This is a really great image, would you be able to email me some information about the copyright? I work for an international women’s rights organization and we are preparing a report on the strategies that fundamentalist actors and women’s rights activist are using to further their respective causes. Please contact me at your earliest convenience.

Best,
Bailey

In cases such as ectopic pregnancies Catholic theology doesn’t automatically open doors to indirect abortion. There are specific ways and conditions that must be applied.

In extreme cases such as these Catholic moral theology relies on the double affect theory and its 4 conditions. Daphne says that this is a dubious theory. We might alternatively say that its not the theory that is dubious but rather the subject it deals with brings moral theology in a difficult position. The theory might be regarded as a first-class tool that helps us get out of the tangle.

With such cases it is clear that without any guiding principles moral theology could not proceed. 800 years ago an Italian Dominican monk by the name of Thomas Acqiunas came to the rescue providing us with this theory. What does this poor monk had to say? Which conditions had to be applied? Here they come

1. The act itself must be morally good or at least indifferent.

Comment. This means that we cannot kill the foetus to get rid of the ectopic pregnancy. Rather we have to remove the fallopian tubes. This condition also implies something else. If in a hypothetical situation the foetus is found growing in a vital organ (fallopian tubes apparently are not) then we cannot just simply flush the foetus away to save the mother since the act itself is morally bad. (The vital organ of course cannot be removed). In that case following the theory of double effect doctors are helpless and cannot save the mother in anyway.

2. The agent may not positively will the bad effect but may merely permit it. If he could attain the good effect without the bad effect, he should do so.

Comment. A sensible condition. None of us will any bad effect I suppose.

3. The good effect must be brought about directly from the action.

Comment. This means that one cannot do a morally good action that as its consequence has the bad effect come before the good effect. So let us create another hypothetical case. Let us say the the fallopian tube is still in a good shape albeit with a foetus inside. We cannot remove the fallopian tube although this is a morally neutral action. Why? Because this brings about a bad effect (the of the foetus) which in turn brings about a good affect. (the fallopian tube stays in a healthy condition). The order of causality has the bad effect before the good one.

4. The good effect must be sufficiently desirable to compensate for the bad effect.

Comment. If the doctors judge that the probability of the mother surviving the operation is still very low then the whole thing becomes illicit. If on the other hand the doctors judge that the pregnancy has a high probability of coming to fruition without any loss of life then any intervention is again illicit.

Each of the above conditions has a veto. They can stop the whole thing and declare it illicit.

The last condition replies directly to this case of having an ectopic pregnancy coming to fruition. If in the future this case becomes more and more treatable or at least manageable then condition 4 starts to have more and more say in the whole matter.

This theory applies not just to abortion but to all similar dilemmas. I suggest something. Try it out on different scenarios where the principal actors are not a mother and a foetus but 2 actors which you dearly love. Put them in a difficult situation where survival can potentially be mutually exclusive and test away the above theory. Would you be happy with the results?

If I’m not mistaken there are rare occurances of live births after ectopic pregnancies.

Google to the rescue:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1050942/Miracle-baby-Billy-grew-outside-mothers-womb.html

I’m not sure if this is a once only occurence, but the prospect of being able to actually save more ectopic pregancies in the future changes a lot for you it seems.

Before this back in 1974 the Vatican made another pronouncement. I am quoting from a document entitled “DECLARATION ON PROCURED ABORTION” issued by the CDF. Looking at this it says the following

“…if the reasons given to justify an abortion were always manifestly evil and valueless the problem would not be so dramatic. The gravity of the problem comes from the fact that in certain cases…by denying abortion one endangers important values to which it is normal to attach great value, and which may sometimes even seem to have priority… It may be a serious question of health, sometimes of life or , for the mother… We proclaim only that none of these reasons can ever objectively confer the right to dispose of another’s life, even when that life is only beginning”

Daphne in her article stated that “After all, we don’t kill children for their organs when their mother’s life depends on an organ transplant that she can’t get elsewhere, do we?”

The example is not good. In ectopic pregnancies the baby is going to die anyway without any chance of survival unlike in the above example.

[Daphne – We are all, without exception, ‘going to die anyway.’]

In simple words if the baby can outlive the mother at the expense of her life then terminating pregnancy by whatever means is treated by the Church as an abortion. Both mother and baby have the same dignity. The case of Gianna Beretta Molla is a perfect example of this.

In more extreme cases such as ectopic pregnancies where whatever one does the baby is still going to die the mother takes an obvious priority. Even in cases like this there are specific ways of going about it. It is not a matter of an aggressor or someone with bad intent. Evangelium Vitae is clear about this. “Unborn babies are beings.”

There is quite a clear and abrupt line demarcating the two cases.

[Daphne – I have a problem with people who say ‘thanks God’. Take a note: it’s either ‘thanks, God’ or ‘thank God’, but never ‘thanks God’. Now scoot off and hold some packets of contraceptive pills hostage, or whatever it is you do for fun.]

What’s the current fashion in Trinidad then?

I’ll get me coat.

The link for the American Civil Liberties Union is http://www.aclu.org. This website is representative of the liberal point of view on social issues.

For a Catholic perspective you could refer to ncronline.org which is the website for the National Catholic Reporter – a fairly liberal Catholic point of view. You yourself may enjoy reading Sister Joan Chittister’s articles called from Where I Stand. A liberal Benedictine theologian who can lash the boys at the Vatican into place any day of the week. You would not have met anything quite like her at the Sacred Heart.

[Daphne – I was at St Dorothy’s Convent. Thank you for the links.]

[Daphne – Those are the methods Gift of Life have used from the beginning. They’re very Americanised, which is one of the reasons they inspired such a strong backlash. Paul Vincenti even speaks ‘American’ when he’s hectoring us about this issue. Are there any links you can post here?]