Poll on abortion, what's your view? Vanity

If you were a legislator in one of these states, freed from the Federal restraints of Roe vs Wade, to what extent would you vote to protect unborn babies and pregnant mothers in your state?

I would copy how the left does it. Start out by getting your foot in the door with something that's hard to argue against, infanticide and partial birth abortion would be my picks.

Showing films of this stuff going on in ads leading up to going public with legislation would almost guarantee public support.

Then move up from there. Accomplish the wish list one piece at a time.

But enforcement of any regulation will be ugly. You'll have to have some way to question a doctor's diagnosis if you allow for exceptions. A review panel? (Sound familiar?)

Otherwise, leftist doctor's will make everyone woman fit in the exception category.

You said your impression was "the Catholic position is that ectopic is not a real pregnancy", but that is not the case. It's a real pregnancy, there's a real conceived child and a real mother, but the mother has a disease condition (threatened rupture of the fallopian tube) which requires the removal of the fallopian tube.

I'm trying to think of a useful analogy, so please patiently try to see what I'm saying, since most analogies are a little wobbly but they make some sense---:o}

OK, it would be like a boy with serious mental disability has gotten behind the wheel of a car, turned on the ignition and is now steering it at high speed toward a half-a-dozen kindergarten children. He can't stop it, doesn't know how. You're in a huge heavy earth-moving machine near the intersection and can, in seconds, pull out into the path of the speeding car so that it crashes into your vehicle instead into the crowd of kids.

If you do this, it is not first-degree murder of the retarded kid at the wheel, even if he ends up dying and even though his death from the collision was foreseeable.

Your motivation: to save the kids in the street. Morally good.

Your intention: to block the speeding car. Morally good.

Your means: by placing an immovable obstacle between the speeding car and the kids. Morally good.

The effects:

Primary: schoolchildren are saved, completely intended, morally good.
Secondary: the mentally disabled kid badly injured. This was not intended, but was foreseeable. In good faith, you would try to save his life if you could.
Secondary: you yourself are conscious, you are injured, but you don't know how severely. Again, forseeable but unintended.

Your good faith here, showing that your injury/possible death and the retarded kid's injury/possible death are truly un-intended, is that you try to dial 911 and get emergency response so both of your lives can be saved if possible.

If he dies, though, it was not murder. And if you die, it was not suicide. You were stopping the speeding car, --- even though there was someone in it --- not trying to murder the driver and yourself.

Similarly, in the ectopic pregnancy, you are stopping the rupture of a fallopian tube --- even though there was someone in it --- not trying to murder the baby.

In good faith, if you could take that little embryonic child and transplant him, e.g transfer him to the mom's uterus and get him to implant there, then that's what you would try to do.

Actually, that doesn't seem so very far-fetched. At some point with the progress of prenatal surgery, I expect that would be possible some day. If it becomes a probably successful surgical choice --- saving both mother and child --- it would then probably be obligatory, provided there were a surgeon around who knew how to do it.

I think that's, in part, the way the pro-life laws were enforced in the 50 states say 45 years ago, before Roe vs Wade. If a mother had a true life-threatening condition (I'm thinking, pulmonary hypertension with right heart failure in mid-pregnancy) you couldn't just say, "Well, I want this pregnancy terminated."

The hospital would convene a panel that includes maybe a high-risk-pregnancy expert, an ethicist, the neonatal ICU people, and they'd make a determination of what the options are.

If you can imagine a graph with the X-axis representing the weeks of pregnancy and the Y-axis representing mortality risk, with a red line representing the baby and the blue line the mother, you can visualize that as the weeks go on, the mother's risk line goes up and the baby's risk line goes down.

Wherever the red and the blue lines cross, that's where you do the C-section to try to save them both.

It's not a precise, mahematical-type determination. It's that, conceptually, everybdyu has to try to save both lives if they can. If they can only save one, they fully commit to saving the one (usually the mother.)

If it is IMPOSSIBLE to save the baby's life, --- well, nothing that is strictly impossible, can be morally obligatory.

But you still trat the baby respefully, as a dying baby. You deliver him whole, you trat him with whatever care you can offer, even if he only lives minutes. You don't go in and dismember him and haul him out in bloody chunks.

Dear Cicero,

Just to make clear, Catholic theologians who hold the view that resolving an ectopic pregnancy is morally acceptable don't believe this because the baby has no chance to live. Rather, it is because there is a normal medical treatment for an inflamed or infected fallopian tube - removal of the tube.

It is the unintended effect that this also causes the unborn child to die as a result of being cut off from his sustenance.

Thus, it is because there is a legitimate illness, and a treatment that is directed toward curing the illness that is NOT a direct, intentional abortion that this is licit.

Similarly, when women receive chemotherapy or radiation therapy for cancer, or when women undergo hysterectomies to remove a diseased uterus, it is the attempt to cure a real physical illness or disease that has the unintended effect of causing the death of the unborn child that makes the action licit.

Cancer is a disease. An inflamed or infected fallopian tube is a disease. Pregnancy is not a disease, and thus, it is not legitimate to "cure" it through direct abortion, especially as that directly and intentionally kills an innocent human being.

MeOnTheBeach,

I'm not sure where you got the idea that an ectopic pregnancy is not a “real pregnancy.” Upon conception within the body of the woman, the woman is a pregnant mother.

sitetest

I used the terms “unfortunate consequence” and “secondary result” rather than “unintended effect,” but the meaning of what I said is basically the same.

Perhaps I should have said that a fallopian pregnancy is not a NORMAL pregnancy, since that was what I intended.

Catholic theologians speak of primary intention—to cure a health problem—and secondary, unintended consequences. Nonetheless, if the baby’s life could be saved by a different procedured, then it would be wrong to use a procedure that killed the baby—primary intention or not. It is certainly a significant aspect of the case that a baby in the fallopian tube cannot be saved, as well as that its continued presence would result in the death of the mother. So there really isn’t any doubt what to do, whereas in a case of lung cancer, for instance, there would be questions of how much more risk there would be to the mother in postponing chemotherapy for another month or two to give the baby a chance. Instead of proceding with no real doubts, that would be case for the mother to discuss with the doctor, and perhaps get a second opinion, before making the choice of whether or not to wait.

Dear Cicero,

I agree with most everything you posted, and it may seem that I'm picking a nit. However, in #27, you said:

“But it is legitimate to remove the fetus when it is an ectopic pregnancy, because leaving it will 100% kill the mother, and there is 0% chance that the child will survive.”

The “because leaving it will...” is problematic. The reason why it's licit isn't because the ectopic pregnancy will definitely kill the mother and there is no chance for survival of the unborn child. The reason why it's licit is because there is an underlying medical problem - the inflammation or infection of the fallopian tube - that is life-threatening and for which there is a medical treatment that is not direct, intentional abortion.

That's why it's possible to say that the death of the child is an indirect, unintentional effect.

With a direct, intentional abortion, what is being “treated," what is the “disease” being “cured” is the baby.

That's all.

sitetest

Sitetest, I want to ask you about one of the examples I discussed in #43 -- the case of acute pulmonary hypertension with right heart failure.

As I understrand it, this is a sitution that can develop fairly early, like maybe 12th week of pregnancy or so, for which the prognosis is very, very poor for the mother. Part of the moral dilemma is that nobody is quite sure what causes it, but it might be caused by abnormal function of the placenta.

Now, as I undersand it, the placenta is a shared, feto-maternal organ composed of cells and tissues of both the mother and the baby. The part that faces toward the baby develops (like the umbilical cord and the anmionic membrane) from the baby's blastocyst: in other words, it is one of the external organs of the baby. The part that faces the mother's uterine wall develops from the mother's endometrial cells: it's part of the internal develoment of her pregnant uterus.

Here's the thing: the fetal placenta and the maternal placenta, are intricately intertwined. Zillions of tiny maternal spiral arteries mesh together with the fetal villi, kinda like velcro hooks and loops, keeping the villi bathed in maternal blood, for essential nutrient and gas exchange.

OK, bottom line, say acute pulmonary hypertension is indeed caused by a placental disorder. If the placenta were the mother's organ, it would clearly be OK to remove this malfunctioning organ in order to save the mother's life. If it's the baby's organ, then you can't attack the placenta (e.g. remove it) because you're attacking the baby himself.

Whether you prematurely deliver the baby from the womb at this stage or not, it has no effect whatsoever on his survivability. Either way, his survivability is zero. But if you remove baby and placenta, the baby dies (as he would anyway) but the mother's hypertension rapidly resolves and she regains normal heart function. It saves her life.

Keep in mind that there's a lot they don't know about exactly how this works.

I have read that reptable Catholic prolife ethicists are divided over this one: can you remove the baby and placenta from the womb at 12, 13, 14 weeks or not?

I have my own opinion, but I'd like to hear yours.

Acute pulmonary hypertension is a new one on me. I’ll take it that the situation is as you describe.

One question is whether the theory that the placenta causes it has good grounds for support, or whether it’s just a theory, as yet uncertain. There would be less reason to do it if it is a far out theory. It “might” be caused by the placenta? What are the grounds for thinking—or speculating—this? And what is the cause—an allergic reaction to the placenta? But let’s say that the chances are 50-50.

In that case, it seems to me that the decision what to do is up to the mother. The doctor should acquaint her with all the medical facts and odds. Then, as with the case of whether or not to have chemotherapy, it would be up to the mother. This strikes me as an especially hard decision, if as you say the cause of this condition is uncertain.

It doesn’t strike me as relevant whether the placenta consists of the mother’s or the baby’s tissue. Clearly it is needed for the baby’s survival, whereas it is not a vital organ for the mother.

Certainly this is a hard one. I would be inclined to say that the placenta should not be removed, since it is uncertain whether or not it is the problem—but I think the decision probably is up to the mother in a case like this. A hard one.

I have a friend who just had an abortion three days ago. She had an ectopic pregnancy and it would have killed her. I mean really. She found out she was pregnant in the E.R. while they were trying to find out why she was bleeding internally.

Your friend did NOT have an "abortion". She had to have surgery to remove the developing baby from her fallopian tube which, if allowed to continue, would have killed both her and the baby. Sadly, because of the short gestation and the inability to protect the baby's life in ANY other way, the child died. She literally had no choice. That is why people CAN be staunchly against all elective abortions - because they are the willful killing of the unborn, developing baby and are not done to save the life of the mother. Life of the mother exceptions are just that - exceptions AND rare. Please let your friend know how sorry you are for her loss and console her that she did not kill her baby. Hopefully, she will be able to have children in the future. She should not be made to feel guilty over this and your other friend should be supportive and help your friend to recover and heal from her loss.

Dear Mrs. Don-o,

I'm not a Catholic moral theologian or a physician. So if I were to hazard an opinion, I'd really be in a deeper part of the pool than where I should be.

If I were to offer a WAG, it would focus on: is there a way to resolve or ameliorate the physical illness where the treatment does not consist of killing the baby? If a treatment of the woman's body cures or manages the illness, and happens to lead to the death of the child, that would be, in my guess, licit. But if the treatment of the woman happens to be the direct, intentional killing of the child, then that wouldn't be licit.

In other words, the woman may not be licitly treated through the action of killing the child.

Whether placentas are part of the woman's body or part of the child's body, or both is way beyond my knowledge. Whether the only cure here is to directly remove the placenta is also way beyond my knowledge. Whether there is some way to understand the actions of the treating physician so that one does not violate the absolute moral precept that one may not directly, intentionally kill and innocent human being to benefit another human being is beyond my ability to understand the moral issues tied up in this particular set of circumstances that you describe.

I do remember once reading a dubium from the latter half of the 19th century where the question was asked whether one could licitly intentionally induce an early labor and birth well before any realistic point of viability, even knowing that the birth would result in the death of the child, for the purposes of saving the mother's life. The answer from the Church was in the negative. An induced early labor and birth that would not have otherwise occurred, at a point in pregnancy where it was known that the child just could not survive, could not be a treatment for the woman, as it would have been through the direct, intentional killing of the child that the woman's life was saved, rather than as an unfortunate byproduct of a treatment of the woman's body.

This seems to me the closest similar circumstances of which I've heard an answer expressed by the Church.

sitetest

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