Abortion in cases of multiple births

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DL82

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In another thread,
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=152631
This is addressed with reference to IVF.

This made me wonder though, sometimes people do naturally have large multiple-births (triplets or more), and sometimes these are incredibly dangerous for the mother and all the children.

Where it is imperative for one or more fetuses to be aborted to save the life of the other fetuses and the mother, is this allowed?

I have real trouble with any interpretation of ‘open to life’ that actually ends up meaning ‘open to death’, i.e. sitting back and letting both mother and child die a painful death rather than taking the reasonable step of preserving one of those lives.

Miracles can happen, but we don’t usually sit around waiting for miracles when medical science has the ability to save lives. Why should these situations, painful and emotional though they are, be any different?
 
So in some cases, it’s OK to kill an innocent, helpless child in its mother’s womb? Is that seriously what you’re saying?
 
DL82 said:
In another thread,
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=152631
This is addressed with reference to IVF.

This made me wonder though, sometimes people do naturally have large multiple-births (triplets or more), and sometimes these are incredibly dangerous for the mother and all the children.

Where it is imperative for one or more fetuses to be aborted to save the life of the other fetuses and the mother, is this allowed?

I have real trouble with any interpretation of ‘open to life’ that actually ends up meaning ‘open to death’, i.e. sitting back and letting both mother and child die a painful death rather than taking the reasonable step of preserving one of those lives.

Miracles can happen, but we don’t usually sit around waiting for miracles when medical science has the ability to save lives. Why should these situations, painful and emotional though they are, be any different?
Click to expand...
If it’s a question of certain death for both mother and child(ren) unless doctors intervene that’s one thing, and intervention is permissible in such cases.

In this case you’re playing God - taking the lives of certain children so that others may live. Life and death are both really His alone to give except in certain clear-cut exceptions such as self-defence.

How on earth would you know WHICH of those multiple children, if any, God wills to be born or to live? How do you know precisely how many is the minimum required to die to give the others a chance?

More importantly, how do you know they won’t all - or just as many of them -survive if you leave them alone? More multiple births than ever happen in this age of IVF, and often all the children survive just fine.

In such a situation it’s impossible to be anything like certain - best to leave it up to God who created those little lives.
 
FightingFat said:
So in some cases, it’s OK to kill an innocent, helpless child in its mother’s womb? Is that seriously what you’re saying?
Click to expand...
In some cases, it’s OK to undertake a treatment with the intention of saving the life of mother (and possibly one or more children) which has the unfortunate but inevitable consequence of ending the life of one or more unborn children. The only cases I’m talking about are the ones where the alternative is for the mother and all unborn children to die.

This is called the Doctrine of Double Effect, it was put forward by St Thomas Aquinas, and is accepted by Paul VI in the exact context I am making reference to above from what I understand, though I can’t find a Catholic reference for it right now.

This Wiki article is quite an accurate summary, though it makes some comments on euthanasia which would probably not be accepted by the Church:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_double_effect#External_links
 
DL82 said:
In some cases, it’s OK to undertake a treatment with the intention of saving the life of mother (and possibly one or more children) which has the unfortunate but inevitable consequence of ending the life of one or more unborn children. The only cases I’m talking about are the ones where the alternative is for the mother and all unborn children to die.

This is called the Doctrine of Double Effect, it was put forward by St Thomas Aquinas, and is accepted by Paul VI in the exact context I am making reference to above from what I understand, though I can’t find a Catholic reference for it right now.

This Wiki article is quite an accurate summary, though it makes some comments on euthanasia which would probably not be accepted by the Church:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_double_effect#External_links
Click to expand...
The Principle (not Doctrine) of Double Effect has four conditions.


  1. *]The action itself must be morally good or indifferent, never evil.
    *]The good effect must not be obtained through the evil effect, i.e., by means of the evil effect.
    *]The evil effect must not be intended, but only tolerated.
    *]There must be a sufficiently serious reason to justify allowing the evil effect (proportionality test).
    For it to apply, all four conditions must be met.

    So lets look at the example you give in your first post.
    Where it is imperative for o or more fetuses to be aborted to save the life of the other fetuses and the mother, is this allowed?
    Click to expand...
    Of the four conditions;
    1. Is passed.
      The action is saving the life of an unborn child and its mother (I refuse to use the word fetuses)
    2. Is failed.
      The good effect is directly obtained though the intentional killing of an unborn child.
      Note: I could stop here as once one of the four conditions fails it is not a case of the Principle of Double Effect
    3. Is failed.
      The evil effect, the killing of an unborn child, is intended not only tolerated.
    4. Is failed.
      It is never justified to kill an innocent being so that another may live.
      So this example fails 3 of the four conditions so it is not allowed.
 
DL82 said:
In some cases, it’s OK to undertake a treatment with the intention of saving the life of mother (and possibly one or more children) which has the unfortunate but inevitable consequence of ending the life of one or more unborn children. The only cases I’m talking about are the ones where the alternative is for the mother and all unborn children to die.

This is called the Doctrine of Double Effect, it was put forward by St Thomas Aquinas, and is accepted by Paul VI in the exact context I am making reference to above from what I understand, though I can’t find a Catholic reference for it right now.

This Wiki article is quite an accurate summary, though it makes some comments on euthanasia which would probably not be accepted by the Church:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_double_effect#External_links
Click to expand...
A direct abortion is not a moral medical treatment and does not fit the principle of double effect.

cuf.org/faithfacts/details_view.asp?ffID=56
 
Sorry,
In light of all the threads on abortion that have popped up here recently, I feel the need to reply to this one. Unless you are in the situation, you cannot possibly know how you would react. You may know how you SHOULD react, but not how you would.

In 1989 I was expecting twins. It was quite a surprise, there were no fertility drugs or artificial methods involved. I found out at about 15-16 weeks. I was thrilled nonetheless. At 22 weeks I became very ill. I went to the hospital and was checked out. I was dehydrated, and I wasn’t feeling one of my babies move around. The doctor patted me on the head and just said, sometimes they take a rest for a day or two.

I continued to get sicker and sicker. Finally I have to be hospitalized for dehydration and given IV’s to rehydrate me and shots to make me stop vomiting. After about a week they let me out. At my next OB appointment they do some routine blood tests and find that some of my blood levels are really screwed up. So they schedule me to repeat the test in a week… and this time it is worse… next week… even worse. By this time they are starting to become pretty alarmed. I was put on special diets, bedrest, etc… anything they thought would make me better. I wasn’t able to do anything but lay there, watch TV and read. I wasn’t even allowed to shower daily. Twice a week I could get up and shower. My doctors were pro-life but even they didn’t think I would survive this pregnancy.

I had weekly blood tests, 4x a week I had non-stress tests and once a week I had ultrasounds. At this point they determined that either I wasn’t going to survive or my babies weren’t. Knowing I was pro-life, they decided to send me to another hospital. I refused to leave my doctors and my home to lay in some hospital in a town where I didn’t know anyone. Instead I researched how to correct the blood levels that were bad. I came up with a totally different diet plan than my doctors. They still made me eat what they thought was right so I made a deal with them… two more weeks their way, then my way if theirs failed. At this point we found out that one of my babies had died but the other one was hanging on. In the next two weeks I went critical on them. It was obvious that as long as I was pregnant, I was also dying. When it came time for me to change the diet plan as they agreed to, they said no, I was too far gone. They were going to put me in the hospital and the second anything went wrong, they were wanting to terminate the pregnancy. I went AMA (against medical advice) and went on my own diet plan.

Still going to the hospital for all my appointments, the next week at my blood test there was significant improvement. I wasn’t out of the woods yet, but I was getting better and so was my surviving twin! Within 2 weeks of changing the diet, my blood levels were on the low side of normal, but still normal. Both of the doctors showed up for my next appointment and wanted to know how I knew what would change this. I promised to bring in my resources and show them. The next day I toted in 7 medical and nutrition books and laid them out across the doctor’s desk. Going step by step I showed them the functionality of the liver. Then I showed them how the endocrine system worked and how foods directly affected how the liver would function. I won’t go into all the details, but I broke it down further and further. Then I went into what different nutrients did for the body and proved to them that the high protein diet they had me on was the worst thing I could be eating but the high vitamin A and fiber diet could correct the blood deficiencies I was experiencing. Both doctors sat there with their jaws hanging. They asked where I had learned it. I told them I checked the books out of the medical library at the local university and just started reading. My male doctor stopped talking to me because he felt guilty for not listening, my female doctor just took it in stride and worked with me vowing to listen more closely to her patients.

At 36 1/2 weeks I gave birth to my son. Other than a few minor problems, everything went well. Obviously I am still here to tell the story, and I am happy to say my ds is 17 yo 6’0" 210 lbs… not bad for a little guy who wasn’t going to make it!!!

The point is, if I had trusted my doctors more than I trusted God either my son or I would have been dead right now. Doctors are fallible, and sometimes they make HUGE mistakes. Trust in God there could be a way out. I wish I had gone against doctors orders sooner but most likely it wouldn’t have changed anything. They determined that my other twin died about the time I got sick and went into the hospital… they just hadn’t caught it until much later.
 
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