Woman 'denied a termination' dies in hospital

[KostyaJMJ]

Right, which is why I say I don’t have all the facts in this case. What I do know, however, is that there is nothing morally wrong with delivering a child early to save the life of the mother, and that’s my point. If labor is induced and attempts are made to save the child then the principle of double-effect comes into play.

Peace and God bless!

There has to be more to the story. I am unaware of any Catholic teaching that prohibits induced labor or uterine evacuation if it is medically necessary. I’m curious as to why they chose not to treat her as she requested or at least dump her at another hospital. Might want to stay away from Catholic hospitals for miscarriages until things are cleared up.

 

[pete_29]

Well, this is quite a sarcastic and inflammatory character.

This is a very sad and unfortunate sitation, but it appears to me that this was a problem of lack of care due to the blood problem, not the baby.

A secular extremist?

 

[epan]

What you guys think about this? Is abortion should be done in this case?
montrealgazette.com/news/Ireland+probes+death+critically+woman+denied+abortion/7546683/story.html

Sepsis is a leading cause of death in pregnant women. There are a number of physiological changes which occur during pregnancy which make women susceptible to infection. Sepsis is often diagnosed later than it should be, and therefore aggressive enough intervention is not always taken in time.

There is a protocol for managing maternal sepsis. It is a very serious and potentially life threatening condition which must be treated very aggressively.

If the source of the infection is in the uterus, then surgical intervention is indicated.

 

[thewanderer]

This may be a false dichotomy.

There may be something which could be done to the mother which might help. Even if it has foreseeable risk to the baby, although then some tricky discernments might need to be made.

And maybe there is nothing which can be done to the mother to help her. That would be a tragedy. But there is no evil done here if nothing can be done.

It is true that the deliberate killing of the baby is forbidden. Murder is never a medical treatment.

Always remember, if the mother is the patient, she can be treated. But a baby is not a disease, never an aggressor.

Isn’t it frustrating when people confuse the Catholic position with saying that you can never do anything to help the mother if it has a chance of harming her infant? Removing the child is a legitimate option according to Catholic morality so long as there is a proportionately grave reason for doing so (life of the mother) and so long as the death of the child is not intended or directly caused(ie by poisening etc). Catholic morality does not say that a woman whose life is in danger because of a pregnancy needs to just suck it up and die. What it does say is that it is wrong to directly and intentionaly kill an innocent human being. There are other ways around saving a mother whose pregnancy is truly risking her life, such as removal of the child without directly killing it, which are legitimate according to Catholic morality. People need to stop claiming that Catholics want cause women with life-threatening pregnancies to die, because that is just plain false.

 

[sophion]

By your faulty logic here, since both are dying anyway, standing on your head in the broom close is a CHANCE WORTH TAKING!

you said you are a doctor. isnt it true then that a person fighting for survival would, in most cases, grab at whatever chances to survive? even if its to stand on your head in the broom.

 

[catholictiger]

now let me first of all make it clear that I’m not a medical expert and this may not be a real case it may never happen, but I want to do it to explain the prinicple of double effect.

lets say a women get pregnant and comes down with a blood illness, and the only way to treat it is with a very strong anti-biotic drug that will kill the baby. One doctor suggests that you go ahead and abort the baby it will be easier on you if you abort the baby then have this treatment, or you take this strong anti-biotic it kills the baby and it will force you to miscarry.

so in case one the abortion doesn’t meet the principle of double effect because the act being done is evil.

the other way to do it does in fact meet the case. Keep in mind this blood illness will kill the mother if not treated immediately.

first the act itself isn’t evil, it would be perfectly moral to do this if the women isn’t pregnant.
there are no evil means to an end here, the anti biotic will cause a natural process called miscarriage.
the intention of the doctor and the women is to save the life of the mother, while they only endure the death of the unborn.
lastly the good is proportional to the evil, one life is saved instead of both lives lost.

so it fits the principle of double effect and in this situation it would be best for there to be no abortion but there to a blood treatment.

there is also an example with eptopic pregnancy. But I don’t have to go into this right now and it doesn’t apply as well.

 

[seekerz]

Not enough details but I wonder what the protest is about? So far what we have seen reported does not give anyone enough reason to protest.

The protest, from what I can tell, is because the couple was told the baby was not viable (i.e. dying, I assume, since no 17 wk baby is viable outside the womb) on the day after admission and the doctors waited to deliver the baby after the heartbeat had stopped days later. In the meantime, the couple asked for an abortion (I think the exact word used was ‘termination’) but were denied. During the waiting period, infection developed which became septicemia and reportedly that was what killed the mother.

At this point, it’s an argument between those who believe she died because of the delay and those who believe she died because she received poor care. It’s impossible to know all the facts without access to her records, but such situations have always been a concern of mine because there does not seem to be agreement even among faithful Catholics on what is the licit way to proceed in such a scenario. What disturbs me as well is that some Catholics insist that there must be a way to save the mother that does not involve delivering (aborting) the child. There are limits, even to scientific knowledge.

 

[Carina20]

Based on the the first sentence of the article It appears there is a serious problem with facts. First, if the woman was miscarrying, remove the dead tissue wound not be abortion. Second, if she a blood infection, how would an abortion be a valid treatment?

I was thinking the same thing. Would an abortion have even saved her if her blood was already infected. If the baby still had a heart beat, how did they think it was dead? Usually when go for an ultrasound, if they can’t find a heartbeat then they conclude that the baby is dead and do a D&C, but not before.

 

[Cbus]

Common sense always has to be applied. The child’s life is dependent on the mother’s life. if the mother’s life will end because of the pregnancy, then child’s life is unsavable therefore you salvage what you can, which is the mother’s life.

Remember 9/11? If you could have prevented one of those planes from hitting the WTC by shooting it down, would you? Would it be an intrinsic evil? It’s the same principle.

 

[St_Francis]

what are you, another doctor???

I am not a doctor, but I have read extensively about these types of situations in order to discuss them with people who are confused about procured or direct abortion.

Notice that I said, it seems… and apparently… I got my information from a US medical professional who explained the normal practice in the US.

it is not only doctors who should be involved in these types of discussions. For example, you are here expressing your opinion, aren’t you? Laypeople must also understand these issues in a general way because we Catholics are exhorted to be able to explain our positions. Some of us also choose or find ourselves explaining more in depth, and we need laypeople who can do that as well.

 

[sophion]

I was thinking the same thing. Would an abortion have even saved her if her blood was already infected. If the baby still had a heart beat, how did they think it was dead? Usually when go for an ultrasound, if they can’t find a heartbeat then they conclude that the baby is dead and do a D&C, but not before.

people would die if you cant go past wondering what would happen.

 

[St_Francis]

I was thinking the same thing. Would an abortion have even saved her if her blood was already infected. If the baby still had a heart beat, how did they think it was dead? Usually when go for an ultrasound, if they can’t find a heartbeat then they conclude that the baby is dead and do a D&C, but not before.

The problem seems to have been that as a result of prolonged labor sepsis (infection) occurred. This is not uncommon in prolonged labor, which is why doctors generally hasten labor in these cases by C-section or administering hormones used to induce labor.

The doctors in Ireland did not want to hasten labor because the baby, altho still alive, would have died since the mother was only 17 weeks pregnant.

I would argue that the principle of double-effect would have come into play here and they should have treated her as they would have treated a woman in the same condition but further along in her pregnancy, but I am not yet absolutely positive about this.

An abortion might have been an alternate form of speeding up things, but was not the only solution available. However, it was definitely the immoral solution so immediately taken out of consideration.

The sepsis may or may not have been avoided by early administration of antibiotics, since sometimes sepsis is caused by a virus or antibiotic-resistant bacteria, or sometimes the infection is just too much for the antibiotics; however, we will never know in this case whether they would have helped since they were given to her so late in the process.

I am also confused by the fact that she was in such great pain. At a minimum, this should definitely have been addressed.

 

[manygift1spirit]

Common sense always has to be applied. The child’s life is dependent on the mother’s life. if the mother’s life will end because of the pregnancy, then child’s life is unsavable therefore you salvage what you can, which is the mother’s life.

Remember 9/11? If you could have prevented one of those planes from hitting the WTC by shooting it down, would you? Would it be an intrinsic evil? It’s the same principle.

Your first sentence is fine, no one should be suggesting we do not try to help the mother. If the baby dies anyway, due to the (unintended) ancillary effects of the mother’s medical treatment, this is tragic but might be OK under some circumstances.

But to be clear, murdering her baby is an act toward the baby, not the mother. Murder is not a medical treatment. Treat the mother, do not antitreat the baby.

The 9/11 question is interesting in its own right, and the resolution of your question might be quite complex. But one thing we can say is that any licit shooting down of such must see it as a missile, a weapon, which is a missile or weapon regardless of whether there were passengers or not. The presence or number of passengers influences how proportionate an action we can take, but seen as a weapon this action can at least be considered.

The proper 9/11 analogy to abortion is to see a plane and say, I wish to kill everyone on it. Acting upon that sentiment is a grave evil. Full stop.

 

[Myqyl]

And further incriminate themselves? i dont think so.

Now other doctors would be smart enough not to say anything as well, for they did not receive the full report of the diagnosis.

But the point is since both are dying anyway, removing the child MIGHT produce a different result. It is a CHANCE WORTH TAKING.

Sometimes doing nothing is the greater evil.

Perhaps to avoid the repetition of the question you have asked several here, you should post where you received your medical degree… It would go a long way to validate your assertion that “both are dying anyway” and that “removing the child MIGHT produce a different result”.

Also, I’m encouraged that you concur with most of us that it was a “child” and not a “fetus” or “tumor”.

 

[sophion]

Your first sentence is fine, no one should be suggesting we do not try to help the mother. If the baby dies anyway, due to the (unintended) ancillary effects of the mother’s medical treatment, this is tragic but might be OK under some circumstances.

But to be clear, murdering her baby is an act toward the baby, not the mother. Murder is not a medical treatment. Treat the mother, do not antitreat the baby.

this is one of those rare cases when waiting for the baby to die on its own becomes too late to save the mother.

and the rare case wherein you dont know until you do so, if removing the baby doomed to die would give the mother a fighting chance to survive.

so is what happened still ok?

moral dilemma.

 

[Gorgias]

the principle of double effect would apply here, if the abortion would truly save the women’s life.

In your following post you explain the situation well; however, here, you make the error of calling a medical procedure that fits the description of double effect an “abortion”. That wouldn’t be the case, of course. An abortion can never be condoned through double effect; however, a procedure which is not an abortion, yet has the unintended but foreseeable effect of killing the baby may fit the definition of double effect…

 

[Boatswain2PA]

you said you are a doctor. isnt it true then that a person fighting for survival would, in most cases, grab at whatever chances to survive? even if its to stand on your head in the broom.

Yes, often people who are fighting for survival grab at whatever chances they think they have to survive. But that doesn’t mean that I will tell them they should stand on their head in the broom closet, or that they should abort their baby because they have septicemia. Now, if you want to go stand on your head in the broom closet, fine by me…but I am not going to perform an abortion simply because you have septicemia.

 

[michele1984]

This disturbed me quite a bit, not least because Im at a much higher risk of miscarriage than most women should i get pregnant. I know how desirable it feels to stand so firm on your faith convictions that you see issues like abortion in terms of black and white , but to not save a woman’s life, who had already touched so many other lives(like the poor husband who had to bury her! Her own parents and family, those she touched in her work), for a baby that was likely to die soon anyway?? This honestly is what fuels the little doubting voice in my mind on the way to converting to Catholicism. I know the Catholic Church officially says that abortion is not a sin where the mothers life is in danger, but in places where the Catholic religion reigns supreme like in the Irish Republic in this case, and another similar case I heard about recently in a Latin American country, this kind of militant stance seems to stand.

 

[sophion]

Yes, often people who are fighting for survival grab at whatever chances they think they have to survive. But that doesn’t mean that I will tell them they should stand on their head in the broom closet,

why not if thats the only chance they have? what do they have to lose?
me, i’ll take it any time! i’ll stand on my head!

or that they should abort their baby because they have septicemia.

because its against your religious code.

 

[Boatswain2PA]

The problem seems to have been that as a result of prolonged labor sepsis (infection) occurred.

Where do you get the information that the infection was secondary to early/prolonged labor (PPROM)? I didn’t see any indication of that in the two news articles.