Revisiting Sr. McBride vs. Olmstead hospital abortion case

[Psalm30]

Is it wrong to kill an adult who is in the process of dying?

I’m not doing anymore what if’s. My answer will be no different than it is for all the other unfair comparisons you and others have spouted on this thread: In a pregnancy where the mother’s life is threatened, you do everything you can to save both. If all measures to save both are futile and the baby is not able to survive no matter what you do, you save the one you can. One person dies rather than two.

There is no other real-life scenario where two lives are at stake and one—who cannot survive the situation no matter what—must be directly killed to save the other.

 

[Anesti33]

An 11 week fetus CANNOT survive this scenario.

Your profile says “Catholic” and yet you’ve excluded the occurrence of miracles. ???

 

[Psalm30]

Your profile says “Catholic” and yet you’ve excluded the occurrence of miracles. ???

I didn’t realize belief in miracles was a requirement unique to Catholicism. Many Protestants, who I’m sure believe in miracles as well, would agree with my stance (and the stance of a few other Catholics on this thread) on this issue.

 

[Anesti33]

I am not sure what the confession of a person has to do with correctly answering a specialized question about a medical outcome that would require a trained and licensed professional and a team of researchers to answer.
You have offered no citations to medical journals, books, or any other source that describes prognosis and historical outcome for maternal pulmonary hypertension. It’s just your tiresome say-so, over and over again, beating the dead horse. Well, I can’t tell if it’s really a horse, but it looks like one by this time.

 

[MarkRome]

I’m not doing anymore what if’s.

There is no “what if” here. No hypothetical. It is a straight up question.

Since I don’t think you will answer it given your responses thus far, cheers and adieu. Not sure what gain you get from repeating your disagreement with the Church, but hey, knock yourself out.

 

[Psalm30]

You have offered no citations to medical journals, books, or any other source that describes prognosis and historical outcome for maternal pulmonary hypertension. It’s just your tiresome say-so, over and over again, beating the dead horse. Well, I can’t tell if it’s really a horse, but it looks like one by this time.

I’m going by the facts presented in the case. It was a severe case of this particular disease. Another person on this thread cited a case that was less severe and allowed the child to be carried to term, but the mother died an hour after birth. In the St. Joseph’s hospital case, the illness was more severe and the mother was in danger of immediate death, and the child was in the process of dying.

 

[Anesti33]

How were the alleged facts presented to you? I got them in news articles. Did you read medical histories?

 

[Psalm30]

I read this thread and articles about the incident.

Look…I get it. You’re arguing that maybe both people had a chance. Or there could have been a miracle. I don’t completely disagree on that. But experienced medical professionals can make informed decisions about the “odds” of a particular thing, and it was determined in the case in question that the baby couldn’t survive and the only way to save the mother was a direct abortion.

 

[Pattylt]

If I may be so bold as to quibble with this: +Olmsted (no “a”) did not excommunicate a nun, he determined that a religious sister had excommunicated herself via latae sententiae . There’s a wide difference there, no ecclesiastical trial and no decree by the bishop needs to take place for an automatic excommunication, it happens by the very fact of the action itself. +Olmsted did not use his discretion to hand down a sentence, it was already imposed when McBride authorized the termination.

Thank you. I stand corrected and didn’t know that’s how it came down.

 

[o_mlly]

Only that no direct killing occurred matters.

The church, as Christ’s sacrament for the salvation of souls, could not teach otherwise.

Death, always an evil event, came into the world by sin.

The cause of death may be physical, e.g., extreme weather; physical evils do not offend God. But if the cause of an innocent one’s death is moral, i.e., by the direct hand of man, then God is offended and the soul of the killer is in jeopardy of eternal damnation.

The Catholic Church holds it better for the sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions on it to die of starvation in most extreme agony, as far as temporal affliction goes, then that one soul, I will not say, should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one willful untruth, or should steal one poor farthing without excuse ( St. John Henry Newman).

 

[Useless]

Stop making me out to be a monster who doesn’t think every life matters.

I’m not doing that. I’m displaying how your position is illogical and is based purely on emotion.

 

[TheAdvocate197]

Deliver a 10 week old fetus? What?! Non-sensical.

 

[vz71]

Deliver a 10 week old fetus? What?! Non-sensical.

The alternative is murder.

 

[graciew]

I deleted my post before your post.
I don’t know exactly why you are posting this to me… sorry.
I know of two similar cases only, very close. In neither removing the babies who were not viable was an option .

 

[Latin]

I’m sorry @graciew I didn’t mean to address my post to you.
Some reason the computer automatically put your name on it and I didn’t even notice it until now.

God bless

 

[graciew]

That is ok, Latin. It is a problem what the computers “ automatically “do without our permission .How dare they!

 

[Gorgias]

Completely disagree. The intention is to “save the mother’s life”.

Not sure I agree, but fine: then we’ll call the “object chosen” as “remove the placenta”.

Killing and dismembering the fetus is also one part of the procedure.

So, again to my thought experiment: if one were able to remove the placenta, as such (without the inflammatory language of “dismembering the fetus”), would that make the procedure acceptable?

This isn’t a “double effect” scenario, as the author even states. Can’t use it here.

I’m not claiming that this example is double effect. You claimed that it’s never acceptable to kill an innocent. I pointed out that this is exactly what happens in a procedure to address an ectopic pregnancy.

Again, there is no correlation with ectopic pregnancies as the author already said double effect isn’t at play here.

There is, but only to refute your assertion about “never taking an innocent life.” I’m not asserting anything else about that example; merely that it demonstrates your claim about “innocent life” to be inaccurate.

I haven’t seen any materials saying that the removal of the placenta was the objective. Everything I’ve seen was that it was just an abortion.

I think I’d gently suggest to you that this is because that was the point of the materials you’ve read – to assert that it was an ‘abortion’, plain and simple. The Lysaught article discusses the medical details and the effects of the working of the placenta on the mother’s already fragile condition.

+Olmsted did not use his discretion to hand down a sentence, it was already imposed when McBride authorized the termination.

Yes and no. The bishop did affirm the excommunication, however. In his discretion as the local ordinary, he could have determined that it wasn’t punishable by excommunication. (Heck, he could have said “grave sin, but not punishable with an ecclesial penalty”, if he wanted to!)

So, to claim that he did nothing is kinda inaccurate. He made the judgment that it occurred, and provided notification of his judgment.

I’m not doing that. I’m displaying how your position is illogical and is based purely on emotion.

Erm… “pot, meet kettle”, perhaps?

Deliver a 10 week old fetus? What?! Non-sensical.

Just as nonsensical as “deliver a 24-week fetus” might have been, a century ago. It’s a question that’s highly dependent on existing medical technology and procedures. Just sayin’…

 

[MarkRome]

So, again to my thought experiment: if one were able to remove the placenta, as such (without the inflammatory language of “dismembering the fetus”), would that make the procedure acceptable?

It’s not “inflammatory language”, it is a step in the procedure right after they killed the fetus. The Church teaches that If diseased tissue is removed, and the fetus dies as a consequence of that removal, then it is the principle of “double effect” and is morally permissible. But you already know that.

I pointed out that this is exactly what happens in a procedure to address an ectopic pregnancy.

And you are incorrect. They do not directly kill the fetus.

There is, but only to refute your assertion about “never taking an innocent life.” I’m not asserting anything else about that example; merely that it demonstrates your claim about “innocent life” to be inaccurate.

I never said “never taking an innocent life.” Putting quotes around it makes it appear I said that, which I didn’t. We are talking about directly killing an innocent human being which is always wrong. Directly killing is what is important here. There is no situation which makes it morally permissible.

 

[o_mlly]

So, again to my thought experiment: if one were able to remove the placenta …

Is the placenta an appendage of the mother or is it a vital appendage of the child? Absent the child, the placenta would not exist so it seems to me an argument could be made that the placenta is the child’s vital appendage. If so, an “attack” on the placenta is a direct attack on an innocent. I’m not a doc and don’t play one on TV (nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night).

 

[Gorgias]

It’s not “inflammatory language”, it is a step in the procedure right after they killed the fetus.

It’s immaterial to the question of whether a direct killing of the fetus was part of the procedure. It provides editorial comment.

And you are incorrect. They do not directly kill the fetus.

Again, you’ve switched contexts. That wasn’t part of your assertion, to which I replied.

I never said “never taking an innocent life.” Putting quotes around it makes it appear I said that, which I didn’t.

Actually, you did. Here’s your original claim, which the counter-example refutes:

The taking of an innocent life is an act that is always wrong, even if the end is good.

You weren’t talking about “direct killing”, but merely “the taking of life.” In a procedure to remove part of the fallopian tube in an ectopic pregnancy, “the taking of the innocent life” of the fetus occurs. And, in a discussion of double effect, this is seen as morally permissible. Therefore, your assertion that “the taking of an innocent life is always wrong” is itself inaccurate.

Is the placenta an appendage of the mother or is it a vital appendage of the child?

It is shared; it’s an interface between the two.

Absent the child, the placenta would not exist

Actually, even if the child dies, the placenta continues to exist and function. If the child in this case had already died, the placenta would have continued to place the mother at mortal risk.

it seems to me an argument could be made that the placenta is the child’s vital appendage.

It’s vital, but it’s not an ‘appendage’, as such. In fact, if you want to make that claim, then we could claim that it is also an ‘appendage’ of the mother, so you’d be back to square one.