Catholic Position Extreme Case of Abortion

[QContinuum]

The ideal government is empowered by the consent of those they govern, who give up their absolute freedom for protection from those who seek to harm them. The government gets the guns to enforce laws from those who want those laws enforced.

I agree, that’s the ideal. The definition I used is basically one that can be used for all forms of government. Places like Iran have repressive and regressive governments - but they are still governments, because they have the power to guarantee their authority.

And, just to ensure that the government always works for the people, not the other way around, we should carry sticks too. Big ones.

It’s an idealist form of government but one that the Founders believed to be the greatest. As someone who admires them and what they did for mankind, I’m inclined to agree.

I agree 100% with you. But I would point out that even with all of our guns added together, we would not withstand an all out assault by the U.S. military, with their drones, bombs, tanks, helicopters, ships, and vast arsenal. Thank goodness the military is principled in the sense they know their duty is to protect the citizens and I think most would refuse to fire on a truly unified American uprising against corrupt politicians.

 

[QContinuum]

So Vatican City, Andorra, Monaco must have fearsome arsenals somewhere to prevent incursion by those nasty bullies completely surrounding them for centuries. I get it.

Might makes right. Feh.

If someone were foolish enough to attack Vatican City, for example, they would likely find themselves at the business end of an Italian rifle. A government does not need to own or house its own military - it only needs the assurance that if its legitimacy is attacked, the attackers would meet some kind of resistance on part of the government. The Vatican is autonomous but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t enjoy certain protections from other countries that it has treaties with. And the Vatican, I believe, does have its own police. If one decided to test the laws within the Vatican, they can be involuntarily detained. This is a show of authority and a demonstration of force. It is understood, if one were to persist in resisting arrest, one risks injury or worse in fighting the state’s police.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

HomeschoolDad:

I see what you are saying, but where I was going, is that you would remove the child, being careful to do so while ensuring no harm to the child other than being removed from its natural environment before it is really ready to be out of that environment.

OK… so, what you’re suggesting is an early delivery. Inasmuch as such are possible, and afford good chances for the child’s survival? Sure! But not merely removing it carefully so that it can be set aside to die outside the womb, right?

It’s really a razor’s-edge thing. Merely inducing or surgically bringing about an early delivery, when the child is at 7 or 8 months, and things are so in extremis for the mother that this extra month or two may make the difference between whether she lives or dies, that is one thing. Going earlier than this, that would be pretty hard to justify, but babies can and do live, even being this premature. At that point, it might come down to “yes, we know this baby may have problems, having to be incubated so long, and it’s far from an ideal situation, but is it justified, considering that the alternative is the likely death of the mother and perhaps even the child as well?”.

I’m not a bioethicist, I am just throwing out ideas, and I don’t know where to draw those lines. But in all cases, I am referring just to removing the child intact and alive, not doing what abortionists do, doing the removal in such a way as to kill the child. I would like to think that even pro-choice people are troubled by the possibility of live delivery, and that it is not something they have as a goal. Dr Gosnell certainly didn’t.

I do not advocate “merely removing it carefully so that it can be set aside to die outside the womb”.

 

[Gorgias]

I do not advocate “merely removing it carefully so that it can be set aside to die outside the womb”.

OK. So, it really is an approach that attempts to save both mother and child.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

HomeschoolDad:

I do not advocate “merely removing it carefully so that it can be set aside to die outside the womb”.

OK. So, it really is an approach that attempts to save both mother and child.

That should always be the objective. I can envision a scenario where the doctor would have to say “I don’t know, this child’s awfully young, this is really risky, it may live and it may not, but if we leave it inside the mother, both mother and child will die, there’s not much time to waste, and if we do this, we may well save both”. Granted, there would be a point below which the child could not possibly live. In that case, the only thing to do, would be to “wait things out” until the child could be delivered with some possibility of surviving, and hope the mother lives that long as well. To my mind, this is neither an abortion nor a direct assault upon the life of the child. You do not typically hear advocates of “abortion to save the life of the mother” seeking to save the life of the child as well — or do you? I don’t know. I don’t talk to these people.

More simply put, following this reasoning, pro-life advocates might be able to strike a compromise with “life of the mother” advocates by saying “okay, you have a point, would you agree, then, to terminate these pregnancies only if there is some reasonable possibility of saving the child as well as the mother — a possibility that will only increase as time passes and the child further develops?”. As I have said elsewhere, non-Catholics implicitly, and perhaps unwittingly, tend to employ “end justifies the means” morality in hard cases (not just abortion), and in times past, anti-Catholics attempted to portray Catholics as cruel misogynistic ogres who favor the life of the baby over that of the mother.

“The mother needs to live to take care of her family” is a sterling example of “end justifies the means” morality — possibly stemming from the skewed notion of "the mother is ‘here’ but the baby is ‘not here yet’ ".

 

[o_mlly]

That should always be the objective. I can envision a scenario where the doctor would have to say “I don’t know, this child’s awfully young, this is really risky, it may live and it may not, but if we leave it inside the mother, both mother and child will die, there’s not much time to waste, and if we do this, we may well save both”. Granted, there would be a point below which the child could not possibly live. In that case, the only thing to do, would be to “wait things out” until the child could be delivered with some possibility of surviving, and hope the mother lives that long as well. To my mind, this is neither an abortion nor a direct assault upon the life of the child.

You have described only two of the three fonts necessary to determine the morality of the act. What is missing is a precise definition of “this” (the surgical procedure). The description will disclose the moral object.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

HomeschoolDad:

That should always be the objective. I can envision a scenario where the doctor would have to say “I don’t know, this child’s awfully young, this is really risky, it may live and it may not, but if we leave it inside the mother, both mother and child will die, there’s not much time to waste, and if we do this, we may well save both”. Granted, there would be a point below which the child could not possibly live. In that case, the only thing to do, would be to “wait things out” until the child could be delivered with some possibility of surviving, and hope the mother lives that long as well. To my mind, this is neither an abortion nor a direct assault upon the life of the child.

You have described only two of the three fonts necessary to determine the morality of the act. What is missing is a precise definition of “this” (the surgical procedure). The description will disclose the moral object.

"This" = surgical procedure, in the nature of a caesarean, with the goal of delivering the baby alive, and providing whatever medical intervention that can be done, to allow the baby to continue living and to grow and develop. I have in mind an incubator and any other provisions that medicine could make — nutritional, life support, and whatever else might be possible and called for.

Development and refinement of artificial wombs should be one of the highest priorities of medical science, assisted by the Catholic Church, both because of the inherent “rightness” of it, and to bear powerful witness to the world, of just how seriously Catholicism takes the preservation of all human life. I know it seems kind of like Brave New World or The Matrix, but better to have unappealing imagery than dead babies. Life support is not the most pleasant thing in the world to think about, but it’s better than loss of life.

Artificial womb - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Rau]

"This" = surgical procedure, in the nature of a caesarean, with the goal of delivering the baby alive, and providing whatever medical intervention that can be done, to allow the baby to continue living and to grow and develop. I have in mind an incubator and any other provisions that medicine could make — nutritional, life support, and whatever else might be possible and called for.

As I understand it, there is no procedure available approaching this given that the Baby (embryo?) is so young at the point in time at which mother’s life would be at grave risk from ectopic (or extra-uterine) pregnancy.