Tubal Pregnancy Termination?

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Hi Everyone,
If a woman is told by her doctor that she is a few weeks into a Tubal Pregnancy (medically known as an Ectopic Pregnancy), what should she do?

A Tubal Pregnancy can NOT be carried to term, and if left “untreated” both the baby and the mother are certain to die.

The standard “solution” is to give the woman a drug to terminate the pregnancy before the baby grows large enough to rupture the fallopian tube. If the baby does rupture the fallopian tube, emergency surgery is required to save the life of the mother, but is sometimes not successful in saving her life.

What is the Church’s position on this? Is it permissible for the mother to take the drug? Must she wait until emergency surgery is required to seek medical assistance?

Thanks.
 
CarrollFamily10 said:
Hi Everyone,
If a woman is told by her doctor that she is a few weeks into a Tubal Pregnancy (medically known as an Ectopic Pregnancy), what should she do?

A Tubal Pregnancy can NOT be carried to term, and if left “untreated” both the baby and the mother are certain to die.

The standard “solution” is to give the woman a drug to terminate the pregnancy before the baby grows large enough to rupture the fallopian tube. If the baby does rupture the fallopian tube, emergency surgery is required to save the life of the mother, but is sometimes not successful in saving her life.

What is the Church’s position on this? Is it permissible for the mother to take the drug? Must she wait until emergency surgery is required to seek medical assistance?

Thanks.
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The Church’s position that giving the drug to kill the baby is abortion and is a grave evil.

The woman’s tube is infected, and acting to treat the diseased tube is not immoral. They can remove the tube before it ruptures. The secondary and unintended effect is the death of the child. It is unavoidable, but not directly intended.

The National Catholic Bioethics Center can consult with the woman on this situation.
 
The part of the tube is to be removed - in this matter the principle of double effect takes place. Taking a medication to kill the child is a direct abortion. Removing the tube may result in the death of the child but not from the actual procedure itself. Also since the cause of tubal pregnancies are usually scarring, etc this is preventing a pregnancy in this part of the tube again - leaving a woman still fertile in the other tube.
 
:confused: I don’t know how I feel about this… I survived an ectopic pregnancy, but the fetus grew larger than most are able to and when my tube ruptured, I nearly bled to death. I was much more ignorant to my faith when I was younger, and I probably would have taken the shot if offered, just not knowing any better. As an adult, I would still go on the ‘wait and see’ basis for the ethical considerations, but this worries me because I already lost one of my tubes and the ovary on the same side. I would worry about bleeding to death or going through an early menopause. Obviously, death would be worse, but ectopic pregnancies are never viable… and I developed a staph infection after the surgery… tough situation to be in. I hope God does not test my strength to endure another ectopic!

It’s easy to say ‘well, I would just wait and see what happens, miracles do occur’, and that’s certainly the way I feel day today, but in a crisis or emergency, sometimes one does not think as clearly or rationally.

Tough and thought provoking question.
 
themeginthemoon said:
It’s easy to say ‘well, I would just wait and see what happens, miracles do occur’, and that’s certainly the way I feel day today, but in a crisis or emergency, sometimes one does not think as clearly or rationally.

Tough and thought provoking question.
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The Church does not require you to have a “wait and see” attitude, wait until the tube ruptures, nor risk bleeding to death.

A person can have surgery to deal with the situation once the ectopic situation is discovered.
 
1ke said:
The Church’s position that giving the drug to kill the baby is abortion and is a grave evil.

The woman’s tube is infected, and acting to treat the diseased tube is not immoral. They can remove the tube before it ruptures. The secondary and unintended effect is the death of the child. It is unavoidable, but not directly intended.

The National Catholic Bioethics Center can consult with the woman on this situation.
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This is the Church’s teaching.

(As always, right on point, ke!) 👍
 
1ke said:
The Church does not require you to have a “wait and see” attitude, wait until the tube ruptures, nor risk bleeding to death.

A person can have surgery to deal with the situation once the ectopic situation is discovered.
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OH… that makes more sense. When I read it I initially thought the Church’s stance was to wait until the tube ruptured, and then deal with it. This makes me feel a lot better, I was worried because after your first ectopic, you are at a higher risk for recurrence. I think I get it now, as long as the procedure is done to remove the affected organ, it is fine… the shot is not fine because it’s only purpose is to kill the fetus.
 
themeginthemoon said:
OH… that makes more sense. When I read it I initially thought the Church’s stance was to wait until the tube ruptured, and then deal with it. This makes me feel a lot better, I was worried because after your first ectopic, you are at a higher risk for recurrence. I think I get it now, as long as the procedure is done to remove the affected organ, it is fine… the shot is not fine because it’s only purpose is to kill the fetus.
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Exactly 🙂
 
So we can remove the tube because the tube is infected? What on earth would we consider it infected from? The real issue is that this is a moral situation similiar to if you had two people in a building after an earthquake. One of the person’s is completely pinned and alive. You are handcuffed to the person at an ackward angle. You have food and water that you share with the pinned person, but the building will collapse and kill you both. You have a chance of surviving if you can get out of here, but the person your handcuffed to has zero chance. The way the building has fallen is a manner in which the key areas you’d have to move to unpin the person would immediately cause the collapse of the building. You could control the collapse, but regardless that person would die. If you control the collapse, that person will die, but you can escape in time while dragging the corpse out with you. The other option that exists is that you have a gun and a saw. So you could either torture the person by cutting their hand off and letting them bleed to death as you abandon them or you could shoot them in the head and then saw their hand off so that you can escape more saftely than a controlled collapse from your attempts to get the person (or rather their body) out with you.

Either way, you’re ultimately deciding how the person is going to die.

When I think of it, the first time I heard about this tubal pregnancies and the moral solution to the problem, it was presented to me as if the only medical option were to remove the fallopean tube. It never even was presented to me that there was another route. I know how the principal of double affect works, and I honestly think we’re splitting hairs here. Its especially offensive when we start telling people they need to contact some ethics committee to tell them what the right decision is, as if they’re teetering on God’s harsh judgement. God’s just sitting there waiting to send them to Hell, right? One false move and boom.

The real question is what is the most loving response? What acknowledges the dignity of the other human life and the fact that it is a tradegy that human life is going to pass away? This ultimately is a tough decision and most people probably are going to trust standard medical practice and I’d say they’d be in good conscience. I’m completely pro life, but I think we’re splitting hairs here. God’s not sitting up in Heaven waiting for us to make a moral mistake, as if a sin were something we could accidently commit. Sins are choices we make. And sorry but if we’re going to take every morally complicated situation and default to a board, we’re actually poorly forming our consciences. A doubting conscience is a conscience that cannot make up its mind. One form of a doubting conscience is to be overscruplous, which in and of itself is an expression of spiritual pride which is indeed and sin and something we need to let go of.

Yes, let’s fight abortion, but let’s not turn abortion into an excuse to be self righteous. Its good to be able to offer moral principles and advise to help people form their consciences, but we should not feed the lie that an overscruplous conscience is a well developed one.
 
twoangels said:
So we can remove the tube because the tube is infected? What on earth would we consider it infected from? The real issue is that this is a moral situation similiar to if you had two people in a building after an earthquake. One of the person’s is completely pinned and alive. You are handcuffed to the person at an ackward angle. You have food and water that you share with the pinned person, but the building will collapse and kill you both. You have a chance of surviving if you can get out of here, but the person your handcuffed to has zero chance. The way the building has fallen is a manner in which the key areas you’d have to move to unpin the person would immediately cause the collapse of the building. You could control the collapse, but regardless that person would die. If you control the collapse, that person will die, but you can escape in time while dragging the corpse out with you. The other option that exists is that you have a gun and a saw. So you could either torture the person by cutting their hand off and letting them bleed to death as you abandon them or you could shoot them in the head and then saw their hand off so that you can escape more saftely than a controlled collapse from your attempts to get the person (or rather their body) out with you.

Either way, you’re ultimately deciding how the person is going to die.

When I think of it, the first time I heard about this tubal pregnancies and the moral solution to the problem, it was presented to me as if the only medical option were to remove the fallopean tube. It never even was presented to me that there was another route. I know how the principal of double affect works, and I honestly think we’re splitting hairs here. Its especially offensive when we start telling people they need to contact some ethics committee to tell them what the right decision is, as if they’re teetering on God’s harsh judgement. God’s just sitting there waiting to send them to Hell, right? One false move and boom.

The real question is what is the most loving response? What acknowledges the dignity of the other human life and the fact that it is a tradegy that human life is going to pass away? This ultimately is a tough decision and most people probably are going to trust standard medical practice and I’d say they’d be in good conscience. I’m completely pro life, but I think we’re splitting hairs here. God’s not sitting up in Heaven waiting for us to make a moral mistake, as if a sin were something we could accidently commit. Sins are choices we make. And sorry but if we’re going to take every morally complicated situation and default to a board, we’re actually poorly forming our consciences. A doubting conscience is a conscience that cannot make up its mind. One form of a doubting conscience is to be overscruplous, which in and of itself is an expression of spiritual pride which is indeed and sin and something we need to let go of.

Yes, let’s fight abortion, but let’s not turn abortion into an excuse to be self righteous. Its good to be able to offer moral principles and advise to help people form their consciences, but we should not feed the lie that an overscruplous conscience is a well developed one.
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I don’t think anyone is trying to this. I think this more one of those questions for the Bioethics committees at Catholic hospitals - and why we expect them to educate us on our options and the morality of them. Unfortuantely this does not happen. Remember the three requirements for mortal sin. It is not an infected tube usually that will cause a ligation usually it is scarring - so ok one gets the shot - what happens six months later when it happens again in the same tube? Aren’t we setting up for more death because we took the easier route? I am asking the philosophical question since I think this is more a philosophical thread then someone actually asking for a right now situation.
 
joanofarc2008 said:
I don’t think anyone is trying to this. I think this more one of those questions for the Bioethics committees at Catholic hospitals - and why we expect them to educate us on our options and the morality of them. Unfortuantely this does not happen. Remember the three requirements for mortal sin. It is not an infected tube usually that will cause a ligation usually it is scarring - so ok one gets the shot - what happens six months later when it happens again in the same tube? Aren’t we setting up for more death because we took the easier route? I am asking the philosophical question since I think this is more a philosophical thread then someone actually asking for a right now situation.
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I would add also, that ectopics are sometimes difficult to diagnose. Sometimes what might seem like an ectopic turns out to be something else showing up on the sonogram.

I was misdiagnosed twice.

Doctor one was adament I take the shot, my life was in peril. It turns out I miscarried naturally, what she thought was an embryo was actually a cyst.

The second doctor diagnosed the ectopic, determined by the size that waiting was not an option, sent me over for surgery. The hospital did more tests, and used a more sensitive sonogram. It turns out that the embryo was where it was supposed to be. I miscarried anyway. 😦

I can’t imagine receiving a misdiagnosis of an ectopic on a viable pregnancy, and being given methotrexate. Surgery on the tube would not harm the baby if he was in the womb. Methotrexate would.😦
 
I accept the teaching of the Church. I accept the principle of double effect.

My problem with the rationale concerning this issue is not with the principle that it is wrong to directly kill a human life. My problem concerns whether taking out a “diseased” fallopian tube is actually correct terminology. Could in fact the fallopian tube not be “diseased” and the “end” is achieved by removing the developing child within an otherwise healthy fallopian tube that is being stressed by a human who is developing in the wrong place?

A comparative issue would be that of breast cancer and doing either a lumpectomy or mastectomy. For a long time doctors thought that if you had a small breast cancer that you needed to remove all of the breast tissue because all of the tissue was “diseased” in some way. It was thought that removing the tumor alone with lumpectomy would not give an equal cure rate. Well in fact there have been randomized clinical trials that show that the cure rate is the same if you remove just the tumor compared to removing the entire “diseased” breast. One can decide to remove the entire breast. This will achieve cure but it is not “better” than removing just the tumor because the problem is the tumor growing in the breast.

Now lets look at the issue of ectopic pregnancy. We have data showing that if you remove the developing human being you do just as well or better than if you remove the section of the fallopian tube containing the developing human being. I think that this proves that the problem is not the fallopian tube but in fact the human being who is developing within the tube.

I love the Church and accept the teaching. I do not understand how we can call the fallopian tube diseased prior to rupture. Sure I can cure an infection in my finger by cutting off my finger but the problem was not my finger! The problem was the bacteria growing in my finger. If I have a medicine that can remove the bacteria then my healthy finger remains.

Just declaring that the fallopian tube is deseased does not make it so. I am looking for better logic than just stating this supposed fact.🤷
 
The difference is, a baby is not a tumor.

The life of that tiny human being is more important than a fillopian tube.
 
Castello said:
The difference is, a baby is not a tumor.

The life of that tiny human being is more important than a Fallopian tube.
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Bear in mind that the tube is attached to a woman who, if the tube ruptures because the baby implanted in it, is going to die from internal bleeding. Fallopian tubes don’t function like a uterus, since they don’t have stretchy muscle tissue in them.
 
Matrix_Refugee said:
Bear in mind that the tube is attached to a woman who, if the tube ruptures because the baby implanted in it, is going to die from internal bleeding. Fallopian tubes don’t function like a uterus, since they don’t have stretchy muscle tissue in them.
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Actually, in the modern world with medical care, very few women die from ruptured ectopic pregnancies. Mine ruptured, the bleeding was serious, I am alive today. My child, however, died without baptism and I will carry that forever.
 
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