abortion OK if mother's life is at stake?

[Kiterius]

I am against legalized abortion in the U.S., but I have a question:
If abortion is banned except in the case of the mother's life being at stake, what's to stop women who want an abortion for convenience to falsely claim their life is at stake? How can a claim of the 'mother's life being at stake' ever be disproved?

Abortion should never be legal. Murder is murder.

 

[DrBubbaLove]

Having had a Jesuit education I am thoroughly familiar with the concepts. The ability of human reason without any hard evidence to back it up can lead to bizarre conclusions. It not only "can ", it has led to bizarre conclusions.

I would not think someone familiar with the concept would confuse an ECF talking about an aspect of mother nature and correctly relating that to the completeness of the Gospels (4winds=4Gospels) as part of dissertation as being an expression of the concept of natural law.
It's not. Murder is not wrong because we see it wrong from observing nature around us.

 

[SPF]

OP:

I am against legalized abortion in the U.S., but I have a question:
If abortion is banned except in the case of the mother's life being at stake, what's to stop women who want an abortion for convenience to falsely claim their life is at stake? How can a claim of the 'mother's life being at stake' ever be disproved?

I think what makes this question rather misleading is actually using the term abortion in relation to a life saving procedure in which saving the life of the mother will inevitably result in the death of the child inside her.

When we think of abortion, we typically think of a woman in good health choosing to terminate the life of the baby inside her for reason X, where X is more of a reason of convenience than life.

However, there are circumstances in which a woman's life becomes threatened due to being pregnant. The most obvious example would be an ectopic pregnancy.

In these life threatening situations, I think the moral thing to do is for the doctor to consider both the fetus and the mother as his patients. His goal should be to save the life of both. However, if the fetus is too underdeveloped, then saving the mother may result in the death of the fetus. This is not an abortion, this is a death as a result of an emergency surgery. The doctor should always have the mindset of saving both his patience, but the grim reality is that there are times where he can't.

As for determining whether a woman's life is genuinely at risk or not, that is fairly easy from a medical standpoint.

 

[DrBubbaLove]

OP:

I think what makes this question rather misleading is actually using the term abortion in relation to a life saving procedure in which saving the life of the mother will inevitably result in the death of the child inside her.

When we think of abortion, we typically think of a woman in good health choosing to terminate the life of the baby inside her for reason X, where X is more of a reason of convenience than life.

However, there are circumstances in which a woman's life becomes threatened due to being pregnant. The most obvious example would be an ectopic pregnancy.

In these life threatening situations, I think the moral thing to do is for the doctor to consider both the fetus and the mother as his patients. His goal should be to save the life of both. However, if the fetus is too underdeveloped, then saving the mother may result in the death of the fetus. This is not an abortion, this is a death as a result of an emergency surgery. The doctor should always have the mindset of saving both his patience, but the grim reality is that there are times where he can't.

As for determining whether a woman's life is genuinely at risk or not, that is fairly easy from a medical standpoint.

Very good points. Interestingly such procedures were always legal on those same grounds. Legal before people wanted to claim those would not be seen as legal procedures unless we legalized abortion for convenience everywhere. They also argued making laws against abortions for convenience means such procedures are also made illegal, unless the law specified it could be for life saving of mother and/or baby. Life saving an interesting point to make for people not wanting to grant that what is aborted is not a life or at least not one worth saving.