There are plenty of scenarios where the death of a child conceived is about as certain as it can get. A starving mother in Africa, if she is even able to carry a baby to term (it takes 300 extra calories a day to support a pregnancy) without dying herself, will certainly not be able to consume the 500 EXTRA calories amday required for breastfeeding an infant, will die herself of starvation and then take the baby along with her. These scenarios are far from unrealistic and happen all the time.
Let’s clear the air here.
The Church indeed teaches that contraception is never permissible, regardless of any scenario. The Church also teaches that it can be morally irresponsible to engage in the marital conjugal act when one or both persons have a known life threatening disease that is likely to be transmitted to a conceived child. Note that contraception is never the solution in these instances…abstinence is.
Your scenario above is somewhat similar, albeit with some differences. It is likely morally irresponsible for a starving mother in Africa, and irresponsible for any husband of this woman, to engage in the conjugal act. Why is it merely “likely” irresponsible? Because of varying degrees of certitude of her medical condition during pregnancy and her capacity to adequately support the life of the child after birth. What is absolutely morally irresponsible, and more importantly, gravely sinful, is for this woman and her husband to artificially contracept. The degree of certitude of danger for the woman and/or of the capacity to adequately support the child would dictate the utilization of only two choices for this African couple…either 1) abstain, or 2) responsibly utilize natural means to space children until such time that there is adequate certainty of the capacity to properly support a child.
Contraception never fits into the equation…ever. And obviously, nor does abortion.
Likewise…homosexual marriage never fits into the equation of how to address the dilemma of a dying child in Africa. There is no teaching from Jesus remotely suggestive that a gravely sinful act can be justified to the end of accomplishing a highly righteous act. I’ve explained why homosexual marriage is gravely sinful on multiple levels.
Yet certainly, Jesus would also
not have a homosexual couple walk past a dying child because they can’t be legally married, and hence, cannot adopt. No, obviously you help the child. You do whatever you can while remaining obedient to moral teaching. And there is a great many things that can be done in that regard. Perhaps adoption of this child by two caring people might be the best thing for the child in terms of living a healthy, pain-free life in the long term…but it is nowhere near the only viable solution for that, and it certainly isn’t the only solution for addressing the actual scenario you put forth, which is an immediate need for medical attention for this child.
The ultimate solution lies in what we must do to prevent the child from being abandoned to die in the first place. Yes, in the meantime, we have this dying child in front of us, and we certainly don’t abandon that immediate necessity just because we’re seeking solutions which address the original causes. Nevertheless, will some children die because homosexuals can’t adopt as couples? I don’t know. Perhaps. Will some children struggle in life because there is no legal way for them to come into a homosexual home? Probably. Did I personally struggle in many ways because my mother couldn’t remarry after getting divorced from my father? Yep. Should she have immorally remarried so that I can have some semblance of a good father in our home. Nope.
Society does dreadful things, from abandoning a child or allowing a child to starve, to stripping apart a family, splitting up two siblings into separate single-parent homes. Not that these are comparable on a scale of depravity - certainly the former is much more grievous. But the fact remains that we don’t address dreadful realities in society with deadly sinful acts. We suffer through these realities, and seek moral, long-term solutions while morally addressing immediate life-and-death issues.
