| From the perspective of the Right to Life movement, I think this is the model story:
A unmarried girl has sex out of wedlock for the sheer physical thrill it brings her. She conceives and , not wanting to face up to the consequences of her irresponsible actions, she has an abortion, taking the life of an innocent fetus just to avoid the inconvenience of being responsible for her child. [ See the response to the FDA approval for the "Morning After Pill" for a representative sampling.
Perhaps a more charitable "model story" would read like this:
A married woman faces a difficult pregnancy. If she carries to term, she risk her life , but her child may live. If she does not carry to term, the unborn child will surely die. She should NOT intervene in the pregnancy under these conditions, let nature (God) decide the outcome. It is the only moral thing to do.
From the Pro Choice camp, this might be their model story:
A women, married, mother of 3 is now pregnant with her fourth child. She is told by her doctors that she has an ectopic pregnancy, that is a fertilized egg has implanted itself outside the uterus. She is told further that
ectopic pregnancy
As the fetus grows, it will eventually burst the organ that contains it. This can cause severe bleeding and endanger [your] life.
A more equitable/charitable telling, based on the statistics, might sound something like this:
A twenty-two year old women discovers that she is pregnant, her contraceptive failed her. She knows she is not ready financially to support a child and herself. Additionally, the father of the child is not someone she believes will be her life partner , even if he were in a position to help support a child. She wants to wait until she can provide for children before she starts her family.
See here for some of the basis for this model. You judge how representative or fair the story is.
Here is the real account, from a story in today's paper out of Arizona:
Ariz. hospital loses Catholic status over surgery
The woman who underwent the procedure is in her 20s and had a history of abnormally high blood pressure when she learned of her pregnancy. After she was admitted to the hospital with worsening symptoms, doctors determined her risk of death was nearly 100 percent...
You are welcome and encouraged to consult the story yourself and to correct/criticize my presentation of it.
Here is the quiz. Which of the model stories does this account seems closest to? Does it fit exactly? Before you answer consider this additional information from the story:
Ariz. hospital loses Catholic status over surgery
"In the decision to abort, the equal dignity of mother and her baby were not both upheld," Olmsted said at a news conference announcing the decision. "The mother had a disease that needed to be treated. But instead of treating the disease, St. Joseph's medical staff and ethics committee decided that the healthy, 11-week-old baby should be directly killed."
Does this change our choice?
How about this?
Ariz. hospital loses Catholic status over surgery
"If we are presented with a situation in which a pregnancy threatens a woman's life, our first priority is to save both patients. If that is not possible, we will always save the life we can save, and that is what we did in this case," Hunt said. "Morally, ethically, and legally, we simply cannot stand by and let someone die whose life we might be able to save."
It seems that the Bishop is arguing there was a treatment for the women's disease that did not directly involve an abortion. The hospital is saying the treatment was the abortion, I think. What about you?
Since this is such a complex case, how about doing nothing, just refusing to "play God" . Take NO pro-active steps to influence the outcome one way or the other! This would mean "first doing no harm" as the medical oath requires. Is "not choosing" a way of avoiding the morally ambiguous consequences of this situation? Is not choosing when the consequences of such action are pretty clear, morally permissible?
The Bishop would say yes, I think. What do you say?
What public policy follows from your choices? We could outlaw all abortions. We could outlaw all abortions except for rape and incest, maybe even to save the life of the mother. Alternatively, we could just make abortions totally the decision of the mother (hopefully with the help of the father, her doctors and her clergyman or woman). Again we could set up a period (the end of the first trimester ,maybe)during which it is the woman's choice only, after that it is illegal with the exceptions of rape and incest, maybe even to save the life of the mother.
As a final challenge, consider these circumstances. You discover that the government wishes to kill a certain child. You warn the child's parents, but no one else. You have strong reason to believe that the government is so ruthless it may kill all babies born in a certain area over the last year just to be sure it kills the one it seeks, since it does not know the target child's whereabouts. Is your decision to warn the target child's parents moral? Is your inaction in warning others morally permissible? immoral? Why?
The only point I would draw from this exercise is this: moral choices in the real world seldom fit the model cases proposed by any side. It would serve us well to remember that in the debate over public policy and NOT just about abortion.
Merry X-mas to you and yours, to us all , more peace and compassion in the new year.... |
