Tough Abortions Discussion

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FightingFat

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OK- I want to discuss tough abortion situations and how we argue a pro-life position when faced with these sorts of really difficult situations.
  1. This is a scenario that was reported on the radio last week. Couple get pregnant, have their first scan (what is that? 12 weeks??) and find out the child has serious brain damage. The brain has not formed properly and basically he has only half his brain. The doctors tell the parents child will be born paraplegic with the most severe brain damage and will have no quality of life if he even survives.
  2. 16 year old Muslim girl has unprotected intercourse with a white boy and ends up pregnant. Her cousin had a white boyfriend and her uncle beat her up for it. She is convinced if her parents even find out, she will be severly beaten, possibly killed (honour killing type thing). What advice do we give? How do we deal with this situation?
 
I’m not sure where you want to go with these scenerio’s. In both cases abortion is out of the question. Is there someting else you want to discuss.
 
Given that we ascribe to a morality of principles, and not simply consequences, these really aren’t tough questions insofar as abortion is concerned, because using abortion as a solution to either of them only compounds the problem.
  1. I’m not really sure what the moral medical solution is here - but certainly killing somebody because they are handicapped is sinful. ‘Quality of Life’ does not effect the principle of a right to live at all.
  2. If the girl thinks her parents are going to kill her, God forbid she be the one to kill first! She ought to contact some crisis agency or at least friends who can take her in, and protect her from possible harm.
 
Neithan said:
Given that we ascribe to a morality of principles, and not simply consequences, these really aren’t tough questions insofar as abortion is concerned, because using abortion as a solution to either of them only compounds the problem.
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I agree, but I’m interested in seeing if we can come up with a good argument from a Catholic perspective.
Neithan said:
  1. I’m not really sure what the moral medical solution is here - but certainly killing somebody because they are handicapped is sinful. ‘Quality of Life’ does not effect the principle of a right to live at all.
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But put yourself in the non-Catholics parents point of view here. Going ahead with the pregnency sentences you to a lifetime of hard work and emotional agony. I have worked quite a bit with handicapped people and know the value of that life, but many people don’t think they have any quality of life and I would certainly suggest the doctors would portray it this way. The abortion sounds like the solution to a thorney problem does it not? As it happens, they had to partial birth the child and the account I heard was horrific! How do we argue that the child shold be left to run to full term? Given a chance to survive?
Neithan said:
  1. If the girl thinks her parents are going to kill her, God forbid she be the one to kill first! She ought to contact some crisis agency or at least friends who can take her in, and protect her from possible harm.
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I kind of thought with this example that the girl wouldn’t be coming to a catholic perspective anyway, but it was used to demonstrate to me how straight forward these sorts of decisions are not. Does our answer rely on their being a sympathetic agency then? What if it does not exist?
 
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FightingFat:
How do we argue that the child shold be left to run to full term? Given a chance to survive?
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It really is a pointless debate if the immorality of abortion is not established first.
Does our answer rely on their being a sympathetic agency then? What if it does not exist?
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🤷 This is your hypothetical scenario, so what are the alternatives here? You seem to be looking for a utilitarian argument, which I wouldn’t be willing to provide, since I think utilitarianism itself is immoral. I argue ethics from principles which are then applied to situations, not vice versa.
 
FightingFat said:
OK- I want to discuss tough abortion situations and how we argue a pro-life position when faced with these sorts of really difficult situations.
  1. This is a scenario that was reported on the radio last week. Couple get pregnant, have their first scan (what is that? 12 weeks??) and find out the child has serious brain damage. The brain has not formed properly and basically he has only half his brain. The doctors tell the parents child will be born paraplegic with the most severe brain damage and will have no quality of life if he even survives.
  2. 16 year old Muslim girl has unprotected intercourse with a white boy and ends up pregnant. Her cousin had a white boyfriend and her uncle beat her up for it. She is convinced if her parents even find out, she will be severly beaten, possibly killed (honour killing type thing). What advice do we give? How do we deal with this situation?
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The situations above should be dealt with in the same way for each of the following…
  1. scenarios above
  2. any age baby
  3. any age adult
The answer to these 3 scenarios would all be the same.
 
FightingFat said:
OK- I want to discuss tough abortion situations and how we argue a pro-life position when faced with these sorts of really difficult situations.
  1. This is a scenario that was reported on the radio last week. Couple get pregnant, have their first scan (what is that? 12 weeks??) and find out the child has serious brain damage. The brain has not formed properly and basically he has only half his brain. The doctors tell the parents child will be born paraplegic with the most severe brain damage and will have no quality of life if he even survives.
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Let’s imaging they lived a generation or two back, when such technology was unavailable. They wouldn’t know about this until after the baby was born. Would it be moral to kill the baby **after **it was born?

Of course not! And therefore it is immoral to kill it before it is born.

This is a bit of a sensitive issue for me – my older half brother was born with severe defects (and his mother died). My father found himself a single parent in the midst of the Depression, with a young daughter and an infant son who would need years of extensive and expensive medical care.

I don’t think anyone would dare to suggest to Dad that he should have killed Bill!:eek:
FightingFat said:
  1. 16 year old Muslim girl has unprotected intercourse with a white boy and ends up pregnant. Her cousin had a white boyfriend and her uncle beat her up for it. She is convinced if her parents even find out, she will be severly beaten, possibly killed (honour killing type thing). What advice do we give? How do we deal with this situation?
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The princple is that mothers (and fathers) sacrifice themselves for their children, not the other way 'round.

My advice to her is to go to a shelter. She can find protection and aid there.

By the way, most Muslims are white – Arabs are Semites, and like their cousins the Jews are Caucasians.
 
both situations in OP can be reduced to symbolic logic symbols:
A & B conceive a child, C, who may or may not survive to natural birth, may or may not be born with severe birth defects, and may or may not survive for long after birth. Therefore, kill the child C as soon as possible. This assumes it is better to actively take steps to kill your own offspring than to allow nature to take its course.

second scenario, A and B have intercourse outside marriage, and a child, C, is conceived. D, E and F commit acts of violence against A, and A also has reason to fear violence from G & H. Therefore, kill C, by one of the worst acts of violence imaginable, precisely because C in this scenario, is an innocent party.
 
These are not tough situations when you consider that killing an innocent is murder. PERIOD.

This debate never has be be more complicated than that. If people would just stop trying to find ways to get around the truth that it really IS a baby and killing it is murder, then all the debates and nonsense would just stop.

It really is simple. Don’t murder the child. Problem solved.
🤷

~Liza
 
lizaanne said:
These are not tough situations when you consider that killing an innocent is murder. PERIOD.

This debate never has be be more complicated than that. If people would just stop trying to find ways to get around the truth that it really IS a baby and killing it is murder, then all the debates and nonsense would just stop.

It really is simple. Don’t murder the child. Problem solved.
🤷

~Liza
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Yes! And this is the point in Kreeft’s book, *The Unaborted Socrates. *That all these scenarios have to eventually boil down to the question: Is what is in the womb human or not? If it is then there is not a shred of difference between what you can do to humans whether in the womb vs. seven years out of it. The best answer from pro-abortionists, agnosticism regarding humanity, doesn’t cut it because the Deerhunter Principle applies.
 
Without reading more i’m compelled to answer.

All LIFE is sacred. You cannot kill the Baby. If they are born deformed, we must care for them. If someone will be a devil abusing the woman because she had a child, we must let the baby be born. Because killing is wrong, period.

The Baby is living at the moment of conception and its LIFE belongs to GOD you cannot kill the Baby. And that’s what we are talking about, killing, no killing, no killing the least of people, no killing the unborn. The term unborn rather seems to indicate abortion a baby can’t be unborn, it is a baby in the womb. No abortion.

Could i say it a few more times a few more ways?

LOVE your neighbor as yourself.
Amen.
 
God did not promise a bed of roses all he did promise was comfurt. The truth boils down to this she chose to have sex!!! in this scenario. Even if we twist this and say what if she was Raped?? Well ok so this does happen and unfortunatly or perhaps fortunatly the person ends up pregnant with another person do we create another victim?? what is in you is alive by every definition of the word and yes when you kill you are victimizing another human being. I read the dictionary at conception a zygote by definition is an organism by definition an organism must belong to a species in this case the species is human to abort ends the life and ending a life is killing by the same definition you stop the life therefor you kill it by all definitions killing is murder.

So she may or may not be in danger it all depends so lets get to the legality of the matter. It is only legal to stop a person using leathal force if you are in mortal danger or a second or third person is. Notice I said stop not kill even here it is still illigal to kill, If the force used ends in death then the motive for the use comes into question and only if used to stop without the intention to kill. This girl feels and perhaps with good reason for her physical safety but keep in mind that she is duty bount to protect herself second to protecting the child which she carries. In undeveloped country’s then I would suggest to look at the morality of the situation at hand. She became pregnant. Did she contamplate having the abortion before finding out the child had severe handicaps?? Does just because the child is not “normal” not entitle it to the same protection as a “Normal” child???

We all know that to commit murder on an innocent babies whether born or not is vile beyond belief. God strictly made it clear we were not to kill.
 
All we have to do is transfer these scenarios to a slightly different setting.

A teenage boy goes out and gets drunk. He knocks down a pedesterian while driving home. He knows a friend got a beating from his father for causing a fender-bender, and he is afraid what his father will do to him.

So he backs up over the pedesterian to be sure he’s dead – dead men tell no tails – and drives on.

Nobody in his right mind would try to justify that!!
 
Let’s imaging they lived a generation or two back, when such technology was unavailable. They wouldn’t know about this until after the baby was born. Would it be moral to kill the baby **after **it was born?

The princple is that mothers (and fathers) sacrifice themselves for their children, not the other way 'round.
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Fabulous! Love this!
 
FightingFat said:
OK- I want to discuss tough abortion situations and how we argue a pro-life position when faced with these sorts of really difficult situations.
  1. This is a scenario that was reported on the radio last week. Couple get pregnant, have their first scan (what is that? 12 weeks??) and find out the child has serious brain damage. The brain has not formed properly and basically he has only half his brain. The doctors tell the parents child will be born paraplegic with the most severe brain damage and will have no quality of life if he even survives. This is still a life that needs to be protected. My daughters Godmother had a child born with this condition. Christopher lived for 10 hours. Long enough to be baptised, cuddled and cherished as a wanted child.
  2. 16 year old Muslim girl has unprotected intercourse with a white boy and ends up pregnant. Her cousin had a white boyfriend and her uncle beat her up for it. She is convinced if her parents even find out, she will be severly beaten, possibly killed (honour killing type thing). What advice do we give? Find a safe place for her and the child. No woman should ever feel threatened with beating or death no matter what the situation. How do we deal with this situation? Teach that no one even a parent has the right to harm a child.
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My Aunt’s birth mother decided to murder her. As the family constructed the story later, she was actually digging the grave, with Aunt Josephine lying on the ground beside her. A man named Kelly saw what was happening and persuaded her to give the baby up. She wrote a note in pencil and Kelly left Aunt Josephine and the note in a basket in a wagon parked next to my Great-grandparents’ house.
Code: 
  May the 9, 1902
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Kind Lady
Please take my child and keep it, for I can’t. Me and my husband has ben railroading and he has left me. And I am not able to keep the child and make a living. The child has no name. I leave that to you it was born on April the 5, 1902.
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I can’t pay you But God can.
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The very questions betray an assumption that doing the right thing should be easy and that righteous people will be given ‘health, wealth and prosperity.’ You start the conversation with a dose of reality that real life involves no small amount of suffering.
 
I’m not sure if killing a baby can resolve any dilemma really. Yes, those two scenarios presented in the original thread opener are difficult at best, to imagine what one would do. But, not sure how exterminating a pregnancy…thus killing a baby…could resolve either issue. I think that #2 is a far reaching scenario. I think we could far reach all day to justify abortion. It’s not justifiable, really. To do something evil…to create a potential good…ultimately is evil.
 
FightingFat said:
OK- I want to discuss tough abortion situations and how we argue a pro-life position when faced with these sorts of really difficult situations.
  1. This is a scenario that was reported on the radio last week. Couple get pregnant, have their first scan (what is that? 12 weeks??) and find out the child has serious brain damage. The brain has not formed properly and basically he has only half his brain. The doctors tell the parents child will be born paraplegic with the most severe brain damage and will have no quality of life if he even survives.
  2. 16 year old Muslim girl has unprotected intercourse with a white boy and ends up pregnant. Her cousin had a white boyfriend and her uncle beat her up for it. She is convinced if her parents even find out, she will be severly beaten, possibly killed (honour killing type thing). What advice do we give? How do we deal with this situation?
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  1. Only God determines when life begins and ends period.
  2. Listen to Cindy and Jennifer Speltz on “Life on the Rock” audio archives from 3-11-99.
ewtn.com/rock/SearchForm.htm
 
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