Selective reduction to save mother?

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This scenario is extremely rare. Triplets are very rare and so are heart conditions in women of childbearing age. It’s so rare, it’s hypothetical, merely to argue a fine point of moral law, for the sake of arguing moral law.

Real life, though, is messy and has many grey areas. For people to condemn health care providers who are trying their best to preserve life and do the right thing to benefit the most people, go ahead, argue with each other, condemn and point fingers, cast judgement and proclaim mortal sin upon their heads.

Meanwhile, the real problem is the millions of healthy women aborting healthy babies , not some 1:1,000;000 rare scenario that common sense tells most reasonable people to try to save the mother and most of the babies, if possible.
 
Corki said:
Neither do you have any guarantee that death or even harm will come to the woman or any of her unborn children. “risk” to her life is no more certain than threat from a terrorist.
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No, there’s a fundamental difference.

In the original scenario, both courses of action have outcomes determined by probabilities, which are given in medical literature. For example, aborting 1 child will lead to everyone else surviving with 70% probability, while non-aborting will lead to everyone surviving with 10% probability. So from utilitarian point of view, you have 30.7=2.1 lives versus 40.1 = 0.4 lives – which is clearly in favor of abortion.

In contrast, in the terrorist scenario you have to realize that the terrorist has no conceivable agenda which would be furthered by your infanticide. So either he is completely insane, or he is after some sick entertainment (well, that also means he is insane). In either case, the probability of him keeping his promise is quite low. It is much more probable that he will end up killing everyone, so there’s not much benefit from playing along. And you will subconciously realize that when you are shown the scenario, which makes the exercise faulty.

This is why a much better analogy to this is the trolley problem, which does not involve additional conscious agent besides the decision maker (i.e. the terrorist).
 
weller2 said:
I disagree. The tube is healthy, it just happens to have an embryo attached in a wrong place.

The idea that it’s a problem with the tube has always struck me as an obvious lawyering.

Well, that’s the problem with Catholic morality. If saving other 3 would require you to directly kill one, then you have to let all 4 die. You have 4 dead, but you have clear conscience.

Also, remember that abortion is an excommunicable offense. Interestingly, murder is not. So paradoxically, you would be better off just killing the woman (and her children).

Unless you can somehow lawyer out of the problem by (ab)using double effect principle. Say that there is a drug which is somehow useful in treating of the mother’s condition. The drug has a known side effect of inducing miscarriage. You administer the drug for the primary purpose of treating the mother’s condition and you accept the “unavoidable and unfortunate” secondary consequence of spontaneous abortion. Said abortion will also happen to reduce stress on woman’s cardiovascular system – which is what you were after in the first place. But that was never your goal – at least that’s what you’ll tell the ethical commitee afterwards.

So, to sum up, you have 3 options:
  1. Do nothing. 4 dead, but you have commited no sin in the eyes of the Catholic Church.
  2. Abuse the double effect. You may succeed in saving some lifes and possibly even escape being in state of sin.
  3. Perform an abortion. 3 lives saved, you are in state of sin and excommunicated. And, if it’s a Catholic hospital, you may end up being fired.
So, take your pick… and in the mean time, prey that you are never put in this situation.
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The only viable option to take as the moral choice is to treat all four lives as they should be treated, with dignity. All four are equal, who makes the choice? We do not have that authority.

The tube in the other statement is not malfunctioning, I agree 100%; however, the fact that there is a growing fetus implanted within and will rupture and ultimately cause death to the woman, the tube must me removed. Yes the fetus will die. Now you can refer to it what ever you like, but this is what moral teachings of Mother Church tell us is the option.

Furthermore, a woman who experiences an ectopic pregnancy can have the fetus removed and save the tube, this is not allowed as it would be a direct abortion.

Of the choices you give none are correct the way you state them. #1 is close, however much more is done than nothing treating all four patients. No one alive can assure anyone that they or their unborn children will definitely die; that my friend is completely up to God. Hummm…I think that is the way it is supposed to be!👍
 
weller2 said:
No, there’s a fundamental difference.

In the original scenario, both courses of action have outcomes determined by probabilities, which are given in medical literature.** For example, aborting 1 child will lead to everyone else surviving **with 70% probability, while non-aborting will lead to everyone surviving with 10% probability. So from utilitarian point of view, you have 30.7=2.1 lives versus 40.1 = 0.4 lives – which is clearly in favor of abortion.

In contrast, in the terrorist scenario you have to realize that the terrorist has no conceivable agenda which would be furthered by your infanticide. So either he is completely insane, or he is after some sick entertainment (well, that also means he is insane). In either case, the probability of him keeping his promise is quite low. It is much more probable that he will end up killing everyone, so there’s not much benefit from playing along. And you will subconciously realize that when you are shown the scenario, which makes the exercise faulty.

This is why a much better analogy to this is the trolley problem, which does not involve additional conscious agent besides the decision maker (i.e. the terrorist).
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Your math is off. You start with 4 distinct individuals. Aborting one gives you 0% chance of everyone surviving. And it increases the risk for miscarriage of the other two babies.

But the abortion scenario involves additional decision makers too. The doctor and other family members are exerting pressure. It is much closer of an analogy to the terrorist scenario than the trolly one. If you are using the trolly scenario I am thinking of, there is only a single decision maker. In the abortion hypothetical, there are at least two.
 
Corki said:
Your math is off. You start with 4 distinct individuals. Aborting one gives you 0% chance of everyone surviving. And it increases the risk for miscarriage of the other two babies.
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Read my post again. 3 surviving with 0.7 probability trumps 4 surviving with 0.1 probability.
 
weller2 said:
Read my post again. 3 surviving with 0.7 probability trumps 4 surviving with 0.1 probability.
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No it does not because you have murdered one to get to the odds you think are good.

In Church moral teachings abortion is intrinsically evil, even though you try to find situations where murder is ok, it is still evil. There is no compromise here. There are no odds except that it is 100% required that all four lives be protected as much as humanly possible and allow God to be in charge.

To take that 0.1 probability away from God’s creation is trying to play God and we are not God.
 
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