnancy.

The majority of Catholic moralists reject MTX and salpingostomy on the basis that these two amount to no less than a direct abortion. In both cases, the embryo is directly attacked, so the death of the embryo is not the unintended evil effect, but rather the very means used to bring about the intended good effect. Yet, for an act to be morally licit, not only must the intended effect be good, but also the act itself must be good. For this reason, most moralists agree that MTX and salpingostomy do not withstand the application of the principle of double effect.

The majority of Catholic moralists, while rejecting MTX or a salpingostomy, regard a salpingectomy as different in kind and thus licit according to the principle of double effect. What is the difference?

A partial salpingectomy is performed by cutting out the compromised area of the tube (the tissue to which the embryo is attached). The tube is then closed in the hope that it will function properly again. A full salpingectomy is performed when implantation and growth has damaged the tube too greatly or if the tube has ruptured. These moralists maintain that, unlike the first two treatments, when a salpingectomy is performed, the embryo is not directly attacked. Instead, they see the tissue of the tube where the embryo is attached as compromised or infected. The infected tube is the object of the treatment and the death of the child is indirect. Since the child’s death is not intended, but an unavoidable secondary effect of a necessary procedure, the principle of double effect applies.

Dr. T. Lincoln Bouscaren,[5] an early 20th-century ethicist and canon lawyer, argues that though the pathological condition is caused by the presence of an embryo in the fallopian tube, nonetheless “the tube has become so debilitated and disorganized, or destroyed by internal hemorrhage, that it now constitutes in itself a distinct source of peril to the mother’s life even before the external rupture of the tube.”[6]

Bouscaren admits that this is a “fine distinction,” but he essentially argues that the infection in the tube, though related to the pregnancy, is sufficiently distanced from the pregnancy to constitute a pathological condition of its own. He maintains that the inevitable rupture is the final end of a single pathology, i.e., a diseased and ever-worsening tube.

Dr. Bouscaren arrives at the same conclusion as the majority of Catholic moralists, that both the partial and full salpingectomy is licit. Some critics of this conclusion argue that salpingectomy is morally indistinguishable from salpingotomy or MTX. Therefore, Dr. Bouscaren’s explanation is helpful and would benefit from further elaboration by contemporary moral theologians.

There are two circumstances that make the use of any of these treatments morally acceptable. The first occurs when an ectopic pregnancy has been diagnosed, but no signs of life exist. The morality of treatment for ectopic pregnancies concerns the absolute value of human life. Conversely, there is no such moral consideration if the embryo has succumbed—there is no taking of human life (assuming a reasonable effort has been made to detect life).

The second circumstance occurs when the fallopian tube ruptures, whether or not the embryo is alive. A ruptured tube presents an immediate threat to both mother and child. If nothing is done, both will die. The doctor is morally obligated to act, even though only one life can be saved. The rupture is the cause of the child’s death, not any procedure the doctor performs. These two circumstances, miscarriage and rupture, present fundamentally different moral questions from instances in which both mother and child are alive and the fallopian tube itself does not pose an immediate threat to the mother’s life.
Source

benedictaoo · Dec 30, 2010

yep, the baby and mom is pitted against one another and it makes for a weird moral dilemma.

A tube pregnancy is a condition in of itself, like a miscarriage is a condition. But Pregnancy itself is not. It should not be treated as a illness.

The difference is the difference between abortion and miscarriage. They are not the same and the difference in the two is huge.

One is a baby not surviving though no one's fault and again, God's will we must accept and the other is intentionally killing a baby so that you can live. Throwing into the mix, "but thy both will die anyway, so lets kill the baby because it will die anyway..." makes no difference.

JimR-OCDS · Dec 31, 2010

benedictaoo

YOU DON'T SUCK YOUR BABY INTO A SINK!!!! YOU DO NOT DELIBERATELY KILL A CHILD AS THE WAY YOU SAVE ANYBODY!!!!!!!!

Well in the case we were talking about, we don't know what procedure was used to perform the abortion. For all we know, the mother was induced and she delivered the pre-viable fetus, which would've died in birth.

Deliver it and let it be counted as a person that matters! Don't abort it. abortion is cruel, inhumane and painful to the baby.

According to Church teaching, it wouldn't even be Baptised if its dead on delivery. So much for it being a person.

Deliver the child and try to save it and give it some dignity as the person God created.

You can not save an 11 week old fetus. In fact, you can't save a fetus younger than 21 weeks. Thats just the reality of medicine.

I know its an emotional issue for you, but there are realities in life that are difficult, and this is one of them.

Jim

JimR-OCDS · Dec 31, 2010

2WhomShallWeGo

If I could extend the length of my life by killing you would it me morally permissible?

No, because I am not dependent on you living.

Also, I'm a fully developed adult human being, unlike an 11 week old fetus, who can not survive without its mother.

Could you sit with this woman and watch her die, while knowing the doctors could save her life by terminating the pregnancy?

I couldn't and I doubt the doctors could, which is why they performed the abortion.

Jim

Abortion hypothetical

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