Possibly I was over-positive.
But I still think it obvious that it is better to lose one life than two.
Several decades ago my wife and I took an emergency childbirth midwifery class as part of preparation for a home birth. Part of the class was about the history of midwifery.
Till recently, midwives in remote areas, and probably today in really remote areas, did not have caesarean to fall back on in emergency. Sometimes twins are misaligned in a way where one is trying to be born breech while the other’s head locks and prevents the birth.
In such a case the midwife’s only option was to remove the head of one of the babies so the other baby could be born.
Appalling, but the alternative was to lose both babies and the mother. In such a case, as the article discusses, killing is not the intent, saving life is the intent.
Indeed. The post referenced here mentions “that in very infrequent cases, babies and mothers may actually survive an ectopic pregnancy.” (The web link link therein seems to be dead.) The right thing to do, as we know, if to make every effort to preserve innocent life when we can.
I note with interest as well, how the author mentions instances of killing that are within the realm of moral rectitude. Also that moral choices are not a matter of self-justification in the scheme of eternal matters.
the correct procedure in locked twins is to push the child back and unlock the heads and then proceed to delivery. However, this takes skill...
don’t read furthur if you have a queasy stomach.
usually in such cases, the first twin ends up dying before decapitation. And decapitation could result in a perforated uterus and dead mother if done by a midwife...which is why partial birth abortion is so dangerous...the mother’s uterus is softer than the baby’s skull so is often injured.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3573520/
Locked twins can be avoided by cesarean delivery in all cases in which first baby is not vertex. However, if the first baby is already partially delivered as breech, disimpaction can be tried by pushing both heads upward out of the pelvis under anesthesia. If this cannot be done, cesarean with abdominal delivery of both fetuses may be the safest route.