Mormonism and Euthanasia

[soren1]

If governments strictly followed the law of Moses or a compassionate derivative with regard to rape or incest, then one could surmise (especially with current DNA science) that laws would be established that would greatly punish the originators of those crimes against the laws of man and God. I am always kind of surprised that I see no outcry within the condemnation of Mormon compassion toward a victim (the woman) on this delicate subject, that would lead to support within the laws for greatly punishing these offenders against the sanctity of marriage and of human life and of the laws of God, both monetarily (let them pay for the permanent support of the child they caused to come into the world), and with imprisonment for an extended period of time, if not for life. Then, one sees that the root cause would be tremendously curtailed if not stopped entirely within a society.

What you are saying here is that preventing the causes of a problem is better than coming up with a solution to it. Fine. I agree. But I note that given a state of affairs where a problem is already upon us, a deep critical discernment is necessary to determine morally licit means to deal with it. These means do not include taking innocent human life. No justification for euthanizing and unborn child is to be found in the above paragraph.

With regard to a woman dealing with the life of a baby when a doctor has advised an abortion, I have known of many cases where the mother chose to keep the baby including having pre-birth operations on the baby and including being bed-ridden the entire pregnancy, and have not heard of any case through either my wife or anyone I have known where a woman faced that decision and chose to have an abortion. I think it is a hypothetical where the real world is that women choose to believe a miracle will happen and their baby will survive (which has happened many, many times in cases I have known about).

The fact that you claim this is a hypothetical case shows three things: first, you realize a need to distance your espousal of this teaching from its application in reality. In the same way, LDS literature on abortion always emphasizes how “rare” the cases are where an abortion could be justified. To this I respond, Big Deal. The question is not the frequency or likelihood of such an action being taken, but the inherent moral rectitude of doing so. The emphasis on rarity or hypothesis is simply a way of putting the very real-world consequences of this teaching out of sight and mind. What this kind of response really shows is that you yourself sense the wrongness of this teaching to the point that you need to insulate your imagination from it in order to defend it.

Second, you seem to think that bearing a child to term is praiseworthy on the part of a woman. But does this come from Mormon principles or from your own personal sensibilities? After all, Mormon teaching leaves room for God to tell a woman when he wants her to have an abortion. What if that is God wants for all these women who carry the baby hoping for a miracle? Maybe they are mistaken, and if they had sought council from the Lord they would have been told to terminate the pregnancy. It seems from Mormon principles this possibility must be taken seriously, and so your assumption that these women actually made the right choice is not justifiable from Mormon teaching.

Third, you do not know (or are not taking into account) the actual facts of abortion. Sure, I can believe lots of women carry terminally ill babies to term. I have also known some personally too. Yet women who choose to abort such children are unlikely to tell their religious acquaintances that they did so. I don’t know you at all, but I would rarely expect a woman I know who has had an abortion to tell me about it, so my experience is bound to be skewed. But I don’t need my own experience to know the facts about our society. We have statistics for that, and they show that birth defects are among the most common reasons for abortions in America. Not only is abortion is the #1 cause of death among persons with Down Syndrome, it is frequently used for even lesser problems. In the world we live in, the world we want to turn into an ideal society, club feet or a missing eye can cost a child his life. In such a climate, abortion is a regularly given and accepted prescription for terminal birth defects. In fact, it is touted as the more compassionate choice. This demands a cry of opposition from all Christians. It is not a hypothetical situation; it is a gruesome reality.

Let me be clear on one more thing: the reason I say it is evil to euthanize an unborn child is the same reason it is evil to euthanize anyone else, not because I think that there is some hope to be held out for the child’s survival, like the women you mention. Certainly, it is a great reward when a child survives miraculously, it is a virtue to hope for survival, but the key moral demand comes from the nature of a human being. That is why in the case of extremely ill and old people, where it is a given that they will die, Mormonism still teaches that euthanasia is a sin. In fact the Church’s definition of euthanasia as killing someone who has “an incurable condition or disease” applies most obviously to cases where death is a certainty. This shows that by your own teaching the possibility of survival is not the decisive consideration.

 

[soren1]

With euthanasia, no law of God was violated for the condition to exist of a terminally ill situation. It is a clear-cut case–we leave the matter in the hands of God, and we learn patience while supporting one who may have a terminally ill condition, and still pray and hope for miracles to occur–which they do, sometimes, but not every time.

This response shows again that you have still not dealt with the basic problem. For one thing, the argument can do nothing to justify euthanizing a dying fetus, for that is not a situation brought on by anyone’s sin. That makes it irrelevant to the main topic, but further it is bad in its own right, because in cases like rape or incest you cannot use it in any consistent way. I prove this with one question: why does the originating violation of God’s law matter for an unborn child but not for one who has been born? After all an infant born from a rape is just as much the product of transgression as an unborn child of rape. Do you think we should therefore have infanticide whenever the cases that allow for abortion obtain? If not, how can you possibly construe a moral difference between the lives of the born and unborn child unless you grant already that the unborn child does not have the same human dignity as the born one? This kind of reasoning only works if you use it selectively, which is to say it doesn’t work at all.

 

[ParkerD]

This response shows again that you have still not dealt with the basic problem. For one thing, the argument can do nothing to justify euthanizing a dying fetus, for that is not a situation brought on by anyone’s sin. That makes it irrelevant to the main topic, but further it is bad in its own right, because in cases like rape or incest you cannot use it in any consistent way. I prove this with one question: why does the originating violation of God’s law matter for an unborn child but not for one who has been born? After all an infant born from a rape is just as much the product of transgression as an unborn child of rape. Do you think we should therefore have infanticide whenever the cases that allow for abortion obtain? If not, how can you possibly construe a moral difference between the lives of the born and unborn child unless you grant already that the unborn child does not have the same human dignity as the born one? This kind of reasoning only works if you use it selectively, which is to say it doesn’t work at all.

Soren1,

We differ in the extreme on the “basic problem”. I wrote that the root problem is the causer of the condition of a pregnancy as regards rape or incest–a criminal, utterly despicable act that should be punishable by (1) the perpetrator being held responsible for all financial consequences of the child, beginning with prenatal care, all birth costs, and support during childhood–and that should be written in the laws of the land as an automatic consequence; and (2) life in prison, as far as I’m concerned. Then society will have dealt with the root cause, the “basic problem”.

Of course I think it is absolutely wonderful and a very compassionate thing for a woman to have a baby when her pregnancy was caused by rape or incest, but do I hold the woman who decides she can’t do that, responsible for “murder” of the unborn baby?–no, I would not and could not do it in good conscience. To me that is punishing her twice–horrendous suffering as the victim of a violent crime, and then adding to the suffering by giving not the slightest consideration to her ability to handle the dilemma she faces in that if she is religious she has to deal with the inner thought question of “how would God let this happen–what did I do wrong and am I being punished?”

So we look at this issue from completely different perspectives as to the “root cause” and how to deal with it.

 

[KathleenGee]

The dr’s who have headed the pro life aspect of euthanasia are Catholics and well versed in ethics…

They have taught us at seminars…alot of moral issues to think about and the Catholic Church has so much help for us.

 

[RebeccaJ]

ParkerD, if you have this ideal that God does not call us to suffer, out of love, for another, whether it is an unborn child or even our enemies, then you haven’t been paying attention.

 

[ParkerD]

Soren1,

I suppose that I might as well add more information since one of your posts brought up congenital defects and Down syndrome.

I have several good friends who have a Down syndrome child, and it never crossed their mind not to have the baby, nor have I considered their situation anything but a blessing in their life and the lives of their other children.

Since I have a wonderful daughter (the one I wrote about a day or so ago who is going to Chicago with her junior high school band, as a percussionist) with a congenital birth abnormality requiring a G-tube and a tracheotomy since her birth, and all the care associated with those, and my family has been greatly blessed because of this situation despite the need for many multiple operations some of which have not worked as hoped, then the “real world” I see around me and know of personally is that Latter-day Saints are just as familiar with abnormal birth situations as any other religious group, Catholics included–and consider those situations as blessings in their lives.

 

[RebeccaJ]

A woman at my work a few years ago was expecting. For the first half of her pregnancy she paid thousands of dollars to have every test that is available, to check for “normalcy”. One day, she told me that if anything came back as abnormal, she would end the life growing inside of her. She told me this by making a slitting motion with her hand across her neck. I was horrified. Luckily for her daughter, everything was alright.

This woman was raised in a devout Catholic home, told me she was an altar server, but didn’t “buy into that stuff” anymore. All I could think was, I pray your daughter is never made less than perfect by accident or disease.

Earlier in my life, a very nice young couple I knew from work were expecting with twins. The Drs had told them that one or both were going to die in utero, and so to save at least one, they should abort one. Seriously, even then in my atheism I would have told those drs to stick it where the sun don’t shine. Sounded like “Sophie’s Choice” come to life to me.

This couple were devout LDS, and after saying they prayed and talking to their bishop they decided to abort the smaller of the two. After their little girl was born they brought her around the office. I wonder if they will ever tell her they killed her twin sister, is what I was thinking.

It is things like this, like Tony888 and his ever-present “fruits”, thathad me thinking, no doubt, that truth was not to be found where killing an innocent unborn is presented as “God’s Will”. In both these experiences, it was the will of anyone but God.

It is true, that while a lot of the secular world will abort a down-syndrome child, I know people from all walks of life who have not. So Mormons will say downs syndrome is not a good reason to abort a child, but there might be any number of reasons they will. It are those “reasons” and the fact they think that asking God to take a life, that really get me. There is a huge disconnect there, that they refuse to acknowledge. Impossible for them because they believe they are led by prophets, and so go through all kinds of mental gymnastics to justify what they are taught.

For you Mormons, this doesn’t look like faith to us, it looks like the blind following the blind.

Evidence of “good fruit” is not determined by the level of happiness you feel or pretend to feel. It is not determined by randomness, by pure dumb luck, or by hiding your head in the sand and naming abortion a good fruit. It should be obvious to anyone who seeks to follow the will of God, that abortion is never, ever, evidence of doing the will of God. God has never called anyone to kill an unborn child, quite the contrary, Jesus teaches us that anyone who harms a child will know God’s Judgement.

 

[KathleenGee]

Pelagianism…things happen by chance…

 

[ParkerD]

Soren1,

Since this thread still gets a few readers, and there are other aspects of the question of abortion related to the advice of a doctor about a pregnancy, I have thought I should go ahead and add a post discussing some of that complexity.

The medical world, of course, has advanced tremendously over the years, including having a history of cases with which gynecologists and others in medical school and in their practice become familiar and thus gain knowledge about development of the human body in the womb, and what to expect in an abnormal case.

The advances in medical technology make it so that a decision being made in 2011 about the viability of life for a human embryo wherein the case history demonstrates that the baby, if carried to term, could only survive on extensive life support and would have a severely compromised health including severely compromised mental development, is a different decision-making process than any such decision in the 1800’s or the early 1900’s or before. It is a more complex decision.

Related to the complexity of such a decision is the knowledge that many pre-birth babies are miscarried and some others, even today, are still-born. For a woman to reflect on this fact of life, especially one who has had a miscarriage and thus knows first-hand how their body was carrying the baby in exactly the same way and they did exactly the same health steps to have a healthy baby and yet there came a miscarriage–means that they are going to be able to realize that Nature ends the life of pre-birth babies in the case of miscarriages, or of still-born babies, and yet people don’t accuse Nature of “murdering” the baby. They accept that this is part of “Nature’s way” of bringing lives into this world, and yet I doubt that any mother would not have cause to wonder “why is that Nature’s way?” when it becomes their own personal case.

On the subject of “still-born” babies, I should point out since I am familiar with the fact of there being neonatal resuscitation training that Latter-day Saint physicians give (for free) to other doctors in many third-world countries throughout the world, leading to saving the lives of scores of thousands of babies, that modern advances in birth care have decreased the number of cases of still-born babies–not just for that reason but for many advances.

So we have a situation in our present-day world where medical technology has advanced to the point that it becomes a very pertinent question when a baby early on in the pregnancy is known to be severely compromised as to viability of life, and the health of the mother is known to be fragile, as to what “Nature’s way” would do if left alone versus what medical technology can do.

A case of twins in the womb where only one is healthy enough to survive to birth and yet having both in the womb could compromise the health of that healthy baby, is a good example of the kind of complexity that can exist. Modern technology can discern this, and case histories can demonstrate that the decision by a doctor to advise that “Nature’s way” would be that both babies would either miscarry or be still-born, and thus their advice to abort the unhealthy baby is supported by their knowledge of medical history.

Even so, the mother through prayer would seek guidance from God as to whether to accept the doctor’s counsel or receive inspiration that the family can hope to receive the kind of miracle that they would hope for and be praying for if they decide not to accept the doctor’s counsel. Such a decision, prayerfully made, can be made through the guiding influence of the Holy Ghost, thus preserving the life and health of at least one infant if not both, while acknowledging that in most such cases by acknowledging the case history, “Nature’s way” would have brought about miscarriages or still-born infants if the parents had insisted on not accepting the doctor’s sound medical counsel.

 

[Telstar]

So, Parker, does that mean that Mormons also believe in yet another god called ‘Nature’?

That’s some mighty fancy word acrobatics that are completely unnecessary when you just consider the fact that intentionally* killing* any baby while it’s still in the womb of its mother, is murder. Plain and simple. Miscarriages are up to God, not ‘Nature’. If He decides to take babies before they are born, then that’s completely up to Him, alone. He’s the giver of life and it’s His prerogative to also take back any life, before or after it’s born. No one else has that right. It might be difficult for parents to have to deal with a miscarriage, or the loss of a newborn, but those are lessons from God that we should always put our trust in Him and accept whatever trials he gives us.

 

[ParkerD]

So, Parker, does that mean that Mormons also believe in yet another god called ‘Nature’?

That’s some mighty fancy word acrobatics that are completely unnecessary when you just consider the fact that intentionally* killing* any baby while it’s still in the womb of its mother, is murder. Plain and simple. Miscarriages are up to God, not ‘Nature’. If He decides to take babies before they are born, then that’s completely up to Him, alone. He’s the giver of life and it’s His prerogative to also take back any life, before or after it’s born. No one else has that right. It might be difficult for parents to have to deal with a miscarriage, or the loss of a newborn, but those are lessons from God that we should always put our trust in Him and accept whatever trials he gives us.

Telstar,

So if you wish to apply that logic to what God does in the case of miscarriages, then go ahead. (The term in what I thought was fairly common use of “Mother Nature” allows people to think in terms of the whole set of circumstances of life on this planet in a way that acknowledges that there are uncertainties and complexities that God is aware of, but we are not–and also acknowledges that doctors and nurses do their best to act in the best interest of supporting life–not competing against it or diminishing it.

 

[Telstar]

Telstar,

So if you wish to apply that logic to what God does in the case of miscarriages, then go ahead. (The term in what I thought was fairly common use of “Mother Nature” allows people to think in terms of the whole set of circumstances of life on this planet in a way that acknowledges that there are uncertainties and complexities that God is aware of, but we are not–and also acknowledges that doctors and nurses do their best to act in the best interest of supporting life–not competing against it or diminishing it.

It’s not due to my use of logic, Parker. It’s the simple truth. Sometimes, God does things that don’t seem to be ‘logical’ to our way of thinking, but God always has a higher purpose for everything that He does. No one has the right to interfere with God’s plans for any of us. When someone does something evil, such as in the case of rape or incest, God allows it because man has free will to choose to do good or evil. So, God will not interfere in man’s choice to do evil. But, when that man chooses to do evil, God will always find a way to somehow turn that evil into good.

If a young woman finds herself pregnant in a situation like that, it’s always possible that that child will end up serving God in a way that defies the sinful way that he/she was conceived. It’s never right to punish an innocent child with a death sentence, for the sins of his father. The mother always has a choice whether to keep the child and raise him herself, or to give the child up for adoption. There are so many good people in the world that want to adopt a child because they can’t have their own, that the chances that he/she will be given a good home and be raised by loving parents is very high.

God will always provide an alternative if we just let Him do what He chooses to do, the same way He allows us the same freedom of choice. His ways are not our ways, but we should always try to follow His ways, above all else. The most important things to God are love and mercy. We should always do anything that we do, by keeping those same things in mind.

(“Mother Nature” or “Nature” are terms that are usually used by those who don’t believe in God, to explain away the things in this world that they can’t understand, or explain, by any other means. For anyone that truly believes in God, it’s considered to be a cop-out.)

 

[soren1]

Soren1,

We differ in the extreme on the “basic problem”. I wrote that the root problem is the causer of the condition of a pregnancy as regards rape or incest–a criminal, utterly despicable act that should be punishable by (1) the perpetrator being held responsible for all financial consequences of the child, beginning with prenatal care, all birth costs, and support during childhood–and that should be written in the laws of the land as an automatic consequence; and (2) life in prison, as far as I’m concerned. Then society will have dealt with the root cause, the “basic problem”.

By the “basic problem” I referred to the topic of the thread, not the extraneous considerations you have brought up which, up to this point, do not bear on it. If I were arguing something vague and non-specific like, “It doesn’t make sense that Mormon teachings allow exceptions for abortion but not for euthanasia,” then your answers would be reasonable. But that is not what I am saying. I am saying something far more precise, and more extreme. I am saying there is a* formal contradiction *between LDS teachings on euthanasia and abortion, a contradiction indeed, which results from extremely shallow moral discernment on the part of the Church’s leaders. You are defending the indefensible.

What do I mean by a “formal contradiction”? I don’t just mean contrariety. I mean radical incongruity. I mean that it is intellectually impossible for a person who understands LDS teachings on both euthanasia and abortion and who sees them in connection to believe them both. The reason I emphasize “formal” is that the contradiction in question has a definable logical (or rather illogical) structure. Specifically, it is a “particular denial of a universal affirmative.” A universal affirmative is a statement like this:

All A is B.

A particular denial is like this:

Some A is not B.

As long as there is no variation in the meanings of A or B, then the two statements cannot both be true at the same time and in the same respect. Here are the universal affirmative and particular denial that we find in Mormon teaching:

All euthanasia is wrong.
Abortive euthanasia is not wrong.

You yourself cannot read these statements together and believe both of them, yet both are teachings of the Mormon Church. The only reason it is almost never noticed is that the second statement is found in the abortion teaching, and so people think of it as abortion without noticing it is also euthanasia. Now that it has been pointed out to you, and you have noticed it, you cannot affirm LDS teaching in both areas without absurdity. If you wish to address the basic problem, you must show either why the two statements are compatible or that they are not both Church teachings, but here I think you have an impossible task. Little wonder you have not attempted it.

 

[soren1]

Of course I think it is absolutely wonderful and a very compassionate thing for a woman to have a baby when her pregnancy was caused by rape or incest,

Why? How do you know God doesn’t want her to abort it? You are expressing your own feelings here, but you can’t justify them from your Church’s teachings which allow for God to say otherwise on exactly this point.

but do I hold the woman who decides she can’t do that, responsible for “murder” of the unborn baby?–no, I would not and could not do it in good conscience.

If you don’t think that aborting the unborn child of a rapist is murder, then you aren’t considering the child as a person. You did not respond before to my totally serious question about infanticide. To state my general view: I do not know a single argument in favor of abortion, including those you have put forward here and in your later posts, that could not be repackaged as an argument for infanticide. What, for instance, if a woman has already given birth to a rapist’s child and feels miserable about it, can’t stand to look even upon the cute wiggly toes of the baby, wishes she had never seen her, and feels defiled even in the act of nursing the baby. Would it therefore not be murder for her to kill the newborn? If you think it would not be, I applaud you for your self-consistency, even as I abhor that conclusion. If you think it would indeed be murder, then you must ask yourself why the same argument that allows killing an unborn baby does not apply for the born one. Is it not because you actually ascribe a different moral status to the two children? How can you do so if you think the sanctity of the human life is the decisive principle as your Church claims?

To me that is punishing her twice–horrendous suffering as the victim of a violent crime, and then adding to the suffering by giving not the slightest consideration to her ability to handle the dilemma she faces…

“Not the slightest consideration”? Who said that? Did I not write the following in my earlier post?:

Man is a per se end, and so he cannot be used as a means to any other end. For that reason, society has no right to evaluate one person’s life by criteria based on the private interests of some other person or group, as if a person could be a means. This is most poignantly true of innocent life, and it shows among other things that the gospel calls mothers to an heroically self-sacrificing attitude towards their children, and likewise calls the whole of society to assist mothers by every moral means to fulfill the call to care for their children, for the good of the child is the good of the mother
It seems you read the part in italics and didn’t notice the underlined portion. You have presented total non-concern for the woman as the alternative to your own view in response to a post that actually claimed that care for mothers is a basic obligation of a human society. The real issue here is not whether we should care for the mothers, since I think we both support that, but rather, what is the scope of “every moral means.” This is a matter of objective right and wrong, and isn’t simply a matter of compassion or lack thereof.

 

[soren1]

…in that if she is religious she has to deal with the inner thought question of “how would God let this happen–what did I do wrong and am I being punished?”
So we look at this issue from completely different perspectives as to the “root cause” and how to deal with it.

If you want to spare people the problem of wondering why God sends them suffering, then the best thing to do is abort every child before it is born. Anxiety and incomprehension at the ways of God are part of the human condition. It is good to remember that while the Book of Job starts off with the problem of Job not knowing why he suffers, it is not content to stay there. Before the story has gotten far underway the real question emerges, “Why do I exist at all?” For Job, man’s life is a cloud of mystery, his “way is hid” and only the “infants that never saw light” are free from troubling. So universal is the pain of life that the problem of suffering moves immediately to the problem of existence.

And one does even need to suffer greatly in one’s own person to appreciate the dilemma. We see enough anguish around us to be faced with the question powerfully, even when our own lives are doing fine. In fact – and Job bears this out too – there is something very shallow in a person who does not feel the urgency and problematic character of man’s suffering existence until he feels great agony himself. To be quite honest, for just this reason I find much of the argumentation put forward for euthanasia to be among the most emotionally persuasive stuff in the world. If you read any of the literature advancing it, you find accounts of the most horrific suffering; I am thinking very distinctly of a story I read in a book advocating euthanasia about a dying woman whose innards were so contorted by disease that she vomited her own feces. And yet, the doctors could not put her out of her misery. For this, the authors taxed the pro-life movement for inhumanity, and indeed, I find it sobering to know that my absolutist position against euthanasia has the real effect of preventing such people from being released from bodies of pain. At the very least, I can say that the following justification for killing that woman would be vacuous: “Look at the pain she is in; we should put her out of her misery before she begins to blame God for it.”

Whatever personal difficulties we face in choosing life, nothing gives me or anyone else the right to kill. Instead, the hard lesson that humans have to accept is that even the worst of our sufferings are sent to us within the order of divine providence, and even our experience of evil is intelligible only in light of the goodness of God. The ultimate defeat of evil is that it is forced in the end to serve the good, and it is trust in that which allows us to find meaning in suffering. A rape is an evil thing, but a child begotten of rape is not. It does no good to punish a rapist and then approve of his victim for imitating him by slaying her own offspring. There is no questioning of God’s goodness at that point, for it has already been rejected. Only a person who has already despaired of seeks God’s face in the midst of anguish would prefer to murder an infant than to patiently endure the trial.

 

[ParkerD]

Soren1,

Because of the fact that the unqualified statement you presented is untrue as regards the Latter-day Saint position on abortion, and the fact that any conversation on this topic that does not come to terms with root causes and with what would need to be done to deal with the root causes before attributing to God a kind of law that just says in effect “so sorry–too bad–deal with it” as regards the heinous crime committed that would cause the condition of a pregnancy from rape or incest–I see no point in having the kind of conversation you have pursued.

Peace, and Merry Christmas.

 

[soren1]

Soren1,

Since this thread still gets a few readers, and there are other aspects of the question of abortion related to the advice of a doctor about a pregnancy, I have thought I should go ahead and add a post discussing some of that complexity.

The medical world, of course, has advanced tremendously over the years, including having a history of cases with which gynecologists and others in medical school and in their practice become familiar and thus gain knowledge about development of the human body in the womb, and what to expect in an abnormal case.

The advances in medical technology make it so that a decision being made in 2011 about the viability of life for a human embryo wherein the case history demonstrates that the baby, if carried to term, could only survive on extensive life support and would have a severely compromised health including severely compromised mental development, is a different decision-making process than any such decision in the 1800’s or the early 1900’s or before. It is a more complex decision.

Related to the complexity of such a decision is the knowledge that many pre-birth babies are miscarried and some others, even today, are still-born. For a woman to reflect on this fact of life, especially one who has had a miscarriage and thus knows first-hand how their body was carrying the baby in exactly the same way and they did exactly the same health steps to have a healthy baby and yet there came a miscarriage–means that they are going to be able to realize that Nature ends the life of pre-birth babies in the case of miscarriages, or of still-born babies, and yet people don’t accuse Nature of “murdering” the baby. They accept that this is part of “Nature’s way” of bringing lives into this world, and yet I doubt that any mother would not have cause to wonder “why is that Nature’s way?” when it becomes their own personal case.

On the subject of “still-born” babies, I should point out since I am familiar with the fact of there being neonatal resuscitation training that Latter-day Saint physicians give (for free) to other doctors in many third-world countries throughout the world, leading to saving the lives of scores of thousands of babies, that modern advances in birth care have decreased the number of cases of still-born babies–not just for that reason but for many advances.

So we have a situation in our present-day world where medical technology has advanced to the point that it becomes a very pertinent question when a baby early on in the pregnancy is known to be severely compromised as to viability of life, and the health of the mother is known to be fragile, as to what “Nature’s way” would do if left alone versus what medical technology can do.

A case of twins in the womb where only one is healthy enough to survive to birth and yet having both in the womb could compromise the health of that healthy baby, is a good example of the kind of complexity that can exist. Modern technology can discern this, and case histories can demonstrate that the decision by a doctor to advise that “Nature’s way” would be that both babies would either miscarry or be still-born, and thus their advice to abort the unhealthy baby is supported by their knowledge of medical history.

Even so, the mother through prayer would seek guidance from God as to whether to accept the doctor’s counsel or receive inspiration that the family can hope to receive the kind of miracle that they would hope for and be praying for if they decide not to accept the doctor’s counsel. Such a decision, prayerfully made, can be made through the guiding influence of the Holy Ghost, thus preserving the life and health of at least one infant if not both, while acknowledging that in most such cases by acknowledging the case history, “Nature’s way” would have brought about miscarriages or still-born infants if the parents had insisted on not accepting the doctor’s sound medical counsel.

All that this shows is that often we can have reasonable certainty that a child will die. If you think that can justify aborting it, why not extend that same logic to the elderly on their death-beds? We know those people are dying, and we don’t blame nature for killing them, so why not just do it ourselves and make things easier for everyone? Again the infanticide objection holds as well: if a child is born, but clearly incapable of living long, why not just give her a lethal dose of something painless? Nature would have done it anyway, and that’s not murder.

That fallacy of all this is that you are not presupposing an exercise of power over life and death that already denies a sanctity of life ethic. Respect for human life puts limits on what people can do in the face of nature. The reason I made a point of rejecting utilitarian ethics from the outset, is precisely because of arguments like this. Even in the case of the twins, you are using one person as a means for the sake of another, and that denies the dignity of human nature. This is not to say that I have answers for all these difficult bioethical problems, but I know for a fact that the utilitarian answers are wrong.

 

[zaffiroborant]

Soren1,

Because of the fact that the unqualified statement you presented is untrue as regards the Latter-day Saint position on abortion, and the fact that any conversation on this topic that does not come to terms with root causes and with what would need to be done to deal with the root causes before attributing to God a kind of law that just says in effect “so sorry–too bad–deal with it” as regards the heinous crime committed that would cause the condition of a pregnancy from rape or incest–I see no point in having the kind of conversation you have pursued.

Peace, and Merry Christmas.

Then discuss the point of the thread, that the LDS church allows euthanasia in the case of unborn infants with terminal birth defects but not in the terminally ill.

 

[RebeccaJ]

A case of twins in the womb where only one is healthy enough to survive to birth and yet having both in the womb could compromise the health of that healthy baby, is a good example of the kind of complexity that can exist. Modern technology can discern this, and case histories can demonstrate that the decision by a doctor to advise that “Nature’s way” would be that both babies would either miscarry or be still-born, and thus their advice to abort the unhealthy baby is supported by their knowledge of medical history.

Reliance on medical staff, who have been and can be wrong. Who advise taking of life…if these were two children who had been born, you would reject this idea of killing a child to save another child. At least, I hope you would.

It is obvious you view the unborn as lacking in human dignity, whereas, what we are telling you is that every life has an inherent dignity, which is sourced from the One True God who created that life.

Your approach is, not even your God recognizes the dignity of an unborn life. What is useful is what is good, is what you are saying. Doesn’t align very well to the Mormon mantra of “in he world but not of it”.

Even so, the mother through prayer would seek guidance from God as to whether to accept the doctor’s counsel or receive inspiration that the family can hope to receive the kind of miracle that they would hope for and be praying for if they decide not to accept the doctor’s counsel. Such a decision, prayerfully made, can be made through the guiding influence of the Holy Ghost, thus preserving the life and health of at least one infant if not both, while acknowledging that in most such cases by acknowledging the case history, “Nature’s way” would have brought about miscarriages or still-born infants if the parents had insisted on not accepting the doctor’s sound medical counsel.

The One True God is never going to condone taking the innocent life of an unborn child. No such “inspiration” from God exists, has existed, or ever will exist. It is an excuse, not an inspiration.

You place a lot of faith in “sound medical counsel”, and none with God who has commanded you not to kill.

As for “root problems”. If a child is starving death, is the solution to kill the child in order to end his/her suffering? If a man commits a heinous crime, is the solution to kill a child in order to end the suffering of the mother, or it seems, of yourself?

The ending of a life is not a solution to ANY root problem. I hope you can pray on that one and come to see that your position is unsound.

 

[twopekinguys]

It has only taken about 30 years for society in general to accept, and promote death of the unborn.

As late as the mid 1970’s, the medical community’s primary concern was to save/preserve life. Now they, and we as a society seem to not even flinch and terminate it.

Back in the 1970’s, everything was done to preserve the life of the unborn, and the mother. Once medical “professionals” could do more, they would leave it in God’s hands.

That is not the case anymore. The medical community, and society in general is all to eager to terminate a human life they don’t think is worth saving. Already born, or not!

How many Einstein’s, Michaelangelo’s, Martin Luther King’s have already been aborted?

What people seem to forget is that the medical community has made, and continues to make misdiagnosis with pregnancies all the time. How many healthy viable babies have been aborted due to a misdiagnosis?

While some of the hardest funerals for me to attend have been for babies and children, I would rather do that, than to spend the rest of my life wondering “What if?”.

We had a young couple in our Diocese a few years ago that told their baby would be born without a brain. It would only have the brain stem, and were told the baby wouldn’t survive more than a few minutes outside of the womb. They were given the option to “terminate” the pregnancy, but declined. They were able to spend several hours with their child before God called him back home.

What a blessing, not to mention an inspiration.