[presidio9]

I think you are wrong about the Catholic Church's position. It does not approve of deliberately killing a baby to save the mother's life when otherwise the baby would live. (There may be an exception in the case where both mother and child would die without the procedure but there is a possibility of saving the mother with it.)

This entire thread is ponderous. Please go back and re-read the thread and don't make false accusations. In the (probably bs) scenario I was commenting on, The choice appeared to be "Baby won't survive regardless. Mother may survive if we remove it now." Such a proceedure is permitted by the Catholic Church.

In the movie The Cardinal the future cardinal's sister gets pregnant out of wedlock. When it is time for the baby to be born the doctors say its head is too big and they need to crush the baby's skull to save the mother. The future cardinal, following Catholic teaching, refuses to give his approval. Later in the movie you see a little girl who is alive because of his decision--but her mother is dead.

Never saw it, but apparently the producer never heard of Julius Ceasar, who was born (not-coincidentally) by ceasarian section some 600 years before the first Catholic Cardinal.

[Verginius Rufus]

Apparently there are rare cases when the problem is only discovered when it is too late for a Caesarian. But the movie was made long before some of the modern technology which could perhaps give the doctors the information in time.

Julius Caesar was not born by caesarian section. The name "Caesar" was a cognomen used by a branch of the Julii long before he was born. If the first one to get the cognoment was born by caesarian section, it was long before the famous Julius Caesar.