Who would you save - 1000 Blastocysts or 1 Baby?

[Philothea53]

Yes but the placenta and embryo are also just parts of the mother’s body. If they weren’t then the whole women’s right to choose what to do with her own body argument wouldn’t make any sense.

Daddums

Well, duh! Of course the so-called right-to-choose doesn’t make any sense. I suspect you’re playing games here?

 

[SoCalRC]

I would like Exalt to answer this question, if you are in a burning building and you can only save one child, which one would you save? A three month old infant or a nine month old infant?

I don’t know if this really diffuses the thought problem, or just enhances it. With two infants, I’d be very inclined to go back into the burning building.

With an infant and a fridge full of petri dishes, I don’t think I’d try going back in for the fridge. It isn’t that I reject the Church’s teaching, I’m just being honest. The sentiment is nothing new. St. Jerome argued that a fetus couldn’t be a person until it assumed a human form. 500 years later, Pope Stephen V noted:

“If he who destroys what is conceived in the womb by abortion is a murderer, how much more is he unable to excuse himself of murder who kills a child even one day old.” - Epistle to Archbishop of Mainz

The context was a problem of infanticide among the Archbishop’s flock (actually a big problem for the Church among the gentile faithful for about a millenia). The Pope was basically saying, look, we consider it murder in the womb - of course it is murder after the baby is actually born!

A more difficult question would be, a mother has an ectopic pregnancy (fetus in the fellopian tube). Do you save the mother (all treatments lead to fetal death) or do nothing and risk losing both? Most Catholic hospitals end the pregnancy, arguing that the abortion is not direct because of theological principles like double effect (though with chemical abortificants, like MTX, other arguments are usually used). But the Church has actually resisted ruling one way or the other. If we look in the Catholic Encyclopedia under abortion, we get a different answer about ectopic pregnancies than we typically get in Catholic hospitals:

The teachings of the Catholic Church admit of no doubt on the subject. Such moral questions, when they are submitted, are decided by the Tribunal of the Holy Office. Now this authority decreed, 28 May, 1884, and again, 18 August, 1889, that “it cannot be safely taught in Catholic schools that it is lawful to perform . . . any surgical operation which is directly destructive of the life of the fetus or the mother.” Abortion was condemned by name, 24 July, 1895, in answer to the question whether when the mother is in immediate danger of death and there is no other means of saving her life, a physician can with a safe conscience cause abortion not by destroying the child in the womb (which was explicitly condemned in the former decree), but by giving it a chance to be born alive, though not being yet viable, it would soon expire. The answer was that he cannot. After these and other similar decisions had been given, some moralists thought they saw reasons to doubt whether an exception might not be allowed in the case of ectopic gestations. Therefore the question was submitted: “Is it ever allowed to extract from the body of the mother ectopic embryos still immature, before the sixth month after conception is completed?” The answer given, 20 March, 1902, was: “No; according to the decree of 4 May, 1898; according to which, as far as possible, earnest and opportune provision is to be made to safeguard the life of the child and of the mother. As to the time, let the questioner remember that no acceleration of birth is licit unless it be done at a time, and in ways in which, according to the usual course of things, the life of the mother and the child be provided for”. Ethics, then, and the Church agree in teaching that no action is lawful which directly destroys fetal life. It is also clear that extracting the living fetus before it is viable, is destroying its life as directly as it would be killing a grown man directly to plunge him into a medium in which he cannot live, and hold him there till he expires.

Even though we instinctively feel for the life of the mother, just as we instinctively feel for the infant over the petri dish, the right thing to do may be to value the doomed tiny life equally to the more recognizable life we know (a loved one, a mother, with other children to care for…) Does not doing this somehow make our fertilization to natural death belief ‘wrong’?

I don’t think so. We acknowledge each Mass that we are sinners who fail to fully live up to Jesus’ example. The fact that we won’t grab freezers over baby carriers, or that we remain disinclined to die (or at least risk death) over a non viable pregnancy, does not mean that we cannot keep striving to see and love life at “any stage” and in “any condition”, just as the Church instructs us.

 

[Leopard]

A hospital has caught on fire. You have a choice between saving one seven-day-old baby or a 1000 blastocysts. Who do you save?

The conditions necessary to save the life of a seven day old baby (by which I presume you mean a full-term baby born seven days ago) and the life of a blastocyst are not identical. The older baby is at risk of dying of smoke inhalation or burns within a very short time if he is not removed from the vicinity of the fire.

The younger baby, AKA blasotcyst, is probably frozen at liquid nitrogen temperatures and is at risk of dying if he is removed from this environment without being carefully warmed and introduced into a woman’s womb in such a manner that he can continue to live and grow. This is not likely to happen in the event of a fire. The alternative is that he would have to be kept frozen. Depending on the conditions of the fire, he may be safer if he was to be left in the freezer during the fire, as the freezer is probably well insulated and may be able to maintain a sufficiently cold temperature for a long time, even without power, as long as it remains closed. Depending on the details of the fire, the freezer may not be damaged and may not even have its power interrupted, while removing the blastocyst under those conditions may result in his death.

 

[surfinpure]

This is an absurd question.

What is the OP trying to prove? That 1000 miniature babies don’t make a single fully-grown baby? Well, you’re right … what they actually make is** 1000 fully-grown babies**, if given time and their own mother’s wombs in which to be conceived and developed!

So the question ought to be, What in the name of all that is sacred are one thousand miniature babies doing outside their mothers’ wombs?!

I tell you one thing, if I had to choose between saving 1000 miniature humans (babies) and one fully grown human, I’d save the innocents in a heartbeat.

mary

 

[Exalt]

I have heard this question too and I think it’s a silly question. So, original poster which child would you save? Would you save the older child or the younger children?

I would save the baby, if it was absolutely a choice between the two, and I couldn’t save both.

I think the answers demonstrate all the reasons why many non-Catholics don’t understand why Catholics oppose stem cell research that makes use of blastocysts.

 

[Exalt]

So the question ought to be, What in the name of all that is sacred are one thousand miniature babies doing outside their mothers’ wombs?!

Research.

 

[surfinpure]

Research.

I know. I was trying to prove a point.

 

[Exalt]

Such questions are like asking which of your children you would allow to die.

Silly logic.

If I was a principle of an elementary school and I could somehow save one child or a thousand children, it wouldn’t even be a question. I’d save the thousand children.

 

[Exalt]

I know. I was trying to prove a point.

What point was that, exactly?

 

[deb1]

If I was a principle of an elementary school and I could somehow save one child or a thousand children, it wouldn’t even be a question. I’d save the thousand children.

All right. I didn’t realize that all of them was a answer in the poll. You should have put that up. If you don’t have to choose between saving one child or a thousand, then why should we have to make the, albeit make believe choice, of saving one infant or a 1000 blastocysts. Therefore, I will choose to save the baby*** and*** the blastocysts.

Thank you for making that easy for me.

 

[surfinpure]

What point was that, exactly?

The point is that without the atrocity of in-vitro fertilization, this would not even be a question. In God’s designed order there are no exposed and unprotected babies in early forms of development. He places all of them – a* full one hundred percent* *of them *-- in the safety and comfort of their own mothers’ wombs – not anybody else’s – their own.

There should be no tiny humans floating around in test tubes at all. This is a horrific degradation of human life. Every child has the right to be conceived, developed, and born from his own mother’s womb.

 

[Daddums]

Well, duh! Of course the so-called right-to-choose doesn’t make any sense. I suspect you’re playing games here?

Games? Moi? A woman has a right to choose what she can or cannot do with her own body. Anti-abortion people are extremists because they are trying to dictate to women what they can do with their own bodies. Everybody knows that. This is the very core of the pro-choice argument. It is taught to all our children in the schools using our tax money. It HAS to be true. If the blastocyst, embryo and fetus are not part of a women’s body, how would the argument that destroying them is a woman’s right because she has the right to choose to do whatever she wants with her own body make any sense? Next you will try to tell me that fertilization creates a new human individual when it’s clear that it just causes growth of the mother’s tissue that gets transformed into a unique human individual by the process of leaving the mother’s body. I believe the scientific name for the process is Tissue to Human Being Transmutation or THBT. I’m not exactly sure of the science behind it but you can look it up.

Daddums

 

[SoCalRC]

Games? Moi? A woman has a right to choose what she can or cannot do with her own body. Anti-abortion people are extremists because they are trying to dictate to women what they can do with their own bodies. Everybody knows that. This is the very core of the pro-choice argument. It is taught to all our children in the schools using our tax money. It HAS to be true. If the blastocyst, embryo and fetus are not part of a women’s body, how would the argument that destroying them is a woman’s right because she has the right to choose to do whatever she wants with her own body make any sense? Next you will try to tell me that fertilization creates a new human individual when it’s clear that it just causes growth of the mother’s tissue that gets transformed into a unique human individual by the process of leaving the mother’s body. I believe the scientific name for the process is Tissue to Human Being Transmutation or THBT. I’m not exactly sure of the science behind it but you can look it up.

Daddums

I would be careful using that as sarcasm, since it matches Jewish abortion beliefs at the time of Jesus. Abortion was mostly prohibited, because the fetus was a ‘potential human person’, but you did not become a Nefesh, a human, until birth. Basically, first breath. We see this theme in the Old Testament (God breathing life into Adam).

Our Catholic beliefs are not that much different. For about 1400 years we accepted a concept of delayed ensoulment, generally around the ‘quickening’, first movement. Prior to that, abortion was wrong, but not murder, since no soul was believed present.

In extending our understanding of “right to life” we did not formally reject this teaching. We still hold that each of us receives a soul, uniquely created by God, and that the soul is not mutable or divisable. Since fertlized zygotes sometimes do things like divide into two people or become uterine cysts, it seems unlikely that ensoulment occurs at fertilization.

I know that this can make people angry, but it is our teaching. See the Church’s Declaration on Procurred Abortion, footnote 19. We do not argue that ensoulment inarguably occurs at fertilization, we argue that it is irrelevant, since the fertilized zygote still represents a potential human person.

In other words, we don’t dispute that the line between a mother’s tissue and a baby’s is blurry, we argue that we must error on the side of life and that fertilization is the clearest first hurdle towards full personhood.

 

[Sabda]

I would save the baby, if it was absolutely a choice between the two, and I couldn’t save both.

I think the answers demonstrate all the reasons why many non-Catholics don’t understand why Catholics oppose stem cell research that makes use of blastocysts.

By using the word “blastocysts” instead of human being you are displaying a pro-abortion thinking. In order to deny person-hood/humanness to the unborn they do not refer to the baby as a baby/human they refer to it as something that makes the baby sound not human. When you do that it is much easier to disrespect the unborn baby. By using what really should be the proper term “human being” it makes it a lot harder to disrespect.

Just because the unborn baby does not represent your idea of a baby does not make it any less a baby. We as human beings are in a constant state of change. From the time we are conceived to the the time we die we are constantly growing developing in some fashion. They way you are at conception is not the same as the way you are at birth. The way you are at birth is not the same as the way you are when you are grown. When you are a young adult is not the same as the way you are when you are old and dying.

The only thing that remains the same thoughout your whole life is your dna. Your dna is what it is from the time of conception to the time you die.

Like I said I would do my best to save everyone because everyone is created in the likeness and image of God regardless of their stage of development.

 

[Sabda]

All right. I didn’t realize that all of them was a answer in the poll. You should have put that up. If you don’t have to choose between saving one child or a thousand, then why should we have to make the, albeit make believe choice, of saving one infant or a 1000 blastocysts. Therefore, I will choose to save the baby*** and*** the blastocysts.

Thank you for making that easy for me.

This is why I didn’t even bother to vote in the poll.

 

[seekerz]

By using the word “blastocysts” instead of human being you are displaying a pro-abortion thinking. In order to deny person-hood/humanness to the unborn they do not refer to the baby as a baby/human they refer to it as something that makes the baby sound not human. When you do that it is much easier to disrespect the unborn baby. By using what really should be the proper term “human being” it makes it a lot harder to disrespect.

Just because the unborn baby does not represent your idea of a baby does not make it any less a baby. We as human beings are in a constant state of change. From the time we are conceived to the the time we die we are constantly growing developing in some fashion. They way you are at conception is not the same as the way you are at birth. The way you are at birth is not the same as the way you are when you are grown. When you are a young adult is not the same as the way you are when you are old and dying.

The only thing that remains the same thoughout your whole life is your dna. Your dna is what it is from the time of conception to the time you die.

Like I said I would do my best to save everyone because everyone is created in the likeness and image of God regardless of their stage of development.

“Blastocyst” is the correct scientific term and has nothing to do with respect of lack thereof for babies. The term has surely preceded Roe v. Wade and the proabortionists.

Also, “blastocyst” refers to the early baby and early placenta, so in a sense it is a more precise term than “baby”.

While it may be true that proabortion people use scientific terms to make a baby seem less than human, that does not at all make it wrong for prolife people to use correct scientific terms.

Indeed, a sound knowledge of the early development of the baby (scientific terms included) is essential in discussing abortion with any reasonably educated person whom we are trying to win over to the prolife view.

 

[Pious_Mat]

Our Catholic beliefs are not that much different. For about 1400 years we accepted a concept of delayed ensoulment, generally around the ‘quickening’, first movement. Prior to that, abortion was wrong, but not murder, since no soul was believed present.

In extending our understanding of “right to life” we did not formally reject this teaching. We still hold that each of us receives a soul, uniquely created by God, and that the soul is not mutable or divisable. Since fertlized zygotes sometimes do things like divide into two people or become uterine cysts, it seems unlikely that ensoulment occurs at fertilization.QUOTE]

Remember that Delayed Ensoulment, no matter how popular it was (yes, St. Thomas personally held this theory to be true) was never an official Church teaching. As I recall, the only reason why it was so popular is because it was Aristotle that first proposed it, and he was the basis for much of medieval philosophical thought, as Summa Theologia makes extensive use of his writings, and seems to reconcile most of him to Christianity. Regarding when babies get their souls, Jimmy Akin a few things to add:

catholic.com/thisrock/2002/0203bt.asp

Also, to say that abortion was not considered murder would be somewhat untrue. Read some of the quotations in this link. These Church Fathers seems to juxtapose “murder” and “abortion” quite a bit.

catholic.com/library/Abortion.asp

Mat.

 

[Sabda]

“Blastocyst” is the correct scientific term and has nothing to do with respect of lack thereof for babies. The term has surely preceded Roe v. Wade and the proabortionists.

Also, “blastocyst” refers to the early baby and early placenta, so in a sense it is a more precise term than “baby”.

While it may be true that proabortion people use scientific terms to make a baby seem less than human, that does not at all make it wrong for prolife people to use correct scientific terms.

Indeed, a sound knowledge of the early development of the baby (scientific terms included) is essential in discussing abortion with any reasonably educated person whom we are trying to win over to the prolife view.

I’m aware of this. Just as I’m aware that the proper scientific term for a human being who has been born and is several months old is not baby but infant.

 

[GandalfTheWhite]

Exalt,

I know where you’re aiming with this and I think this is a good question but a bit unfair.

Let me explain why. We humans tend to have more compassion with what we see and so we would probably feel sorry for the older baby. On the other hand, to our senses, the blastocysts don’t really resemble a cute baby. I know I should save the blastocysts if they had chance of surviving after being saved but on the spot I might act emotionally.

Say there are 100 babies behind a door. I’ve never been in that room but I somehow know that they are there. I’m also holding a cute baby in my arms. The baby is staring at me. If can save only one of the two the choice will be very difficult. Logically I should go for the 100 anonymous babies but I don’t know if I would be able to drop the one baby and let it die.

 

[SoCalRC]

Remember that Delayed Ensoulment, no matter how popular it was (yes, St. Thomas personally held this theory to be true) was never an official Church teaching.

I’m sorry, that simply is not true. In addition to St. Augustine, St. Jerome, and St. Thomas Aquinas, etc. we have Papal authority. For example, Pope Innocent III ruled in a case involving a monk and his lover. At that time, the term “animated” seems to have been adopted. At the beginning of the 13th century, he reiterated the distinction and set the time of ensoulment at “quickening”.

Pope Gregory XIV reaffirmed the “quickening” test in 1591, adding a hard deadline of just over 16 weeks.

Pope Pius IX dropped the distinction between “fetus animutus” and “fetus inanimatus” in 1869. But, he did not remove the prior teaching on delayed ensoulment. Quite the opposite, he stated that early in development, the fetus almost certainly was not animated, but that it did not matter because before then it was “anticipated murder”. The Catechism actually continued to carry the “animated” distinction until around 1913 (I’d have to check that date, but it was definately the 20th century).

Also, to say that abortion was not considered murder would be somewhat untrue. Read some of the quotations in this link. These Church Fathers seems to juxtapose “murder” and “abortion” quite a bit.

Again, we have popes saying it, not me. We have to be careful when we start pulling quotes because we are often not sure when abortion refers to later term abortions or abortion in general. I was surprised when I first started reading early Latin writings in earnest. A pair of very popular ‘pro-life’ quotes from Tertullian’s treatise on the human soul do seem clearly anti-abortion, but sandwiched between them is a gruesome description of a primitive partial birth abortion which Tertullian describes as inarguable moral, a “necessary cruelty”.

Also, you’ll often find masterbation and oral sex referred to as “murder”, depending on the particular age of the text.

It would be very untrue to claim that the Church was ever pro-choice . That has never been the case that we I can determine (and Pope John Paul II asserted the same in Evangelium Vitae). Jesus was born into a surprisingly pro-life culture with regards to abortion and earliest Church writings seem to indicate that, unlike purity laws, gentile converts were expected to follow suit.

However, it would also be untrue to claim that early abortion (prior to quickening) was not treated less greivously than late term abortions. That does not mean that it was not a mortal sin, just that, at various points in time, it was treated with less gravity. We can see this in things like Penitentials from the 7th and 8th centuries. Murder typically carried a pennance of 20 years to life. Oral sex a pennance of 10 years. Early abortion just 120 days.

In general, sterilization was typically viewed much more harshly because abortion represented a one time interruption to reproduction, while sterilization was forever. But I don’t see why Catholics should be alarmed because the perceived gravity of different mortal sins has changed over millenia. That is part of the reason we have a Magesterium.

The only ‘inconsistancy’ that I can see in Church abortion history is that our ban on abortions of medical necessity is relatively new. That is, we can find seeming permissiveness for abortions to save the life of a mother going right back to the time of Jesus. As late as 1869 the Church was declining to rule on the matter. It wasn’t until 1884 and 1889 that the Church specifically prohibited it. Frankly, the matter does not seem to really be settled yet. The Church seemingly ruled on ectopic pregnancies in 1902, but such pregnancies are frequently terminated in Catholic hospitals under various theological arguments (ex. ‘Double Effect’) today.

Personally, I don’t see it as truly being inconsistant. The Church didn’t obviously ‘switch’ positions. It seems more accurate to say that it declined to rule one way or another until the right moment in time. Again, a benefit of having a Magesterium.

Sorry to go on an on. I became interested in the subject when it struck close to home and have now been studying it for a number of years. It seems to upset some Catholics, but I actually think that, in context, our history enhances our ‘pro-life’ credentials.