I am in a discussion with my daughter about abortion. It began when I read an article about the Obama administration considering ACLU’s request to mandate ‘emergency’ abortions at Catholic hospitals. My daughter’s response was “They wouldn’t have to give it to a woman who considered it an emergency. There ARE medical emergencies: How about an ectopic pregnancy … or the case of the nine year old who was raped by her step-father and pregnant with twins (yes, that is an emergency both physically and mentally for a child)? Or a woman who has a uterine infection at 3 months along that is threatening her life? “…our very core beliefs that all life is sacred.” (she’s quoting from my post) – including the mother’s.” I know the the teachings on direct and indirect abortions, but my question is about the 9 yr. old. If these little girls are raped and become pregnant, are there exceptions made by the Catholic church to end the pregnancy if it is decided she would never survive the pregnancy. I understand she could have a Caesarian, but what if her little body could not handle the pregnancy.
There are times when an evil act like abortion saves more lives than inaction: that is, the evil brings about good which can’t otherwise exist. Can we do it then? Well, Romans 3:8 says: " Why not say—as some slanderously claim that we say—‘Let us do evil that good may result’? Their condemnation is just! "
Now, Paul
has to mean that the foreseen good result is bigger than the contemplated evil, or the question wouldn’t even make sense. Nobody (well, almost nobody) wants to take ten innocent lives to save one person. They want to take one innocent life to save ten people.
The example is of a train that’s run off the tracks, headed towards a group of kids. You’re next to an extremely obese person, and you’ve got good reason to think that if you push them in front of the train, you can save the kids (you personally are too tiny to even slow the train down, so throwing yourself would be pointless). Is throwing an innocent person in front of the train moral? Is that what we think Jesus would do?
And if we can’t kill an innocent bystander to save ten kids, why can we kill an innocent bystander (because that’s what the unborn child is, to the rape, after all) in order to save one? This is true **even if **the baby is likely to die anyways.
Catholic morality isn’t focused on the
ends, but on the
means. In this, it differs from most types of secular morality, which constantly ask us to do evil because it’s for a good cause. This sort of philosophy is dangerous: it’s the mentality of every dictatorship in history.
Now, the example of the ectopic pregnancy is different. Here, you
are allowed to remove the falopian tubes, with the child in them, even though that’ll kill the child. The reason is that you’re not *intending *to kill the kid: if you can remove the child from her mother’s womb and save her life, you’ll do it. Your intention is simply to remove the fallopian tubes. This isn’t a direct abortion, in the sense that any abortive effect is accidental and unintentional (of course, even this is morally licit as long as you’re not trying to abort your kid). These two things seem really similar, but the first example relies on the death of the child as part of the solution, while in the second example, the death of the child is totally unintentional and pretty unavoidable.
Another example to illustrate what I mean: imagine a house is burning, and a mother wants to run in and get her child from the basement. You know that there’s literally **no way **that she can make it in and back - her running in will just get her killed. So you physically hold her back, knowing that it’ll break her heart but save her life. Obviously, you don’t want the kid to die: if someone else can get to the baby, praise God! So restraining the mom isn’t evil towards the kid, but sheer benevolence towards mom. Contrast that with the same mother, with the kid in her arms, hobbling towards the exit. The kid is holding on to her, and if she doesn’t let go, they’ll both die. You’re outside the house, but have a gun… can you kill the kid?
Thankfully.