The Walk-in Freezer at Reilly's Pub

/me waddles in

Phew!! I feel like I need to be here!!! Baby's sick, Daddy's sick, I'm trying *not* to catch it any worse... I feel like a whale with sticks for arms and legs, and I'm getting those nice end-of-pregnancy hot flashes...

Now that that's off my chest, I feel much better.

/me munches on a dove bar with sklipp

Avila - you're not REALLY pregnant until your lil butterball timer button pops out to let us know you're done

Br. Max - my Butterball timer is going to shoot out the oven door if it pops out anymore!! At least there is a light at the end of the tunnel. 9 more weeks (I'm guessing actually 8 or slightly less) to go until we get to meet our new sweetheart! I think the pants are contributing to my whale-ishness, but they are sooo comfy! I remember why I got them late in the pregnancy with Tommy - very roomy until those last 2-3 weeks.

Opening up a new box of dove bars for Br. Max's arrival

oh those end of the pregnancy hot flashes are the worst, aren't they? GEEEEEEZ mine was in Feb, so it wasn't too bad

** sits on a block of ice with melts instantly**

Dove bar please

passing the dove bars over to Br. Max........here have 2 u look like u need them.

yes. I do. I need to catch up to avila

Can we have a round of prayers for Annabel? I hate to use the phrase "pro-life nut" in a room full of Catholics, but there's a guy who is pretty much saying that, since Annabel once had an ectopic pregnancy, which was terminated, she's gonna go to Hell, and that she should have died painfully rather than do such a horrible thing.

I mean, I can understand being opposed to elective abortions, birth control, and so on, but for *!@#*!#'s sake, an ectopic pregnancy is a death sentence, not a child.

I consulted my copy of William E. May's Catholic Bioethics and the Gift of Human Life, and May, as near as I could figure, agrees with the "pro-life nut". There is an incredible amount of medical jargon in there which is way over my head, plus opinions by numerous theologians both pro and con; I conclude that bioethical theologians are rather like economists: if you lay them end-to-end, they point all directions.

The 1971 edition of Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Facilities directed that use of a partial or total salpinectomy was morally licit if there is grave danger of fallopian-tube hemmorhage. Since that time, however, use of a drug called methotrexate has come into practice, and the 1994 edition of the same directives specify that no intervention is morally licit which results in a direct abortion.

Thereupon follows three pages of arguments from various theologians in May's book about what constitutes a "direct abortion". May himself concludes that the only morally legitimate way of dealing with an ectopic pregnancy is by "expectant therapy", which basically boils down to waiting for the tubal pregnancy to spontaneously abort and result in a miscarriage, "with no harm to the mother". How this is all to be accomplished without "harm to the mother" is something that May doesn't address.

Bottom line: if these guys can't agree among themselves what the proper course of action should be (and supposedly they're a heckuva lot smarter than you or me), then I seriously doubt if a woman who is faced with this decision is going to know what to do, either. How will God judge the woman? I believe compassionately and mercifully. She doesn't know what to do. The theologians can't agree what to do. The medical community is not in a position to know (from a moral standpoint) what to do.....

It's sort of like the guy whose car broke down in front of a "No Parking" sign; the wrecker driver wants to remove the car, but another sign says "No Towing". The guy who runs the store where the car is sitting wants the car owner fined for blocking his business site, the cop wants to ticket the guy for being parked in a no parking zone, and the wrecker driver wants to be paid for making the trip out from the garage to retrieve the car. The guy who owns the car finally says, "Tell you what: I'm gonna leave my wallet on the front seat and let you guys fight over it. Come over to the cafe and let me know what you decide when you're done."

A good point. One thing that I have come to believe is that God isn't sitting there with _Yahweh's Big Book Of Moral Dilemmas_, checking to see whether we always make The Right Decision. He's watching to see if, when we make decisions, we make them with compassion and love. That's the "right answer".

One site, BTW, says that "expectant management" is a policy of monitoring to observe whether or not an ectopic pregnancy is indeed in evidence. They list a drug which can be taken which is likely to cause the fetus to detach from the fallopian tubes harmlessly; perhaps this is an "indirect" abortion.

A bit of further study reveals that some ectopic pregnancies *may* spontaneously abort. Here's a page with good information on it:

http://www.thrombosis-consult.com/articles/Textbook/86_ectopic.htm

I observe that there is never any hint of a way to turn one of these into a living baby.

Sklipp - winter is a GOOOD time to have a baby - if you get too hot, you can always stick your head out the window for a few seconds!

ITA about ectopic pregnancies. IMO, they are dangerous and never produce a baby that is old enough to live outside the womb (even if they could somehow get it out of the tube without killing it). There's no moral dilemma to solve here - saving the mommy's life is far more important than saving a baby who wouldn't be able to survive anyway. (((hugs))) to Annabel!

With an ectopic pregnancy, if the mother's still breathing, you can probably safely assume that the fetus isn't yet forming value judgements about pain.

And yes, the drug treatment is clearly intended to cause a "spontaneous" abortion.

I think this is a good example of the danger of taking an understanding (pregnancy is a human life forming), generalizing to a rule (never terminate a pregnancy), and forgetting the *origins* of the rule - the awareness that there is a potential human life. In an ectopic pregnancy, there isn't.

Originally posted by Avila
Sklipp - winter is a GOOOD time to have a baby - if you get too hot, you can always stick your head out the window for a few seconds!

ITA about ectopic pregnancies. IMO, they are dangerous and never produce a baby that is old enough to live outside the womb (even if they could somehow get it out of the tube without killing it). There's no moral dilemma to solve here - saving the mommy's life is far more important than saving a baby who wouldn't be able to survive anyway. (((hugs))) to Annabel!

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I agree Avila. There is no chance for baby to live and develop within a fallopian tube. And to let mommy die in this situation just seems fruitless to me. I mean, there is just no room!!! As painful as it is to contribute to the termination of a life, the reality of the situation is that the baby doesn't have a chance to develop anyway, and that is extremely heartbreaking to me, but it is reality, plain and simple.

And it defies analogy. The closest thing I can think of is a situation from a war movie I saw once, where a plane was coming in that had lost its wheels, and the lower ball gunner was trapped in his seat. The pilot had to eventually land the plane or run out of gas, but he knew that his good friend in the gunner seat was going to be seriously injured and most likely be killed. Heart breaking!!! Another potential but less relatable example is from one of the old westerns, where a guy's best friend gets caught by the "Indians". The guy sees his friend being burnt alive by the "Indians", and he shoots him from afar out of desperation, to try to bring an end to his friend's terrible suffering.

*sigh*... ... ...

All I know is that our God is far more merciful than any single man or theologian or expert on this Earth is capable of being. And I would just have to have faith that our God is a God of infinite compassion, and would have mercy according to His lovingkindness.

Originally posted by seebs

I think this is a good example of the danger of taking an understanding (pregnancy is a human life forming), generalizing to a rule (never terminate a pregnancy), and forgetting the *origins* of the rule - the awareness that there is a potential human life. In an ectopic pregnancy, there isn't.

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This is a good example of the dangers of the "God said it, I believe it" approach, in which people "take the scriptures at their face value" (which you should read to mean "take the scriptures in the way I have been told to interpret them by preachers" or "take the scriptures to support the views I have always held") rather than thinking critically about what they *mean*.

-Chris

Ah....

Hmmm...


/me sits in the corner and bites her lips to keep them shut.

***sitting on e rappidly melting block of ice***

feminazi . . . *sigh*

When you can find a MAN who has experienced an ectopic pregnancy, THEN I'll listen to whatever moral decision he can make.

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lol rotf!!!!!!!!

I am sooooooooooo upset with myself for not being there for a friend last night........sitting on a block of ice and asking for forgiveness.