If the mother’s life is at stake and she has other children she is entitled to allow her unborn to die because it is the lesser of two evils.
Please provide Church teaching to back up this claim.
She is not allowed to directly abort her child. It has nothing to do with the lesser of two evils. If her life is at stake and her child dies as a result of efforts made to save her life, that is a tragic consequence of the life-saving efforts. A direct abortion is NEVER allowed under ANY circumstances!
We have the right to allow a person to die if it is the lesser evil.
We are not allowed to use an evil means, even in order to achieve a good end.
I’m not so sure of that. There are some statements being made that deeply trouble me and that I would like to explore more fully, although I think we’re veering way off topic. However, this is so important that I think we should either continue with the current direction of this thread or agree to discuss this in a new thread.
Code:
The Church teaches that** our conscience is our ultimate authority**...
Please provide Church teaching to back up this claim.
The following are bits and pieces from a source that I believe explains Church teaching very well. Please read the entire article (it’s not that long) because I don’t want to be presenting quotes out of context:
John Paul II took the opportunity of the 25th anniversary of “Humanæ vitæ” to publish his groundbreaking encyclical “Veritatis splendor.” Here he reasserted the teaching of Vatican II that
Christ and the Church can, have and do teach definitively in moral matters, and that a well-formed Christian conscience will be informed by such authoritative teaching. Here one ought to proceed with obedience of faith, submitting one’s experience, insights and wishes to the judgment of the Gospel, prepared to reform oneself according to the mind of Christ authentically transmitted by the Church. Conscience is indeed the proximate norm of personal morality, but its dignity and authority “derive from the truth about moral good and evil, which it is called to listen to and to express.” Sincerity cannot establish the truth of a judgment of conscience and freedom is never freedom from the truth but always and only freedom in the truth.
The magisterium does not bring to the conscience truths which are extraneous to it, but serves the Christian conscience by highlighting and clarifying those truths which a well-formed conscience ought already to possess.
In subsequent documents the CDF taught that the magisterium has the task of “discerning, by means of judgments normative for the consciences of believers, those acts which in themselves conform to the demands of faith and foster their expression in life and those acts which, on the contrary, are incompatible with such demands because intrinsically evil.” In “Ad tuendam fidem,” John Paul II identified three categories of doctrines which I have treated more fully in my written paper.** An example of the highest degree of authoritative teaching – requiring the assent of theological faith by all the faithful – is “the doctrine on the grave immorality of direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being.”**
Ratzinger argued that the reduction of conscience to subjective certainty does not liberate but enslaves or abandons us, making us totally dependent on personal taste or prevailing opinion. Though a person’s last, best judgment binds him at the moment of acting, this cannot mean “a canonization of subjectivity.” While it is never wrong to follow such a judgment, "guilt may very well consist in arriving at such perverse convictions."
…the faith and morals of the Church are normative for the individual who wishes to belong to it. Once a person has chosen (and been chosen) to belong, certain practices “come with the package,” so to speak. If you are pro-abortion, pro-euthanasia and pro-cloning the Catholic Church is not for you; or – better – since the Catholic Church is for you, you should convert to being anti-abortion, anti-euthanasia, anti-cloning and pro-life and love, pro-the sick and disabled, and pro-the theology of the body.
Documents such as the Catechism thus function as an authoritative articulation of “the Catholic story.” To be part of the Church is to believe certain things but also to live in accord with that tradition and like other members of that community. Orthopraxis expresses orthodoxy.
zenit.org/article-19058?l=english
[bolding and underlining added by this poster for emphasis]
There are very tragic cases where the distinction between allowing a person to die and killing a person becomes arbitrary and legalistic. In both cases we are fully aware of the end result and directly responsible for the means by which it is achieved.
Who is fully aware? Fully? The only Being Who is fully aware is God, by His omniscience. Methinks some people are trying to place themselves above God.
I’m thinking of the following scenario.