Discussion about ectopic pregnancies

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TheMike0012

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I’m having an online discussion with someone regarding this. It all started when I stated that saying “you can be pro-life while making exceptions” is inconsistent. Then the person brought up ectopic pregnancies. I explained, at length, how treating ectopic pregnancies aren’t technically abortions; the person disagrees and is trying to claim I’m “making an exception”. I went further to state that if there is any chance of survival for the fetus, and you terminate it anyway, that’s what makes it abortion, and that’s what brought about my current predicament…

This person brings up cases where the baby is implanted in the fallopian tube, it ruptures, is implanted in the abdomen, and results in a live delivery. This person claims that the majority of these rare cases which result in a live delivery is the one I previously mentioned. I wanted to respond but I wasn’t sure my response would have been morally sound. How should I respond?

By the way, for clarification’s sake, I’m pretty sure the person I’m discussing with is a pro-choice person playing devil’s advocate.
 
They are probably unwilling to acknowledge the nuance, but the morally licit way is removal of the inflamed tissue (a portion of the fallopian tube) though it may result in the child’s death. Targeting the embryo itself is not moral. The distinction is that the disease is being targeted and treated. The means and end is not to kill the child. As in the treatment is not “kill the child.”

Similar to how it’s licit to undergo chemotherapy to treat cancer even if a possible/likely result is the death of the child.
 
I agree with what @Wesrock said. An ectopic pregnancy fits the conditions for the principle of double effect. The intent here is to remove the damaged tissue, NOT to kill the baby. The death of the baby is foreseen, but it is directly willed. One way I was taught concerning the validity of the principle of double effect is whether there would be any hesitation if there was no bad effect. In this case there would be no hesitation to remove the damaged tissue if there was no baby involved.

Pax
 
TheMike0012 said:
This person brings up cases where the baby is implanted in the fallopian tube, it ruptures, is implanted in the abdomen, and results in a live delivery. This person claims that the majority of these rare cases which result in a live delivery is the one I previously mentioned. I wanted to respond but I wasn’t sure my response would have been morally sound. How should I respond?
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Speaking as an M.D., the hypothetical example above would be as “rare as hen’s teeth.” Ectopic pregnancy represents about 1–2% of all pregnancies with 95% occurring in the fallopian tube. Abdominal pregnancies represent just about 1% of ectopic pregnancies. The incidence of abdominal pregnancy differs in various publications and ranges between 1: 10000 pregnancies and 1:30,000 pregnancies. It was reported for the first time in 1708 as an autopsy finding and numerous cases have been reported worldwide ever since. In most of these cases, the diagnosis is made on the basis of the ensuing complications such as hemorrhage and abdominal pain. Maternal mortality and morbidity are also very high especially if the condition is not diagnosed and managed appropriately. These pregnancies generally do not get to 37 weeks (term gestation) and usually the end result is the extraction of a dead fetus. Another challenge for babies from abdominal pregnancy is the very high incidence of congenital malformations.

How to respond? 1.) The hypothetical question is absurdly rare (1:10,000 - 1:30,000 pregnancies), hardly worth the philosophical consideration in practical terms; 2.) These pregnancies pose very high maternal and fetal mortality and morbidity; 3.) these pregnancies usually result in extraction of a dead fetus, anyway, so the philosophical / moral question is moot.

I believe that your position is that you are “pro-life.” This requires some practical sensibility in the real world. A procedure to save a young woman’s life, that absolutely requires sacrifice of a fetus that cannot survive independently is not elective abortion. You are advocating for the life of the mother, the lesser of two evils, the only other option being to let everyone die.
TheMike0012 said:
By the way, for clarification’s sake, I’m pretty sure the person I’m discussing with is a pro-choice person playing devil’s advocate.
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I agree. They are setting up an absurd discussion scenario and demanding that you hold to a rigid, unwinnable, position in the face of it. You don’t have to go along with the stupid trap they are setting.
 
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Mine too.

I have wondered — and I know medical science may never come up with this — whether an artificial womb could be developed, and if a woman is bound and determined to have an abortion, she could instead have the fetus extracted live, placed in this womb, sign over all rights to the child, get on with her life, and allow the child to be gestated and put up for adoption to a family who does want a child. Heck, pay her to do it on top of that! Anything to save the life of the baby.

Just fantasy thought along the lines of “if I had the money of a Bill Gates or a Jeff Bezos”.
 
HomeschoolDad said:
whether an artificial womb could be developed, and if a woman is bound and determined to have an abortion, she could instead have the fetus extracted live, placed in this womb, sign over all rights to the child, get on with her life, and allow the child to be gestated and put up for adoption to a family who does want a child. Heck, pay her to do it on top of that! Anything to save the life of the baby.
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I do think science will eventually be able to do this. The next question is should it? Would it be voluntary for the mother or a forced decision? Will the father be able to claim ownership of the fetus? Relatives?

When it happens, it will bring up a huge basket of legal and ethical questions that will have to be decided. What happens when there are so many babies that all adoption desires are filled? Does the state become responsible for them? Should Americans have to pay? I do love the idea! And it scares me a great deal, too!
 
Pattylt said:
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HomeschoolDad:
whether an artificial womb could be developed, and if a woman is bound and determined to have an abortion, she could instead have the fetus extracted live, placed in this womb, sign over all rights to the child, get on with her life, and allow the child to be gestated and put up for adoption to a family who does want a child. Heck, pay her to do it on top of that! Anything to save the life of the baby.
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I do think science will eventually be able to do this. The next question is should it? Would it be voluntary for the mother or a forced decision?

Voluntary.

Will the father be able to claim ownership of the fetus?

Good question. Not to be crude, but I’d say he should have “first refusal”. There is a proposal in Sweden to allow unwilling fathers to have a “paper abortion”, repudiating all parental rights in exchange for not being responsible for the child.

Relatives?

Possibly, but it would be an awfully sticky wicket, for a child to grow up with the knowledge “your mother didn’t want to be pregnant, so you were gestated artificially, and even though she didn’t want you, we did”. Family reunions would get very interesting.

When it happens, it will bring up a huge basket of legal and ethical questions that will have to be decided. What happens when there are so many babies that all adoption desires are filled?

Don’t know. There is a huge imbalance in the adoption pool between a lack of healthy, newborn children with no troubling issues, and a surplus of children in other circumstances who need homes and can’t get adopted. Very sad.

Does the state become responsible for them? Should Americans have to pay?

Hard to say. The scenario I described presupposes the present situation of abortion on demand, at least through a large portion of the pregnancy. It’s “really getting out there” to think of a future society which is pro-life root and branch, but which has a way such as this, to relieve women of the burdens of unwanted pregnancies. It begins to sound like a mash-up of The Handmaid’s Tale and Brave New World.

I do love the idea! And it scares me a great deal, too!
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RaduLykan said:
No…

Always should be womens choice…update ur bible to 2020
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Please explain how morality gets “updated”, and what is so special about living in the year 2020.
 
Like @Wesrock said (who, though while not claiming expertise on this on another thread, seems to have a darn good grip on it), there is a causal chain which accidentally (albeit foreseeably) extends to the child’s harm. The “problem” is the tube which will rupture - not the child himself - so removing the tube that will rupture and kill the woman is acceptable. The tricky part is that the child is the cause of the problem, which cause is also removed along with the tube… it’s subtle, but the removal of the tube is not the same as removing the child. They are entirely different substances/beings. In no way is success predicated upon any harm being done to the child, and the proportion of effects at stake are clearly in favor of the procedure (the child dies, or everyone dies).

If only Father Fallopa had known… (Yes - the fallopian tubes are named after a priest, who was an anatomist!)
 
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Amen!!!

Also, speaking as a woman who had an ectopic pregnancy, making claims about these absurdly rare circumstances is cruel to a mom who will always question if she could have saved her child.
 
And then there is that fine moral distinction between salpingectomy (allowed by Catholic ethicists because it does not act directly on the fertilized egg) and salpingostomy ( not allowed because it removes only the fertilized egg). Always seeemd nit pIcky to me at that point.
 
Shakuhachi said:
And then there is that fine moral distinction between salpingectomy (allowed by Catholic ethicists because it does not act directly on the fertilized egg) and salpingostomy ( not allowed because it removes only the fertilized egg). Always seeemd nit pIcky to me at that point.
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I spent many years “in the trenches” of real medical practice, confronting real situations. The “nit picky” holds no interest for me.

Not sure your medical terminology is correct: 1.) Salpingectomy is removal of the fallopian tube and products of conception (tube + conceptus + placenta). This permanently reduces the woman’s fertility. 2.) Salpingotomy is the surgical procedure of incising the fallopian tube longitudinally and extracting products of conception (conceptus + placenta). The tube is permitted to heal, hopefully preserving fertility.

In the face of potential tubal rupture, hemorrhage, and possibly death, neither salpingectomy or salpingotomy constitutes elective abortion. They are different approaches to saving maternal life, depending on various factors like where along the tube, the conceptus has implanted. The real issue is a mechanical one (volume of products of conception the fallopian tube can tolerate before rupturing). By this point, there are thousands of fetal cells, not just one “fertilized egg.” Medicine is complicated.
 
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From what I’ve gathered, the current situation is a shortage of normal newborns and an abundance of older special needs children. If we had artificial wombs, it would quickly become an abundance of all babies. Most parents looking to adopt want the newborn normal baby. With artificial wombs, normal babies would saturate the market very quickly and with many leftover. The special needs babies and children numbers would also explode. What on earth are we to do with all these babies?
 
Pattylt said:
With artificial wombs, normal babies would saturate the market very quickly and with many leftover. The special needs babies and children numbers would also explode. What on earth are we to do with all these babies?
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I think you’re getting a little ahead of things. Even if such technology existed it would likely be extremely expensive. I don’t think you’d see a huge influx of children who weren’t already headed for a waiting family. You’d most likely see them used first in cases of medical emergency, e.g. a car accident where the mother dies, or such as being discussed here a medical condition which makes it impossible for the mother to keep carrying the child without serious risk to one or both of them. I would also assume early versions of the technology would likely only be able to work in the later stages of pregnancy, slowly moving back as such technology improved. In short you’re probably many many decades away from a conception-to-birth artificial womb.
 
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Yeah, I’m overthinking it. The only defense I can give is that, once established, technology advances at often astonishing speeds. I’m also overthinking that this would become an excuse to abolish abortions…and mandating use of the artificial womb…proposals that very well may never happen. It would be hugely expensive at first and could very well remain so. Thanks for bringing my wandering brain back to earth! :hugs:
 
Shakuhachi said:
And then there is that fine moral distinction between salpingectomy (allowed by Catholic ethicists because it does not act directly on the fertilized egg) and salpingostomy ( not allowed because it removes only the fertilized egg). Always seeemd nit pIcky to me at that point.
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Yes, and that “nit pIcky” is brings death of the possibility of the birth of many Catholic babies!!!

Salpingostomy (surgical unblocking of a blocked fallopian tube).
So, Salpingostomy which procedure would open up the possibility that the mother could give birth many more happy Catholic children is categorically forbidden as immoral.

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Salpingectomy (surgical removal of the fallopian tube).
In reality, the procedure of salpingectomy kills the possibility that the mother could give birth even one Catholic child by sterilizing the mother is perfectly fine and moral.
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I believe, the above rules instead of the SPIRIT OF THE WORD based on the LETTER OF THE WORD.

2 Cor.3:6 He has enabled us to be ministers of his new covenant. This is a covenant not of written laws, but of the Spirit. The old written covenant ends in death; but under the new covenant, the Spirit gives life.
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I’m a Catholic and I believe, some Catholics still living in the old written covenant time, which covenant ends in death; as we see it according to the rules of Salpingostomy and Salpingectomy.
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God bless
 
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Dan123 said:
Isn’t that basically the situation now?
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Considering the already low birth rate and the rate of abortion, no that is not the situation now… Ask anyone who has tired to adopt, including open adoptions. The birth mother has more than ample time to change her mind, and often enough, they do. I do not mean to disparage the mother, but it is not too short of devastating to the couple who so badly wants to adopt. I was involved as an attorney with two open adoptions and chose not to do any more, as I had to walk with the couple who came so close… it was hard on everyone, perhaps with the exception of the child.
 
Latin said:
In reality, the procedure of salpingectomy kills the possibility that the mother could give birth even one Catholic child by sterilizing the mother is perfectly fine and moral.
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The last time I studied biology, which granted was a number of decades ago, women had two fallopian tubes, so your statement is incorrect unless biology has somehow changed radically.

And Spirit has nothing to do with that fact.
 
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The matter is not the numbers, in time both fallopian tube can be blocked and we are back to square one and the same principle applies.

The matter is: 2 Cor.3:6 He has enabled us to be ministers of his new covenant. This is a covenant not of written laws, but of the Spirit. The old written covenant ends in death; but under the new covenant, the Spirit gives life.

Unfortunately some ministers UNABLE to be ministers of his new covenant and by the application of the written laws they can be “some kind of serial killers” instead of qualified ministers of the new covenant.

Disclaimer:
I did not say, some ministers of the Catholic Church, I have spoken in general.
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God bless
 
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