Yes, because the mother’s life is less important than this absolute focus on direct killing.
Child won’t survive if the mother throws herself overboard. It’s a very simple question. Is it OK for her to kill her child in order to save herself?
Please read Deacon Christopher’s post about made up scenarios that do not help these discussions. You are making up a situation that does not happen in real life. In the boat scenario the child being alive does not depend on the mother being alive.
Exactly. That’s would be the direct killing of an innocent person. That’s what the Church teaches, whether the person is 95 years old, 50 years old, 20 years old, 3 years old, or 11 weeks old.
What I mean is, in your boat scenario, it is literally not possible to throw a live child overboard to save the mother. If it is, it is not the same as the pregnancy scenario, and you don’t get to use it as an analogy.
See M. Therese Lysaught’s analysis of the case in the January 27, 2011 edition of the CNS’s “Origins”, beginning at page 537. She claims that it was the placenta that was causing the mother’s impending death, and that the child was already in the process of dying at the time of the procedure. The object, she asserts, was the removal of the placenta, not the death of the child. (Nevertheless, the NCBC disagreed with her analysis. Of course, they would have had to reject the bishop’s actions in order to present a case that agreed with Lysaught’s analysis.)
Wouldn’t that constitute double effect? If you removed the placenta rather than the baby directly? Like the tube in an ectopic pregnancy or the uterus in a cancer case?
IIRC, she claims it isn’t double effect, per se. She simply points out that the intent isn’t the killing of the baby (whom doctors had already claimed was in the act of dying), but rather, the removal of the organ which was causing the life-threatening effects in her (the placenta).
Did you read Deacon Christopher’s post yet?
Your boat scenario is not a fair comparison. It would be wrong to throw the child overboard in that situation because the child still has a chance at survival. You say the child doesn’t have a chance at survival, but that’s not real life. A three year-old does not die as a result of the death of the mother. He may die for other reasons (not being able to swim, etc.) but he doesn’t automatically die as a result of his mother’s death. He still has a chance. You say the child in the boat has no chance, but you’re making that up to win the argument. It’s not a fair comparison.
Thanks for explaining.
A good intention does not make an act evil in its object to become a good act (CCC#1753).
One may never do evil that good may come of it (CCC#1761).
Yes, and how do they go about doing so?
They removed the placenta since it is what is causing the disease. That’s why sister deemed it double effect.Psalm30:
Yes, and how do they go about doing so?
According to all secondhand information I’ve found, the baby was directly killed.
Okay, I am not a medical doctor but I know a bit about birth and abortion procedures. I have never, ever heard of medical literature that envisions a procedure of “removing the placenta” without some process of ending the baby’s life, before or after. If we are talking about “removing an intact placenta, containing a fetus” then we have a partial-birth abortion, where you typically jam scissors into the cervical spine to ensure death. I mean, they could’ve tossed baby into a medical waste bin and ignored its plaintive cries? I’m simply at a loss to fathom what kind of placent-ectomy would not be a direct abortion, and instead parallel treatment of the ectopic pregnancy.Capta(name removed by moderator)rudeman:
They removed the placenta since it is what is causing the disease. That’s why sister deemed it double effect.Psalm30:
Yes, and how do they go about doing so?
See post 120
Welcome to “How to kill someone with a hemorrhage, for dummies”
Can you tell me what happens during the removal of a cancerous uterus that makes it different from this? Or even the removal of a tube? Would the baby not scream until he/she dies in these instances? Is anything done for the baby afterwards to try to save him/her? Or even keep him/her comfortable?
Well for one, they don’t kill the child as a step in the procedure. It’s an unfortunate by-product of the procedure.