On February 8th I said the following on Facebook:
Many Catholics use birth control. I suspect that even though doctrine commands that a woman should die rather than terminate her ectopic pregnancy, most Catholic doctors and most Catholic women choose to terminate the pregnancy. Does anyone know a Tebow like testimony where a woman chose to die from her ectopic pregnancy?
Many Catholics use birth control. I suspect that even though doctrine commands that a woman should die rather than terminate her ectopic pregnancy, most Catholic doctors and most Catholic women choose to terminate the pregnancy. Does anyone know a Tebow like testimony where a woman chose to die from her ectopic pregnancy?
I misunderstood the following section of the Catholic Encyclopedia.
After these and other similar decisions had been given, some moralists thought they saw reasons to doubt whether an exception might not be allowed in the case of ectopic gestations. Therefore the question was submitted: "Is it ever allowed to extract from the body of the mother ectopic embryos still immature, before the sixth month after conception is completed?" The answer given, 20 March, 1902, was: "No; according to thedecree of 4 May, 1898; according to which, as far as possible, earnest and opportune provision is to be made to safeguard the lifeof the child and of the mother. As to the time, let the questioner remember that no acceleration of birth is licit unless it be done at a time, and in ways in which, according to the usual course of things, the life of the mother and the child be provided for". Ethics, then, and the Church agree in teaching that no action is lawful which directly destroys fetal life. It is also clear that extracting the living fetus before it is viable, is destroying its life as directly as it would be killing a grown man directly to plunge him into a medium in which he cannot live, and hold him there till he expires.
However, if medical treatment or surgical operation, necessary to save a mother's life, is applied to her organism (though the child's death would, or at least might, follow as a regretted but unavoidable consequence), it should not be maintained that the fetal life is thereby directly attacked. Moralists agree that we are not always prohibited from doing what is lawful in itself, though evilconsequences may follow which we do not desire. The good effects of our acts are then directly intended, and the regretted evilconsequences are reluctantly permitted to follow because we cannot avoid them. The evil thus permitted is said to be indirectly intended[1]
After these and other similar decisions had been given, some moralists thought they saw reasons to doubt whether an exception might not be allowed in the case of ectopic gestations. Therefore the question was submitted: "Is it ever allowed to extract from the body of the mother ectopic embryos still immature, before the sixth month after conception is completed?" The answer given, 20 March, 1902, was: "No; according to thedecree of 4 May, 1898; according to which, as far as possible, earnest and opportune provision is to be made to safeguard the lifeof the child and of the mother. As to the time, let the questioner remember that no acceleration of birth is licit unless it be done at a time, and in ways in which, according to the usual course of things, the life of the mother and the child be provided for". Ethics, then, and the Church agree in teaching that no action is lawful which directly destroys fetal life. It is also clear that extracting the living fetus before it is viable, is destroying its life as directly as it would be killing a grown man directly to plunge him into a medium in which he cannot live, and hold him there till he expires.
However, if medical treatment or surgical operation, necessary to save a mother's life, is applied to her organism (though the child's death would, or at least might, follow as a regretted but unavoidable consequence), it should not be maintained that the fetal life is thereby directly attacked. Moralists agree that we are not always prohibited from doing what is lawful in itself, though evilconsequences may follow which we do not desire. The good effects of our acts are then directly intended, and the regretted evilconsequences are reluctantly permitted to follow because we cannot avoid them. The evil thus permitted is said to be indirectly intended[1]
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