C
CatholicMatthew
Guest
What we have to remember is that the amputation or sterilization is always evil. However, utilizing the valid principle of double effect we can achieve the good of protection of the body through a legitimate medical procedure. It would be illicit to perform the procedure if the negative medical condition did not exist.The removal of a part of the body for the good of the rest having medical reasons is not evil. … The idea that if one has the possibility of preventing any part of the body to function (to avoid a bad effect) just by using FREE WILL is enough to dismiss the application of the principle of totality is not necessarily completely true. Complete sexual abstention might not be considered as a valid option to rule out the application of the principle of totality in our case. Of course, temporal abstention, if NFP works for that person, should be used instead of sterilization.
Examples:
1.) My arm is infected and I will die unless the infection is removed from my body. Antibiotics and everything else fail due to the advanced nature of the infection. A medical procedure to remove the infection is licit even though it has the unintended side effect of loss of limb.
2.) My arm is healthy and I decide to undergo the medical procedure to prevent a future infection that may happen when I undergo an activity (for the good of humanity, of course) that will probably cause my arm to be infected. This would be illicit and from what I understand it is your situation.
3.) My arm has light excema but I do not want to deal with putting lotion on it every day and so I have the same procedure done as before (I believe I am out of arms at this point but this is hypothetical). This would be illicit because the benefit of ridding myself of the excema (a skin disorder) is not more beneficial than the loss of my arm.
If the reproductive organs of your wife are not harming her now then you have no recourse to a medical procedure (morally speaking) to remove the same organs. Also, under the principle of double effect you cannot recourse to protect the life of your wife by immoral means (you are intending to do something that has a specifically contraceptive effect to prevent pregnancy) no matter how much you want it to be preventitive it never will be anything other than sex with a contraceptive because your wife might get pregnant. If the continued presence of the reproductive organs would harm your wife then you could consider sterilization for her and her alone.
However, you wish to contracept to achieve the means of removal of the function. If the disease causes her problems now and threatens her then proceed with the removal of the disease and the unintended side effect of the removal of the organ could be realized.But I insist that this is not about contraception but about a medical amputation of a diseased function or organ.
The removal of the eyes would be licit in this case because they are not functioning correctly and threatening life regardless of outside stimulus. If your wife’s reproductive organs are not threatening her in a non-pregnant condition then they are functioning correctly as they are. You have asserted that the oncoming of pregnancy is what causes the problem and not the organs themselves. Your analogy is incongrous to your situation.Imagine just this hypothetical and strange situation: you have an illness that just by receiving light through your eyes, the electric impulse to your brain would kill you. You have two choices to go on having a normal life for the sake of the total wealth of your person (principle of integrity or totality)
In both cases you are going to be blind: by free will or by medical treatment. What option would you take? Do you still think that the option 2) is morally unacceptable because your eyes are healthy and you are not allowed to remove them or to impair the visual stimulus reaching the brain?
- To stay always in a dark room (that involves free will) you are blind although your eyes are healthy.
- To use a medical treatment that removes physically the eyes or impairs the function of the eyes in transmitting the electric impulse to the brain in order to achieve a better life.
The problem here is that, as I an others see, the principle of totality could be applied here.
Look at our example: you always have the possibility to keep your eyes closed or live in a dark room. … This is a missunderstanding: it is not about contraception, it is about application of moral principles to a particular case.