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SoCalRC
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CAH and the USCCB. Remember, there are well over 100,000 ectopic pregancies treated in the US each year.
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catharina
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catharina
Guest
Do you mean (maybe) CHA (CHAUSA)?
In any event, where are the numbers sourced?
In any event, where are the numbers sourced?
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SoCalRC
Guest
Sory, yes, CHA. The CHA takes a very permissive view of “double effect”. You’ll find more stringent views from the National Catholic Bioethics Center:
ncbcenter.org/
However, if you search you will find that the vast majority of Catholic Hospitials in the US now have protocols for dispensing MTX, a chemical abortifiant.
FWIW, I do not believe that these abortions are licit. But the Church has declined to rule on the matter and I have great compassion for the individuals involved.
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catharina
Guest
You do understand that the use of methotraxate is geared to many serious medical problems, often problems that affect the elderly. Why are you so certain that MTX is used to abort?
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mikew262
Guest
How about if a fetus is discovered to be horribly deformed early on and would only be expected to live maybe for an hour or 2 after birth; perhaps even suffer before it mercifully died? Yes, it happens.
The question was asked, so I’m tossing scenarios out where many rational people might see some justification for ending a pregnancy.
The question was asked, so I’m tossing scenarios out where many rational people might see some justification for ending a pregnancy.
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mapleoak
Guest
How about if you knew your neighbor was expected to die a tragic death tomorrow. Would you say you have the right to mercifully murder him today?
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mikew262
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Nice dodge. Try responding directly to my scenario.
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puzzleannie
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yes that is another very sane, logical conclusion. Deformed people have no right to exist so let us indeed murder them, as early as possible, so we don’t have to deal.
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mapleoak
Guest
It illustrates absurdity with absurdity.
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mikew262
Guest
I’m not just talking deformed like a cleft pallet (sp?), or missing an arm. I’m talking about baby with no brains, baby’s who basically are just a hodgepodge of flesh (termed monsters), which bear little resemblance to a human. It’s fair to let a mother carry it to term, let her be horrified when she sees it, only for it too die minutes after it’s born? Certainly, if she wants to carry it to term, thats her choice, but don’t you think at least in this instance, the mother should have the choice?
Take your blinders off for a second and think rationally.
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mikew262
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I can see you can only answer with insults; that is in itself absurd. When you can respond with an answer with some substance, feel free to do so.
What I tossed out there is reality my friend. These are real scenarios that women do face. It’s easy to sit on the sidelines and cast judgment. Now if you have actually faced this scenario and dealt with it, then I beg your pardon, but until then…
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mapleoak
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I can see you can only answer with insults; that is in itself absurd.
Kind of like people who say “men shouldn’t force their ideas on women cause they don’t know what it’s like”, or “If you haven’t experienced it, you don’t know what you are talking about”.
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Scottgun
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Good point. By this absurd logic only murderers could sit on a jury for a capital crime because only they have been there. The blob justification (that is, the highly deformed and certain to die baby) does not work. A human is more than a functioning brain and body parts and when we choose an inherently evil act of abortion we are affirming that matter is the only reality. It dehumanizes everyone involved. In fact, the deformed baby argument is little different than the argument that because in the early stages it’s just a few cells, abortion is ok. Both are attempts to deny humanity based on size or functioning body parts.I can see you can only answer with insults; that is in itself absurd.
Kind of like people who say “men shouldn’t force their ideas on women cause they don’t know what it’s like”, or “If you haven’t experienced it, you don’t know what you are talking about”.
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SD_Catholic
Guest
If God were to give a soul to a mutant lizard that was to be born by my wife it would be born. When God gives a soul it is not our choice to seperate body from soul, that should be left to him and him only.
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Newbie2
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If the baby died inadvertanly during attempts to save the mother’s life, that’s different; that’s not an abortion. But you’re saying something like the mom has a severe cardiac problem and wouldn’t (likely) make it through childbirth, right?
Abortion would not be acceptable in that case, as referenced below:
Rationalizing abortion, then?
It’s not a monster. It’s a deformed human baby, who has the same right to live or die like an undeformed baby.
That’s a risk we accept when we have children. Moms are not allowed to play God.
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Philothea_2.0
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art-bin.com/art/omodest.html
This justification is nothing new, it’s just that we just have quicker, less messy ways of getting rid of the “undesirables” than Swift could have ever imagined when he wrote this satire. Funny how when he wrote it, the absurdity was the point, no one would ever kill a baby just for being poor – and now we actually DO this and use his “absurd” justifications for it!
Oh, and of course, unlike in Swift’s essay, we don’t eat the babies with fava beans and a nice chianti once we’ve killed them – we simply loot their bodies for any useful tissue and consume them that way (stem cell and vaccine research, experimentation, etc.).
lifedynamics.com/Abortion_Information/Baby_Body_Parts/
This justification is nothing new, it’s just that we just have quicker, less messy ways of getting rid of the “undesirables” than Swift could have ever imagined when he wrote this satire. Funny how when he wrote it, the absurdity was the point, no one would ever kill a baby just for being poor – and now we actually DO this and use his “absurd” justifications for it!
Oh, and of course, unlike in Swift’s essay, we don’t eat the babies with fava beans and a nice chianti once we’ve killed them – we simply loot their bodies for any useful tissue and consume them that way (stem cell and vaccine research, experimentation, etc.).
lifedynamics.com/Abortion_Information/Baby_Body_Parts/
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PhilotheaZ
Guest
Thanks for verbalizing these important questions. Many people wonder about this.
If I knew I was carrying a baby with serious medical problems and I knew he or she would probably live only a few days, hours, or minutes, I would want to give birth, be able to show the baby that he or she is loved (even if only for a few minutes), and baptize the baby. I would know that I had done the best I could for my baby, and I would know for certain that I had a little saint in heaven praying for me! (Without baptism, we don’t know for certain whether babies enjoy the beatific vision.) With the abortion option, I may be living with the guilt of murder for the rest of my life.
Regarding the “perhaps even suffer” part of your question, I would choose that over the absolute certainty of suffering that happens during abortion. Our society likes to hide the fact that preborn babies do feel pain and do suffer tremendously during an abortion procedure.
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SoCalRC
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Read the articles. It all started with the attempt to draw a thin distinction between salpingastomy and salpingectomy in treating ectopic pregnancies. In light of the Tribunal of the Holy Office’s response in 1902 (see the Catholic Encyclopedia entry on ‘Abortion’ for a basic overview) ‘thin’ is putting it mildly.
But, now we have earlier detection and intervention, combined with plasma and antibiotics. So we have the possibility of tubal rupture, which, in turn, has the possibility of death (but a relatively low probability outcome with medical treatment). So the old old ‘treating the tube isn’t direct abortion’ argument has migrated into ‘preventively treating the tube isn’t direct abortion’ (we can’t say ‘pre-emptive’ because we don’t know if the tube will actually rupture).
Further, we have pressure from secular medical standards. Treating an ectopic pregnancy with salpingastomy, salpingectomy, and MTX have the same prognosis for the fetus - certain death. But, one is least intrussive (no surgery) and one is most intrussive (surgery and partial sterility) from the perspective of the mother. It is becoming very difficult to get secular health insurance to pay for a procedure with higher risks and a less positive health outcome simply because some theologians argue that doing the abortion of medical necessity a certain way does not count under Catholic faith.
So, we are seeing some very innovative thinking when it comes to ‘obeying the directives’. CHA’s position paper on ectopic pregnancies suggests that the old ‘thin’ argument of ‘double effect’ might apply to all three treatments. But a lot of Catholic hospitals are using very different protocols and rationalizations. For example, if you search the link I gave you you will find a relatively recent article on a protocol for the use of MTX in the treatment of ectopic pregnancies. That protocol contends that they are not, in fact, pregnancies, but interrupted miscarriages. So, the fetus is already ‘dead or dying’. The later, of course, has implications with regards to euthanasia, but the article does not address them. Nonetheless, the protocol is in use in a group of Catholic hospitals.
In fact, you would be hard pressed to find a single Catholic hospital that would not readily offer and provide at least one of the three common treatments for ectopic pregnancy. Since the Church has never declared any of them licit, and secular society counts them as abortions of medical necessity, I stand by my statement.
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mapleoak
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The justifications typically used in support of salpingectomy on the principle of double effect are very weak and it is quite difficult to differentiate between that and MTX treatment in ectopic pregnancy. In fact it can be said that salpingectomy is even worse because it is both a direct attack on the unborn and an attack on the mother’s fertility. It is a difficult argument to say that removal of the tube with the baby inside is not a direct attack.
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