Abortion in extreme cases?

[seeking_answers101]

On social networking, I often come across posts supporting things that are against my beliefs such as abortion and homosexuality and I make a point of defending my beliefs as well and strongly as possible. This often results in debates and questions. I was recently challenged to answer the question, “Do you think it is wrong for a young girl, 13 perhaps, who has been raped, to get an abortion?” I stuck with my point that abortion is murder and wrong in any case, but am I wrong? If I remember right, there have been times when the Church has permitted abortions in extreme cases. Would the Church object to an abortion if the young mother’s life was in great danger? I just want to represent the Church accurately to the people I am debating.

 

[Nelka]

Abortion is always wrong but remember most women that have abortions are adults that had sex.

People will always give you the most extreme for you to defend.

I knew someone whom was raped by her grandfather when she was 12/13 and got pregnant but refused to have an abortion and she was not Christian in any way.

If we think 13 is okay for an abortion, what about 14 or 15 or 16? Before you know it the gate is wide open.

 

[Dorothy]

On social networking, I often come across posts supporting things that are against my beliefs such as abortion and homosexuality and I make a point of defending my beliefs as well and strongly as possible. This often results in debates and questions. I was recently challenged to answer the question, “Do you think it is wrong for a young girl, 13 perhaps, who has been raped, to get an abortion?” I stuck with my point that abortion is murder and wrong in any case, but am I wrong? If I remember right, there have been times when the Church has permitted abortions in extreme cases. Would the Church object to an abortion if the young mother’s life was in great danger? I just want to represent the Church accurately to the people I am debating.

If a child is conceived, abortion is wrong. However, if the victim of rape goes to a Catholic hospital and they can verify that a child has not been conceived as yet, there is something that can be done.

Please see this article:

catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=6852

A suggestion for you: If after you explain the Catholic teachings on morals you are ridiculed and attacked, it is wise to stay away.

Have a Blessed Easter Season!

 

[PennyinCanada]

Why should a baby be executed for the sins of the father?

 

[JerryZ]

On social networking, I often come across posts supporting things that are against my beliefs such as abortion and homosexuality and I make a point of defending my beliefs as well and strongly as possible. This often results in debates and questions. I was recently challenged to answer the question, “Do you think it is wrong for a young girl, 13 perhaps, who has been raped, to get an abortion?” I stuck with my point that abortion is murder and wrong in any case, but am I wrong? If I remember right, there have been times when the Church has permitted abortions in extreme cases. Would the Church object to an abortion if the young mother’s life was in great danger? I just want to represent the Church accurately to the people I am debating.

You can always reply that 2 wrongs do NOT make anything right.

The person was raped certainly very wrong.

By murdering the innocent fetus how are you punishing that man?
Is murdering the fetus going to make the girl feel any better?
If the mother is unwilling to rear the newborn there are options to her, give it up for adoption, so many people who cannot have children.

---

 

[Hans_W]

Last year there was a thread on this forum discussing such an extreme case.

A 9-year-old girl was pregnant with twins after being raped by her stepfather. The girl weighed 80 pounds and her life was in danger. I could not believe it, but I had more than half a dozen posters accusing me of not being a real Catholic when trying to defend this poor girl wanting an abortion. Well, the girl herself probably didn’t even know what happened to her. Her mother and the doctors were pleading for an abortion.

It happened in 2009 in Brazil and you can look up all the details. The most disgusting part of the story is that the mother of the 9-year old and the doctors who eventually did perform the operation were excommunicated. The stepfather who raped her was not excommunicated. His crime was obviously not severe enough for that. A simple confession was fine for him. In defence of the Church (and of common sense) one can add that this case caused a big rift in the Catholic communities, the clergy and right into the Vatican.

Are we not allowed to consider the trauma a young woman has to go through after being raped. Her whole life can be destroyed having to carry an unwanted child now for 9 months, plus giving birth. Some can handle that, others not. I wonder how many have committed suicide, who couldn’t live with that shame. In that particular case we have a 9-year old child whose body was totally unsuited to bear one child, let alone twins. We are asked to simply ignore her physical and mental anguish. She should have been artificially kept alive as a kind of breeding automat until it was safe to cut her babies out.

That happens if you follow the rules blindly, to the last letter. I wonder how many of the 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide would agree with such a ruling. I have no doubt that I will get an immediate hammering from a dozen ultraconservatives on this forum accusing me for wanting to murder two babies. I have no intention of replying.

 

[Burning_Sapling]

Last year there was a thread on this forum discussing such an extreme case.

A 9-year-old girl was pregnant with twins after being raped by her stepfather. The girl weighed 80 pounds and her life was in danger. I could not believe it, but I had more than half a dozen posters accusing me of not being a real Catholic when trying to defend this poor girl wanting an abortion. Well, the girl herself probably didn’t even know what happened to her. Her mother and the doctors were pleading for an abortion.

It happened in 2009 in Brazil and you can look up all the details. The most disgusting part of the story is that the mother of the 9-year old and the doctors who eventually did perform the operation were excommunicated. The stepfather who raped her was not excommunicated. His crime was obviously not severe enough for that. A simple confession was fine for him. In defence of the Church (and of common sense) one can add that this case caused a big rift in the Catholic communities, the clergy and right into the Vatican.

Are we not allowed to consider the trauma a young woman has to go through after being raped. Her whole life can be destroyed having to carry an unwanted child now for 9 months, plus giving birth. Some can handle that, others not. I wonder how many have committed suicide, who couldn’t live with that shame. In that particular case we have a 9-year old child whose body was totally unsuited to bear one child, let alone twins. We are asked to simply ignore her physical and mental anguish. She should have been artificially kept alive as a kind of breeding automat until it was safe to cut her babies out.

That happens if you follow the rules blindly, to the last letter. I wonder how many of the 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide would agree with such a ruling. I have no doubt that I will get an immediate hammering from a dozen ultraconservatives on this forum accusing me for wanting to murder two babies. I have no intention of replying.

Imagine a parallel case. A mother and her child are hiding in a closet from mafia members that have come to kill her. Her child is about to sneeze. She knows that if the child sneezes it will catch the attention of the mafia members who will then find her and kill her. So she has the option- she can kill her child (quietly somehow) or she can let it live, in which case she will be killed. It seems obvious that it would be wrong for her to kill the child, despite the fact that this would be her only means of saving her own life. And it really doesn’t make a difference whether the child was conceived by rape or through consensual, marital intercourse. In either case she is not morally permitted to kill the child.

So, why should there be any difference in cases where an unborn child poses a threat to a mother’s life? Unborn life is just as sacred. Catholics are committed to this much.

I have heard it said that it can be permissible to carry through procedures that risk the unborn child’s life if they are necessary to save the mother so long as the intention is not to kill the child but rather to save the mother. But this reasoning could not be used to cloak or justify abortion.

 

[vz71]

Are we not allowed to consider the trauma a young woman has to go through after being raped. Her whole life can be destroyed having to carry an unwanted child now for 9 months, plus giving birth. Some can handle that, others not. I wonder how many have committed suicide, who couldn’t live with that shame. In that particular case we have a 9-year old child whose body was totally unsuited to bear one child, let alone twins. We are asked to simply ignore her physical and mental anguish. She should have been artificially kept alive as a kind of breeding automat until it was safe to cut her babies out.

That happens if you follow the rules blindly, to the last letter. I wonder how many of the 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide would agree with such a ruling. I have no doubt that I will get an immediate hammering from a dozen ultraconservatives on this forum accusing me for wanting to murder two babies. I have no intention of replying.

Rape is a horrible crime.
Not only does the does the criminal commit a horrible assault upon their victim, but the crime is compounded again and again by a society that looks upon the offspring as furthering of the crime.

We should not be playing into the crime of rape; it is not an occasion to murder an innocent life.

Were we truly pro-life, our society would put the rapist away, and provide support for the victim and offspring.

 

[Bruised_Reed]

Last year there was a thread on this forum discussing such an extreme case.

A 9-year-old girl was pregnant with twins after being raped by her stepfather. The girl weighed 80 pounds and her life was in danger. I could not believe it, but I had more than half a dozen posters accusing me of not being a real Catholic when trying to defend this poor girl wanting an abortion. Well, the girl herself probably didn’t even know what happened to her. Her mother and the doctors were pleading for an abortion.

It happened in 2009 in Brazil and you can look up all the details. The most disgusting part of the story is that the mother of the 9-year old and the doctors who eventually did perform the operation were excommunicated. The stepfather who raped her was not excommunicated. His crime was obviously not severe enough for that. A simple confession was fine for him. In defence of the Church (and of common sense) one can add that this case caused a big rift in the Catholic communities, the clergy and right into the Vatican.

Are we not allowed to consider the trauma a young woman has to go through after being raped. Her whole life can be destroyed having to carry an unwanted child now for 9 months, plus giving birth. Some can handle that, others not. I wonder how many have committed suicide, who couldn’t live with that shame. In that particular case we have a 9-year old child whose body was totally unsuited to bear one child, let alone twins. We are asked to simply ignore her physical and mental anguish. She should have been artificially kept alive as a kind of breeding automat until it was safe to cut her babies out.

That happens if you follow the rules blindly, to the last letter. I wonder how many of the 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide would agree with such a ruling. I have no doubt that I will get an immediate hammering from a dozen ultraconservatives on this forum accusing me for wanting to murder two babies. I have no intention of replying.

Excommunication is applied to offenses in which there is there is organized disobedience against church teaching. There are CINO groups that promote abortion as acceptable in some cases. There aren’t any Catholic groups that support rape in any circumstance so it doesn’t need as strong of a penalty. Ultimately, excommunication or not, the remedy is the same for both: repentance.

Also, I’ve read that the mother and even the doctors in in that were not excommunicated.

To answer the point about making a victim of rape carry a baby to term. How does abortion fix rape? Is it that the woman will have to watch her belly grow with child and this will remind her of the rape? It probably will, but what won’t remind her of it during those first months and later anniversaries and other triggers as it happens even when a woman does not get pregnant as the result of rape?

I think that the support of rape in cases of rape and incest is due to our own discomfort. Rape is still a very uncomfortable subject and I think it’s because it’s still seen as something scandalous that the woman has done and the baby is the evidence of an illicit intimate act. But it is NOT an act of intimacy; it is an act of violence. People aren’t awkward around guy who gets a broken nose after a violent assault at the bar they way they are awkward around a woman who shows any signs of being a victim of sexual assault.

 

[on_the_hill]

I have no doubt that I will get an immediate hammering

Not from me, you won’t.

Sorry. I’m pro-life, I do not make allowances for rape. But in the case of the 9 year old girl–I cannot say that I would keep calm and carry on. I don’t know what I’d do, but maintaining a rigid pro-life stance wouldn’t be guaranteed.

I have no intention of replying.

Me neither.

 

[Hans_W]

We often have to face a decision between two evils. It makes it a lot easier to set up a fixed rule that one of those evils is the greatest and the other option must be taken, in all cases, whatever the circumstances.

This takes off the responsibility of making a difficult decision; it is simple and clear-cut, no ambiguity, no grey area - just black and white. It gives us the feeling of having done the right thing without forcing us to look at all the details, circumstances, possible future implications etc.

I am certainly pro-life and I have no sympathy for the average abortion case when a pregnancy is just an inconvenience one wants to get rid of. But there are circumstances when life and health, physical and mental, of the mother should be taken into account.

This probably goes beyond the OP’s original question. But if I was quizzed by a non-Catholic on our standpoint on abortion, I would stay clear of extreme cases. An unmoving, hardened stance in exceptional cases is likely to distance the non-Catholic from our belief system.

 

[Rau]

We often have to face a decision between two evils. It makes it a lot easier to set up a fixed rule that one of those evils is the greatest and the other option must be taken, in all cases, whatever the circumstances.

This takes off the responsibility of making a difficult decision; it is simple and clear-cut, no ambiguity, no grey area - just black and white. It gives us the feeling of having done the right thing without forcing us to look at all the details, circumstances, possible future implications etc.

I am certainly pro-life and I have no sympathy for the average abortion case when a pregnancy is just an inconvenience one wants to get rid of. But there are circumstances when life and health, physical and mental, of the mother should be taken into account.

This probably goes beyond the OP’s original question. But if I was quizzed by a non-Catholic on our standpoint on abortion, I would stay clear of extreme cases. An unmoving, hardened stance in exceptional cases is likely to distance the non-Catholic from our belief system.

Your position can be summarised as rejecting the Church position on intrinsically evil acts. Therefore, you must also agree that it is ok, in suitable circumstances, to murder a child.

Your statement about “two evils” is not right. It would be an evil to refuse the girl medical care. It is not an evil to refuse to murder the foetus.

 

[minkymurph]

We often have to face a decision between two evils. It makes it a lot easier to set up a fixed rule that one of those evils is the greatest and the other option must be taken, in all cases, whatever the circumstances.

This takes off the responsibility of making a difficult decision; it is simple and clear-cut, no ambiguity, no grey area - just black and white. It gives us the feeling of having done the right thing without forcing us to look at all the details, circumstances, possible future implications etc.

I am certainly pro-life and I have no sympathy for the average abortion case when a pregnancy is just an inconvenience one wants to get rid of. But there are circumstances when life and health, physical and mental, of the mother should be taken into account.

This probably goes beyond the OP’s original question. But if I was quizzed by a non-Catholic on our standpoint on abortion, I would stay clear of extreme cases. An unmoving, hardened stance in exceptional cases is likely to distance the non-Catholic from our belief system.

I can see where you are coming from.

I am pro-life and like you, have little sympathy for an inconvenience abortion but differ with your position in that we cannot afford ourselves the luxury of staying clear of extreme cases. , we cannot ignore extreme cases because they do occur. Irrespective of how rarely they occur the law must legislate for these cases and as to the religious world, one has to answer the question would a loving God’s answer to extreme cases of rape and incest, or a severely disabled child that would have died prior to advancements in medicine be it is very unfortunate but my rules you must have the baby?

As you say, this black and white response is inadequate, and gives us the feeling of having done the right thing without forcing us to look at all the details, circumstances, possible future implications etc.

 

[minkymurph]

Not from me, you won’t.

Sorry. I’m pro-life, I do not make allowances for rape. But in the case of the 9 year old girl–I cannot say that I would keep calm and carry on. I don’t know what I’d do, but maintaining a rigid pro-life stance wouldn’t be guaranteed. .

That’s honest on the hill.

 

[minkymurph]

I just wanted to add that last year, 22,116 rapes were reported in the UK.

 

[Hans_W]

I just wanted to add that last year, 22,116 rapes were reported in the UK.

Imagine the figures worldwide. I lived for many years in South Africa. It is estimated that over 40% of South African women will be raped in their lifetime and that only 1 in 9 rapes are reported. One rape every 30 seconds. The suffering is beyond imagination.

I was always prolife and until recently thought that incest, rape and threat to the mother’s health should be seen as an exception. However, I realise that those exceptions would be abused and would be difficult to police. My experience of CAF has taught me to keep quiet about my opinion. But the case of that 9-year old Brazilian girl was too much for me. I hope that extreme cases like that will be addressed officially by the Church in the near future.

As I said, this case has divided even the clergy right up into the Vatican.

 

[Sy_Noe]

Imagine the figures worldwide. I lived for many years in South Africa. It is estimated that over 40% of South African women will be raped in their lifetime and that only 1 in 9 rapes are reported. One rape every 30 seconds. The suffering is beyond imagination.

I was always prolife and until recently thought that incest, rape and threat to the mother’s health should be seen as an exception. However, I realise that those exceptions would be abused and would be difficult to police. My experience of CAF has taught me to keep quiet about my opinion. But the case of that 9-year old Brazilian girl was too much for me. I hope that extreme cases like that will be addressed officially by the Church in the near future.

As I said, this case has divided even the clergy right up into the Vatican.

That case for me proved that everything is not as black and white as the Church says and I believe in gray. But then I’m not a practicing Catholic.

 

[Rau]

Imagine the figures worldwide. I lived for many years in South Africa. It is estimated that over 40% of South African women will be raped in their lifetime and that only 1 in 9 rapes are reported. One rape every 30 seconds. The suffering is beyond imagination.

I was always prolife and until recently thought that incest, rape and threat to the mother’s health should be seen as an exception. However, I realise that those exceptions would be abused and would be difficult to police. My experience of CAF has taught me to keep quiet about my opinion. But the case of that 9-year old Brazilian girl was too much for me. I hope that extreme cases like that will be addressed officially by the Church in the near future.

As I said, this case has divided even the clergy right up into the Vatican.

I cannot conceive of how an “exception” is possible. How would the Church formulate a position that it is OK to murder an innocent because to not do so may cause another great distress? Such would be a substantial upheaval to Catholic Moral Theology. What would be the criteria that makes the killing moral? How many other scenarios must then be admitted because they satisfy the relevant principles?

Great pain and sorrow happens in this life, and we are not free to adopt any and all means to avoid it.

 

[MtnDwellar]

As I said, this case has divided even the clergy right up into the Vatican.

I don’t think the clergy was divided in regard to the morality of abortion, even in this extreme case. The only discussion I am aware of is whether automatic excommunication occurred, or if culpability was sufficiently diminished due to the circumstances.

 

[on_the_hill]

I don’t think the clergy was divided in regard to the morality of abortion, even in this extreme case. The only discussion I am aware of is whether automatic excommunication occurred, or if culpability was sufficiently diminished due to the circumstances.

certainly the 9 year old had no culpability at all, one would hope.