Miscarriage or Abortion?

[Moneyball]

Just to add methotrexate isn’t just an abortificant, it’s also used for treating cancer.

Yes, this is true, we were told that it’s purpose was simply to stop cells from dividing. If I’m not mistaken though, methotrexate is most often used to treat ectopic pregnancies… from a Catholic perspective, that would definitely be a problem.

 

[Moneyball]

I’m very sorry for what you experienced. :hug3:

I agree with everyone who said you have not sinned in this situation. If it’s still bothering you, though,** I would contact the National Catholic Bioethics Center for reassurance.** This is not something I would trust to anonymous strangers on the Internet. Prayers for you and your wife.

That’s a good suggestion, thank you very much!

 

[Beryllos]

I am praying that you and your wife may be comforted in your loss, and may have peace.

 

[Xantippe]

That’s a good suggestion, thank you very much!

Yes!

I also think it could be helpful to seek out miscarriage support. You and your wife are fixating on the question of whether it was a miscarriage or abortion–but you both need to grieve the loss of your child.

If you look in the “Parenting” subforum, there is a permanent thread entitled “Mommies of Little Saints” that might be a good place to start.

 

[Hoosier_Daddy]

Yes!

I also think it could be helpful to seek out miscarriage support. You and your wife are fixating on the question of whether it was a miscarriage or abortion–but you both need to grieve the loss of your child.

If you look in the “Parenting” subforum, there is a permanent thread entitled “Mommies of Little Saints” that might be a good place to start.

Yes I think you are exactly right.
The fixation seemed odd to me until you pointed this out. It could be a coping mechanism.
I will stand by my original point that the poster needs to drop this and support his wife.

 

[Xantippe]

Yes I think you are exactly right.
The fixation seemed odd to me until you pointed this out. It could be a coping mechanism.
I will stand by my original point that the poster needs to drop this and support his wife.

I think it’s not an uncommon coping response to hyperfocus on something other than one’s grief.

I had a late miscarriage some years ago, and in the early months, I was very fixated on how badly a particular relative had behaved. They had behaved very badly–but that obviously wasn’t the primary issue.

 

[kptrs]

I think it’s not an uncommon coping response to hyperfocus on something other than one’s grief.

I had a late miscarriage some years ago, and in the early months, I was very fixated on how badly a particular relative had behaved. They had behaved very badly–but that obviously wasn’t the primary issue.

Yes, that’s a good point. I agree with this.

 

[paperwight66]

I think it’s worth pointing out something as regards terminology, something learnt from a midwife friend.
Patients can be caused huge distress when they hear (or overhear/read on notes) the word ‘abortion’.
Abortion (more properly, ‘spontaneous abortion’) is the term used by medics to describe what lay people usually call a miscarriage.
An induced abortion is the proper term for deliberately ending a pregnancy (not the case in the OP).

I hope this doesn’t seem like a derailing of the thread. It’s just that sometimes medics assume patients are OK with the terms they use, and enormous hurt can be caused by misunderstanding.

 

[Hoosier_Daddy]

I think it’s worth pointing out something as regards terminology, something learnt from a midwife friend.
Patients can be caused huge distress when they hear (or overhear/read on notes) the word ‘abortion’.
Abortion (more properly, ‘spontaneous abortion’) is the term used by medics to describe what lay people usually call a miscarriage.
An induced abortion is the proper term for deliberately ending a pregnancy (not the case in the OP).

I hope this doesn’t seem like a derailing of the thread. It’s just that sometimes medics assume patients are OK with the terms they use, and enormous hurt can be caused by misunderstanding.

That’s true. People sometimes get the political meaning and medical terminology mixed up.

 

[Moneyball]

Yes I think you are exactly right.
The fixation seemed odd to me until you pointed this out. It could be a coping mechanism.
I will stand by my original point that the poster needs to drop this and support his wife.

Your original point was, and still is, unhelpful. There’s no contradiction between seeking clarity and grieving… in fact, much of the feedback I’ve gotten from fellow faithful Catholics in this thread has been quite therapeutic.

 

[Hoosier_Daddy]

Your original point was, and still is, unhelpful. There’s no contradiction between seeking clarity and grieving… in fact, much of the feedback I’ve gotten from fellow faithful Catholics in this thread has been quite therapeutic.

Sorry you found it unhelpful but I’m glad others were therapeutic for you.
I wish you peace.

 

[JanetF]

I experienced a miscarriage in 1997 prior to giving birth later the same year. It’s still hard. I have found this quite helpful whenever I think about what might have been.

"My Lord, the baby is dead!

Why, my Lord—dare I ask why? It will not hear the whisper of the wind or see the beauty of its parents’ face—it will not see the beauty of Your creation or the flame of a sunrise. Why, my Lord?

“Why, My child—do you ask ‘why’? Well, I will tell you why.

You see, the child lives. Instead of the wind he hears the sound of angels singing before My throne. Instead of the beauty that passes he sees everlasting Beauty—he sees My face. He was created and lived a short time so the image of his parents imprinted on his face may stand before Me as their personal intercessor. He knows secrets of heaven unknown to men on earth. He laughs with a special joy that only the innocent possess. My ways are not the ways of man. I create for My Kingdom and each creature fills a place in that Kingdom that could not be filled by another. He was created for My joy and his parents’ merits. He has never seen pain or sin. He has never felt hunger or pain. I breathed a soul into a seed, made it grow and called it forth.”

I am humbled before you, my Lord, for questioning Your wisdom, goodness, and love. I speak as a fool—forgive me. I acknowledge Your sovereign rights over life and death. I thank You for the life that began for so short a time to enjoy so long an Eternity. – Mother M. Angelica

 

[ArielRussu]

Thank you for the reply. Like you, my wife and I thought the same, but after further questioning the last OB-GYN told us that my wife’s case was not a molar pregnancy. He said that in a molar pregnancy something goes wrong during the fertilization stage and sometimes the placenta can also cause problems, but that in our case the child was properly conceived but that something went wrong early in our child’s development. Again, there was no heartbeat detected or even a sac, so I’m inclined to believe the child had past long before we even made it to the hospital… the only thing that confuses me is the “growing”, if it’s growing, it’s alive. Could it be that we had a non-viable, underdeveloped child that was still growing?

Of course my wife and I are not professionals in this field so we had to place our trust in the doctors, we had no other choice. We understand this, but I still can’t help myself and wonder.

That does sound like a partial molar pregnancy. A full molar pregnancy is, like you said when something goes wrong during the fertilization stage and sometimes the placenta can also cause problems. However, a “partial” molar pregnancy is a variation of a molar pregnancy, where, a cluster of grape-like cysts (known as a hydatidiform mole) grows in the uterus it is the result of an fertilized embryo that started abnormal development early on and thus is non viable. A placenta (the sac in which the fetus grows) may also actually start to develop.

 

[Xantippe]

I think it’s worth pointing out something as regards terminology, something learnt from a midwife friend.
Patients can be caused huge distress when they hear (or overhear/read on notes) the word ‘abortion’.
Abortion (more properly, ‘spontaneous abortion’) is the term used by medics to describe what lay people usually call a miscarriage.
An induced abortion is the proper term for deliberately ending a pregnancy (not the case in the OP).

I hope this doesn’t seem like a derailing of the thread. It’s just that sometimes medics assume patients are OK with the terms they use, and enormous hurt can be caused by misunderstanding.

That is important to know.

I remember seeing some paperwork after my missed miscarriage that required a hospital induction, and it said “abortion” on it.

I understand that the medical world has its own terminology, but this can all be very hard on the layperson.

 

[smallcat]

That does sound like a partial molar pregnancy. A full molar pregnancy is, like you said when something goes wrong during the fertilization stage and sometimes the placenta can also cause problems. However, a “partial” molar pregnancy is a variation of a molar pregnancy, where, a cluster of grape-like cysts (known as a hydatidiform mole) grows in the uterus it is the result of an fertilized embryo that started abnormal development early on and thus is non viable. A placenta (the sac in which the fetus grows) may also actually start to develop.

We’re all playing armchair physician here without the benefit of medical records, ultrasound images, or physical exam. That’s not really fair to the OP or his wife. He told us that doctors ruled out a molar pregnancy. Even if the embryo is long deceased, the placenta and supporting structures may continue to grow, which is what the physicians may have been referring to when they said that tissue is still “growing”. It’s not the embryo that’s continuing to grow, it’s the early placenta. This is not the same as a molar pregnancy, which has different characteristics on imaging.

 

[Rau]

Hi everyone, I have gone through a moral dilemma that’s been bothering me for some time and was wondering if I could find some clarity.

At six weeks pregnant my wife went to the ER due to bleeding, after getting an ultrasound she was informed that no heartbeat was detected, and that she had an “abnormality” in her uterus. Furthermore they told her that she had a “cyst” (not embryo) without a sac or a pole. They sent her to another hospital to get better care.

When we met the OB-GYN at the other hospital, we were told that this “cyst” was at risk of attaching itself to the uterine scar left from past c-sections and if left alone could cause serious health risks to my wife. To address the risks the doctor really pushed for the use of methotrexate (explained to us as a drug that is designed to stop cells from multiplying) instead of getting a hysterectomy (my wife and I do very much want more children, so we wanted to avoid the hysterectomy if we could).

This of course raised red flags for my wife and I. My wife explained that if this drug is to act as an abortifacient that she and I would take issue with the prescription and that it would go against our religious faith. At that point it was clear that we needed to know what we were dealing with before we stunt the growth of any cells. So we asked the OB-GYN and she essentially said that there was no baby, that the tissue was growing as a tumor or parasite (I forget which of the two terms she used). Still skeptical, my wife asked if this growth were to be placed in an ideal environment with nutrition if it would ever develop into a child, the doctor replied without hesitation “no.”

After an awkward back and forth with the doctor, my wife and I felt reassured that this tissue was not identical to our child, and that taking the drug would ease the risks of the miscarriage. The doctor never once used the words “abortion” or “embryo.”

Two days after taking the drug, my wife and I went back to the hospital for another blood test and spoke to another doctor… we expressed the same initial concerns with this doctor and asserted that we were pro-life, he reassured us without hesitation that this wasn’t the taking of a life. That same day we saw a third doctor (another OB-GYN) and he too said that although there was initially a baby at conception, that something went wrong early in the development to cause the pregnancy to no longer be viable. The fourth and last doctor refered to what my wife went through as a “spontaneous miscarriage.”

Long story short, despite all of that I still look back at the whole ordeal and wonder if we did anything morally wrong. We know that pro-chiocers can sometimes distort language to strip the child from his/her humanity and can’t help but wonder if that’s what happened here. Of course I understand that none of you are in a position to give us any medical advice or anything like that, but I was wondering if anyone can help me with this guilt I’m feeling…

Please pray for us.

Unless several doctors lied to you, you did nothing objectively wrong. You made the proper Enquiries. In light of those enquiries and response, and your knowledge, you acted morally.

There was no child at the time you sought medical care. Nothing objectively wrong was done. And you have nothing morally to be concerned about.

Best wishes to you and your wife.