As for the woman you describe… I don’t think her case is black or white either… jeapardizing your own life as a human in order to save someone else who has only a few days or weeks to live… It does not make sense to me and I will probably never change my mind on that. My reason together with the law of Christ which is love tells me something and I must follow my conscience and God more than people.
I’m glad you used the word “jeapardizing”. A tubal rupture is potentially very serious because of the possibility of internal bleeding. Once there is bleeding inside the body cavity all kinds of complications can arise, like organ failure and hemorrhagic shock. But with prompt medical attention it is not nec. fatal (I am not a doctor, but I spent two years treating extreme cases of such trauma in '68 and '69).
However, try to step back and look at the Church teachings in context. We believe that every human person is a unique creation by God, infinitely loved by our creator. The distinctions we place between ourselves, even ‘good’ and ‘bad’, are largely moot and we are discouraged from even applying them in the Gospels. The best test of this is not to look at, say, one’s horrible boss and say ‘there is a fellow child of God’, but to look at the most extreme cases, like a defensely child or an adult in a vegative state.
Having a disabled son probably makes this an easier teaching for me. By most standards, my son would be a societal ‘failure’, but he loves and is loved and hasn’t a mean bone in his body. So on a standard of being a worthwhile human being, he is well ahead of many of the people I interact with every day. Having stretched me understanding of what can and cannot be a worthwile life, it is easy for me to stretch it again, to the comatose or a developing fetus.
However, it is extremely difficult not to rank, or value, our fellow human beings. So your attitude about your sister versus a tiny creation seemingly doomed from conception is understandable. But also understand that the Church does not act in a vaccuum.
For most of 1800 years the Church was seemingly ambivilent about abortions to save the life of the mother. But the change was not random. At the same time the Church took an active stance, we were seeing the rapid growth of a “Eugenics” movement, particularly here in the US. Why should a society be burneded with the disabled or genetically defective? Destroy the monsters at birth, sterilize the ones that are missed…
One small benefit of the horror of Nazism and the holocaust is that it drove eugnenics out of fashion here in the US (though we were still forcibly sterilizing people until the 1970s).
Similiarly, look at the timing of the Second Vatican Council’s more extensive interest in fetal life. Do you think it is a coincidence that the Wistar Institute had just started cultivating vaccines in human diploid cells taken from an aborted fetus?
May I suggest that our logic may be effected by the culture and faith traditions we were brought up in and that there might not be always one answer to every situation…
I don’t think that there is a problem with my reason or logic. I am a willing Roman Catholic. That is, I willingly defer to the Church as much as possible. If I have a true crisis of concience, I would do my best to follow Christ, but when it comes to most matters, I try to obey on principle. Generally, but not always, I find that I come to agree with the Church’s teaching in time. For example, I first enlisted in the USMC, then later realized that I needed to serve my country in a different way to remain true to my faith. Similiarly, I used to find Pope John Paul’s new perspective on the death penalty difficult, but have since concluded that the Church is correct, it is an extension of our fundemental pro life teaching.
Remember, the Church does not profess to provide an answer to every specific situation. But it does try to pressure us to make our decisions in the proper moral context. Think about it this way, you say you don’t see the point of risk and sacrifice for a fetus that faces of prognosis of death in a few weeks or few months (6 is the maximum documented) anyway. How is that argument any different from, say, expediting Grandma’s demise a few weeks or months and saving the family a tremendous burden?
Or, taking IDEA funding away from the disabled and spending it on school children who have dramatically better test scores since they clearly benefit more from academics?
I know you are not saying these things, I am just using hyperbole to make a point. The Church is not interferring with your decisions, but it wants you to make them, openly and knowingly, in a Christian context.
Peace.
) a choice the woman made? Actions have consequences! If someone is going to make such a decision, they must also be able to deal with the consequences!