consistency?
Feb. 9th, 2004 12:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioThe second head had brain activity. (I understood it to be activity independent of the other brain.) The additional head had eyes, a mouth, and other features that moved and apparently reacted to environment. If the head remained it was certainly going to become a serious hardship for the child, both physically and mentally. It was not clear to me that its presence was directly life-threatening.
So, the doctors removed an entity that was developed enough to have a working brain and body parts, which was infringing on a host entity through no fault of its own, to preserve the health but not necessarily the life of said host.
Now, I have absolutely no problem with that decision. But I wonder how those who are anti-abortion see it. I did not hear of any protests outside the hospital, and I would be somewhat surprised if a significant number of anti-abortion folks actually objected to this surgery. You'd have to be pretty hard-hearted to object to this, I think.
But I wonder about the reasoning. What are the salient differences between this case and abortion that make the former acceptable and the latter not? Is it just that a suffering child tugs on the heart-strings more than a suffering adult? Or is there a real difference? The analogous abortion case would seem to be an unintended, risky pregnancy resulting in a fetus with a serious not-immediately-fatal defect, like Down's. While many anti-abortion people make exceptions for cases like that, many others do not. They're the ones I'm curious about.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-10 07:51 am (UTC)And... it's not so much that the church is opposed to the idea of .... fertility being hampered. The church also opposes people doing things like in vitro fertilization. It has to do with an idea of 'God is the creator of human life, humans shouldn't muck about with that'. Any fertility treatments that involve conception outside of the mother's body are... not approved of by the Catholic Church.
Fr Lee (who was the one involved in the conversation where this came up) seemed to feel that an ectopic pregnancy was the only situation he'd ever heard of where it was impossible for the child to survive _and_ the mother's life was at risk. (He felt that, say, in coma situations the danger to the mother was being highly overrated)
The impression I have gotten from that and other teachings is that.... if two persons each had a chance to survive a situation, it would be morally wrong to kill one to better the chance for the other. Only when it is _certain_ that there is _no_ _way_ that being A would survive would it be morally acceptable to kill that being pre-emptively in order to increase the chance for being B's survival. (And since it's so hard to be _certain_ about such things, one would be treading on morally murky ground.)
Re:
Date: 2004-02-11 07:30 am (UTC)I believe the bit about the 'you have to take the tube and not detach the fetus' has something to do with not wanting to interfere with .... a fetus being attached where it... attached itself to.
I find this interesting because we have a case of an abnormal situation that cannot possibly lead to either party surviving, and even then the church is concerned about not interfering in the events that set that in motion. This is clearly something about fetii in particular, as the church doesn't object to, say, removing cancerous tumors that are equally "natural". And it's not about preserving the life of the fetus, because (1) it's going to die and (2) it would have died anyway. Removing it from the tube, rather than the entire tube from the mother, doesn't strike me as interfering in God's creation of life in that case. Obviously others see it differently. :-)
Any fertility treatments that involve conception outside of the mother's body are... not approved of by the Catholic Church.
I didn't know that. Thanks.
My comment about reducing the mother's fertility is more about interfering with the plumbing that God put there so that people could go forth and multiply. My impression is that the Catholic church takes that obligation pretty seriously, so it struck me as odd that they would opt for interfering in that when doing so doesn't help the fetus. I guess it ties into the same question as above -- there must be some "benefit" to the fetus to doing it this way that I'm just not seeing.
The impression I have gotten from that and other teachings is that.... if two persons each had a chance to survive a situation, it would be morally wrong to kill one to better the chance for the other.
That matches my impression of Catholic (and maybe Christian in general) teachings. And the church defines a fetus as a person, hence the objection to abortion.
Interfaith anthropology ahead:
In Judaism, the fetus is not a person. (You probably figured that out. :-) ) It does not have rights that supersede those of the mother, and if I understand correctly, in a case where a pregnancy threatens the life of the mother abortion is halachically required, because we do not stand idly by the blood of our neighbor. In fact, it would be required in that case even if the fetus were a person, because it would in that case be viewed as a rodef (pursuer). The more general principle is that if someone is about to kill soemone else, you not only can but must interfere, even if that means killing him. Intent of the parties doesn't affect that, so the fact that the fetus doesn't mean to kill the mother is irrelevant. (Aside: the commandment is not "thou shalt not kill", else war and capital punishment would never be permitted either. "Tirtzach" is more like "murder".)
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Date: 2004-02-11 05:04 pm (UTC)Contrary to how some may interpret certain.... suggestions.... decisions.... preferences..... the church does not currently _actually_ promote an _obligation_ to 'go forth and multiply'.
It just has to do with that idea that.... sex is for family building in the emotional side and for the creating of people in the biological side (and that the two have to go together). Many people seem pretty attached to the idea of frequent (or at least, not infrequent) sex.
So... the obligation is not so much to.... have babies.... as.... not have sex that can't lead to having babies. (ok, as a clarifying modifier there's the whole Natural Family Planning thing that I _could_ go into... but I will not here unless requested.... the previous covers in general most of the relevant territory) Kind of a fine line there for many people.
sex and reproduction
Date: 2004-02-12 06:48 am (UTC)Good point.
I assume the ban is on active barriers to fertilization (e.g. most birth control), and not that people who are incapable of having kids are forbidden to have sex anyway. There is life after menopause, after all. :-)
More interfaith anthropology: In Catholicism, birth control is forbidden but choosing to have sex during times of the month when the woman is not fertile is permitted. In Judaism, birth control is permitted (sex for pleasure is fine -- commanded, even) but sex during the infertile part of the month is forbidden. The origins of the practices are probably completely unrelated, but the juxtaposition struck me as interesting.
Re: sex and reproduction
Date: 2004-02-12 08:10 am (UTC)Exactly :)
Re: sex and reproduction
Date: 2004-02-13 06:38 pm (UTC)I hadn't known that..
Is there a particular time period when that teaching first recognizably developed?
Re: sex and reproduction
Date: 2004-02-14 08:25 pm (UTC)Re: sex and reproduction
Date: 2004-02-15 06:13 am (UTC)What's the relationship between the Talmud and what Christians call the 'Old Testament'?
Re: sex and reproduction
Date: 2004-02-15 08:26 am (UTC)The talmud compiles the "oral law" (yes, it eventually got written down -- fear of loss during Roman persecutions and the like). The traditional view is that the oral law was given at Sinai along with the written law, and passed unfailingly in a direct line until it was written down. (Some of us quibble with that. :-) )
The talmud consists of two major parts. The mishna was the original attempt to write down the oral law; it was written down sometime around 200 CE by Rabbi Yehuda ha-Nasi. The gemara came later (completed around 500 CE, I think), and further expands on the points in the mishna, sometimes bringing in other oral teachings not included in the mishna. Almost every statement in the mishna and gemara is of the form "Rabbi So-and-So taught...", where Rabbi So-and-So is an ancient sage.
The talmud has been further augmented through the centuries by later scholars, so you can't just look something up in the talmud to get the current law. (And anyway, there's no index. This is an area where computers really help...) It's the foundation, though, and at about 5000 pages of dense Hebrew (and Aramaic), there's a lot there.
talmud
Date: 2004-02-15 10:53 am (UTC)Catholicism has stuff like that.... (Something that many Christian denominations take issue with)
I think the current average feeling in the Catholic church is that "knowing that stuff is really nice if someone wants to go to the effort but otherwise just listen to your priest who's supposed to know that stuff and he'll steer you the right way"
But writings of the Church Fathers, Encyclicals... those are all that same sort of idea...
Re:
Date: 2004-03-02 06:10 am (UTC)http://www.americancatholic.org/Newsletters/CU/ac0892.asp
the relevant part of the article
Regarding other birth control methods, the Catholic Church teaches that "a couple may never, by direct means (i.e., contraceptives), suppress the procreative possibility of sexual intercourse" (Human Sexuality, 47). It follows that direct sterilization surgeries are also prohibited, except in those instances when one is directly removing a diseased or cancerous reproductive organ, with the resultant sterilization being indirect and unintentional.
I can tell that this is somehow related to what Fr Lee expressed although I wouldn't be able to say exactly what else might have got him from there to what he said.