Author Topic: Is abortion ok if its ment to save mothers life? (Read 2989 times)

Ladislaus · « **Reply #15 on:** August 06, 2016, 06:54:03 PM »

If there's one thing that distinguishes Catholic moral theology from all others, it's this very simple principle. ONE IS NEVER ALLOWED TO DO EVIL. PERIOD. There's no such thing as doing an evil to prevent a greater evil or doing an evil to accomplish a greater good. One can never directly will evil.

Now, in the case of abortion, one can NEVER directly will to take the life of a child "IN ORDER TO" save the life of the mother. One can perform a procedure to save the life of the mother ... even if it happens to result in the death of the child. But even that has to be done very carefully and only in certain circuмstances. There are even very specific things one can and one cannot do in the procedure itself ... there can never be a direct attack upon the unborn child. So, for instance, you can't say, "I'm going to kill the baby with saline so that it will die." ... in order to achieve the effect. You can remove the baby. You can do something that might also happen to cut off the blood supply to the baby, etc. But there can be no direct attack upon the life of the baby.

All this hand-wringing too on television dramas about "I must murder one person so as to save the lives of 100." Nope. You can NEVER do that. Then the 100 must die, and you leave it up to God. No moral anguish and cold Protestant calculus about whose life is worth more than another's.

St Ignatius · « **Reply #16 on:** August 06, 2016, 07:21:13 PM »

Quote from: Ladislaus

One can perform a procedure to save the life of the mother ... even if it happens to result in the death of the child. But even that has to be done very carefully and only in certain circuмstances. There are even very specific things one can and one cannot do in the procedure itself ... there can never be a direct attack upon the unborn child.

You are referring to the principal of "double effect," correct?

Ladislaus · « **Reply #17 on:** August 06, 2016, 07:47:17 PM »

Quote from: St Ignatius

Quote from: Ladislaus
One can perform a procedure to save the life of the mother ... even if it happens to result in the death of the child. But even that has to be done very carefully and only in certain circuмstances. There are even very specific things one can and one cannot do in the procedure itself ... there can never be a direct attack upon the unborn child.

You are referring to the principal of "double effect," correct?

Yes.

Matthew · « **Reply #18 on:** August 06, 2016, 11:04:40 PM »

Quote from: Ladislaus

All this hand-wringing too on television dramas about "I must murder one person so as to save the lives of 100." Nope. You can NEVER do that. Then the 100 must die, and you leave it up to God. No moral anguish and cold Protestant calculus about whose life is worth more than another's.

Good point.

Notice that in such cases, the protagonist feels guilty about it, but he tries to salve his conscience by saying, "But at least I saved 100".

But the fact of the matter is, you'd feel no pangs of conscience if you DIDN'T kill that one man. Even if 100 people were murdered as a result, it's not like their blood is on your hands! The blood is on the bad guys' hands. It's simple, really. You had nothing to do with the murder of those 100 people, and you can't trust the bad guy when he says, "But -- pinky swear -- I wouldn't have killed them if you had killed that one man. So YOU PRACTICALLY KILLED THEM! Bwahahaha!"

No, it doesn't work that way. If you don't kill someone, your conscience is clean from murder.

Basically, murder is out of the question. People seem to have no problem considering murdering someone in cold blood to be out of the question for a Buddhist monk or a 70 year old bingo-playing grandmother -- why not everyone else? Murder should be off the table for *any* good person, let alone any Catholic.

MaterDominici · « **Reply #19 on:** August 07, 2016, 12:46:54 AM »

Quote from: Mark 79

Precisely so.

Matthew is correct that abortion per se is never justifiable, but there are circuмstances in which life saving procedures are justifiable even if the baby would die.

These "life saving procedures" most commonly take the form of delivering the baby prematurely. While it's not ideal for the baby, this still leaves open the possibility of the baby's survival with medical assistance outside the womb. Many of them do survive with no long-term complications.

A former abortionist explains this in the 2nd video here:
http://abortionprocedures.com/questions/