O.K. I realize I am wading into some deep water here, but I really want to understand.
Gingrich says he is pro-life. He may have come to his beliefs thru age or religion. What revelence is it to “where life begins?” If one is pro-life, one is pro-life. Unlike our current rESIDENT who believes nobody should be punished with a baby and believes in late term abortion.
He has already said that he thinks embyronic stem cell research can be accomplished in other ways..i.e. umbilical cord.
Many years ago, the Catholic church believed that the mother should be sacrificed for the child. And if both died, so be it.
So if an ectopic pregnancy presents..what is the answer?
And before you answer, consider that the mother may be your wife or mother. And that ectopic child is a human life.
A woman/girl/female in America has a right of self defense. An Ectopic pregnancy will in most cases kill or severely damage the mother. I know of an ectopic pregnancy which happened when the embryo implanted in the exterior of the liver. That child made it to term and is alive today and so is the mother. But that was an extremely rare thing ... until medicine discovered how to excise an ectopic pregnancy, the event almost always ended in death of the mother and of course the alive little one at very early age.
The goal must be to try and save both individual humans involved, but alas our medical science has not reached that level of sophistication yet. We are getting very close, but are not there yet. It will involve, with ectopic implantation, the removal of the implanted embryo and reattachment to either an alternate female utewrus or reimplatation to the mother's inner uterine lining, or an external artifical amniotic envirnoment. Japanese reaserchers are getting closer, havign a few years ago kept a fetal goat alive in an artifical womb for seventeen weeks, to normal birth age.
A woman/girl/female in America has a right of self defense. An Ectopic pregnancy will in most cases kill or severely damage the mother. [ I know of an ectopic pregnancy which happened when the embryo implanted in the exterior of the liver. That child made it to term and is alive today and so is the mother. But that was an extremely rare thing ... ] Until medicine discovered how to excise an ectopic pregnancy, the event almost always ended in death of the mother and of course the alive little one at very early age.
The goal must be to try and save both individual humans involved, but alas our medical science has not reached that level of sophistication yet. We are getting very close, but are not there yet. It will involve, with ectopic implantation, the removal of the implanted embryo and reattachment to either an alternate female uterus or reimplatation to the mother's inner uterine lining, or an external artificial amniotic environment. Japanese researchers are getting closer, having a few years ago kept a fetal goat alive in an artificial womb for seventeen weeks, to normal birth age, IIRC.
The Church has not changed in the least.
A child in utero must never be intentionally killed no matter what the reason.
Pregnant women often refuse cancer treatment and die in order to save a babe in utero. I know my wife would insist on that. I have friends who have died this way and the baby is healthy. We have a canonized Saint Gianna whose children are still alive - she sacrificed her life so that her child could be born healthy. The kids attended her canonization!
We believe it is always wrong to intentionally kill a person who is innocent. Always. And we treat unborn children in the womb as persons.
An ectopic pregnancy is caused by factors that may be treated under Catholic bio-ethics.
Unfortunately, that treatment will have a secondary effect of terminating the pregnancy.
More details here... http://www.ncregister.com/site/article/conflict_of_clarity/
“So if an ectopic pregnancy presents..what is the answer?
The pregnancy is doomed when an ectopic pregnancy occurs.
(I don’t even think that is considered an abortion in that case.)
So if an ectopic pregnancy presents..what is the answer?
An embryo growing outside the uterus would kill the mother if not removed. It has zero chance of growing to the second trimester. Its host would be deceased. This is no “choice.”. Thank G-d we can do what is necessary to save the mother.
That is very different a scenario from an inconvenient pregnancy.
If there becomes ever a law to prevent human embryo use in science, it will be worded csuch that a mother with an ectopic or other life-threatening pregnancy can be saved.
Clinton and others have tried to use “life of the mother” concern as a scarecrow to keep people from recognizing that pre-Roe law universally allowed saving the life of the mother, and was never classified as abortion, either by the Church OR in civil law.
Where the Catholic Church takes a more pro-child position than pre-Roe American law is when the mother and child are in jeopardy, such as in pre-eclampsia, or cancer. Thirty-nine years after Roe, both pre-eclampsia and usually cancer are treatable without risk to the child's life, and so the pregnancy can continue to birth.