Abortion is not allowed under any conditions in either the Catholic Church and as best as I can tell the Orthodox church. This includes Uterine cancer and ectopic pregnancy. I believe this was and is being discussed in the thread on Abortion and Greek Orthhodox.
Yes that thread is intended to discuss the Greek Orthodox approach and I would like this to address the Roman Catholic one.
Because questions have been asked about the Orthodox approach and now I, as an Orthodox, want to learn about the Roman Catholic one. Since it is of Orthodox interest it is in the Orthodox section.
If in the course of a treatment to save a mother’s life, the child is lost it is not considered abortion as destroying the child was not the primary function of the treatment. As far as I know abortion per se is not permitted under any conditions.
I could be wrong, but I thought that in situations where both will die and an abortion is the only way to save the mother’s life, then it would be permissable. I think the two examples you gave would fit here.
Forgive me, but I find these word games less than honest.
But I know of no differences between orthodox and Catholic thought in this matter. So I’m not certain of the point of these discussions. They seem more appropriate to discussions between Orthodox/Catholics and Protestant faiths embracing abortion or non-believers who embrace abortion.
An abortion is not being performed to save the Mothers life! the diseased organ is being removed and unfortunately the child unintentionally dies. Whether you accept the concept or not it is still not a direct abortion. One is not killing the child to save the Mothers life.
But is this not what is happening with the termination of an ectopic pregnancy?
The gangrenous limb is the diseased organ in need of removal. No one is claiming that the cancerous uterus is not being removed. So the analogy doesn’t really work .
What I am hearing is, Catholics may in some circumstances bring about the termination of a pregnancy and end the life of the fetus provided that they act unintentionally. Is that about right?
No the inflamed Fallopian tube is being removed. The child may be causing the tube to be inflamed , but as a similar example say the developing child had caused a pulmonary embolism … the Mother is free to have the embolism treated to save her life …likewise the Mother is free to treat the inflamed Fallopian tube which is causing great pain and is preparing to rupture… unfortunatley in the latter the unintended death of the child occurs (and it is actually irrelevant that the child would die anyway.) The Mother could always opt to forgo the treatment of the affected Fallopian tube/ectopic pregnancy just as she could forgo treatment of an infected appendix getting ready to rupture.
Why is this argument for abortion under these circumstances different to those advanced in other instances of abortion? The health of the mother requires the destruction of the fetus.
We are saying that a Catholic is not morally culpable of murder when they have treated a condition they would normally be free to have treated if a child wasn’t in utero. You are tryng to create sin where it does not exist.
First off those advanced in other circumstances are for the direct killing of the child where the child is looked upon as the problem or disease. ie killing a child because the pregnancy is causing depression in the mother.
Here is a web page containing documents published on the USCCB website. Among the documents are those on abortion.
Because in addition to having s legal mindset, the church also has a pastoral one. Which is why women who have an abortion do not have to travel to the bishop explicitly to confess and be absolved. Most dioceses have delegated confessors to counsel and absolve.
The word abortion, without any modifier, may refer to any number of conditions in which a pregnancy ends prematurely, usually resulting in or as a result of the death of the child. When this happens naturally this is called a spontaneous abortion. As this is usually beyond the power of the mother or often anyone to prevent, there is no sin attached to this particular abortion, although it may be possible that sin may be attached to factors contributing to a spontaneous abortion.
Medical treatments such as removal of a child from a falopian tube or removal of a diseased uterus which may contain a child are not direct abortions because the death of the child is not the purpose for which these treatments are undertaken. It is true that at the present state of medical knowledge such treatments usualy result in conditions under which a child can not live, but these are undesired consequences which medical knowledge may be able to address in the future. I pray that we may soon see the day when surgeons can viably move a child developing in a falopian tube to the uterus or effectively treat uterune cancers with methods that might not negatively affect a growing child.