cancer and abortion

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if a woman is pregnant, then finds out she has cancer and the resulting chemo would kill the child, is it permissible to have the abortion? or just let the child die first as a result of chemo?
 
No, it is not permissable to kill the child by abortion.
It is permissable to undergo chemo even though there is a risk of injury or even death to the child.

BTW, I am not sure there is any cases where chemo WILL kill the child. There are types of chemo that increase (even dratically) the risk to the baby. Often the timing of the chemo makes a huge difference in how much risk the child will face. Doctors tend to overemphasize the risk. It is simpler to do chemo (or anyother treatment on pregnant women) without the complication of pregnancy. And they don’t want to be sued if something happens to the baby.

Like many of these faux “either/or” choices that pop up in the moral theology forum, it is unlikely that a woman has just these two choices. Other options are usually available. When two lives are involved, it becomes doubly important to investigate all the options.
 
I think the principle here is best illustrated by an analogy:

Let us suppose your three-year-old child gets terminal cancer. She is going to die – painfully – in a few months. Is it therefore permissible to stab her to death now? Of course not. Similarly, it is permissible for an unborn child to be killed as an unintended (and desperately unwanted) side effect of medical treatment, but not to go in and deliberately kill the child with knives just because the child is doomed anyway.

Thus, in the scenario you presented, abortion is morally prohibited, treatment is morally permissible, and delaying treatment for the sake of the child is morally praiseworthy – which is the stuff that saints like Gianna Molla are made of.

Also worth noting is that the number of abortions performed to protect the physical life of the mother are essentially zero. Under three percent are performed to “protect maternal health,” which can include mental, emotional, social, financial, and familial health (Source: Alan Guttmacher Institute), and scenarios where abortion is necessary to save a mother’s life are practically non-existent. (U.S. statistics on this don’t exist, but in the U.K. maternal life accounted for 0.004% of abortions.) In the words of Planned Parenthood Medical Director Mary Calderone, writing all the way back in 1960, “[M]edically speaking, that is, from the point of view of diseases of the various systems, cardiac, genitourinary, and so on, it is hardly ever necessary today to consider the life of a mother as threatened by a pregnancy.”

In short, if we banned abortion in all cases except those where it helped to save the mother’s life, the 1,300,000 abortions performed in the U.S. annually would drop to 52.

So let’s not get distracted by arguments about abortion and the woman’s life.
 
choy said:
if a woman is pregnant, then finds out she has cancer and the resulting chemo would kill the child, is it permissible to have the abortion? or just let the child die first as a result of chemo?
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Direct abortion is intrinsically evil and always gravely immoral. But what you are describing is indirect abortion, which is sometimes moral.

If possible, the prenatal should be delivered prior to chemotherapy, so that both the child and mother have the best chance to live.

Sometimes the mother and physican will choose to delay chemo until the child is viable outside the womb; after delivery, the chemotherapy begins. This represents a modest increase to the risk of the mother, but with the benefit of saving the life of the prenatal.

If the prenatal is too early in development to deliver, and too early to wait for viability, then the medical treatment for the cancer can be given to the mother, even though it also kills the prenatal.

This is moral because all three fonts of morality are good: intention, moral object, consequences.
 
Wowbagger said:
I think the principle here is best illustrated by an analogy:

Let us suppose your three-year-old child gets terminal cancer. She is going to die – painfully – in a few months. Is it therefore permissible to stab her to death now? Of course not. Similarly, it is permissible for an unborn child to be killed as an unintended (and desperately unwanted) side effect of medical treatment, but not to go in and deliberately kill the child with knives just because the child is doomed anyway.

Thus, in the scenario you presented, abortion is morally prohibited, treatment is morally permissible, and delaying treatment for the sake of the child is morally praiseworthy – which is the stuff that saints like Gianna Molla are made of.

Also worth noting is that the number of abortions performed to protect the physical life of the mother are essentially zero. Under three percent are performed to “protect maternal health,” which can include mental, emotional, social, financial, and familial health (Source: Alan Guttmacher Institute), and scenarios where abortion is necessary to save a mother’s life are practically non-existent. (U.S. statistics on this don’t exist, but in the U.K. maternal life accounted for 0.004% of abortions.) In the words of Planned Parenthood Medical Director Mary Calderone, writing all the way back in 1960, “[M]edically speaking, that is, from the point of view of diseases of the various systems, cardiac, genitourinary, and so on, it is hardly ever necessary today to consider the life of a mother as threatened by a pregnancy.”

In short, if we banned abortion in all cases except those where it helped to save the mother’s life, the 1,300,000 abortions performed in the U.S. annually would drop to 52.

So let’s not get distracted by arguments about abortion and the woman’s life.
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EXCELLENT POST! 👍
 
choy said:
if a woman is pregnant, then finds out she has cancer and the resulting chemo would kill the child, is it permissible to have the abortion? or just let the child die first as a result of chemo?
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no direct abortion with intent to kill the infant is never permissible, nor is it even good medicine. The doctors in this case have two patients and should do their best to save both. The mother has the option to undergo the recommended treatment for her cancer, and if the possible unintended after effect of that is fetal death, there is no sin. But you can’t equate a definite murder with a possible unintended death. The mother also has the option of forgoing any treatment that might harm her child until after the stage of development where delivery can safely be induced, which is heroic but not required morally.
 
puzzleannie said:
no direct abortion with intent to kill the infant is never permissible, nor is it even good medicine. The doctors in this case have two patients and should do their best to save both. The mother has the option to undergo the recommended treatment for her cancer, and if the possible unintended after effect of that is fetal death, there is no sin. But you can’t equate a definite murder with a possible unintended death. The mother also has the option of forgoing any treatment that might harm her child until after the stage of development where delivery can safely be induced, which is heroic but not required morally.
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agreed, but a touchy issue. waiting on cancer could mean it might get to the point that is spreads and is uncontrollable. i know some cancers tend to progress slowly and thus can wait for treatment, some are agressive and you can’t really postpone treatment
 
puzzleannie said:
The mother also has the option of forgoing any treatment that might harm her child until after the stage of development where delivery can safely be induced, which is heroic but not required morally.
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In some cases, forgoing treatment for a limited period of time would be morally required. For example, if the child were two weeks away from viability, and if the mother could wait the two weeks with only a limited increase in risk to her life, it would be objectively gravely immoral to begin cancer treatments immediately, rather than waiting two weeks.

The three fonts of morality always apply.

So if the act is indirect abortion, and so is not intrinsically evil, nevertheless the other two fonts must be good. In particular, the good consequences must outweigh the bad consequences. It is morally required for a mother to take upon herself a modest increase in risk to her own life if it also means that the child will likely live, instead of likely die.

What would be heroic and not morally required would be to wait a longer period of time, so that the mother’s life likely would not be saved, so as to likely save the prenatal’s life (if that were possible, medically).
 
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