AmericanPapist Comments
"Doctors tried to break their bond in the womb, but they just proved it couldn't be broken."
Said the woman who authorized the attempted murder.
Now that this is public news, can you imagine trying to explain it to the boy they tried to abort, later on in life? "Well, son, see, we tried to kill you to let your brother live..." How sad.
i think it goes to show how contradictory medical practice has become when we can discuss "heroic" examples of life finding a way and ... doctors were the ones trying to extinguish it.
"...his mother Rebecca Jones had to make a heartbreaking decision."
No, she didn't HAVE TO make a heartbreaking decision.
I can just see both of them entering the priesthood in twenty years or so. "You thought it was best to send us back to Heaven, Mom. Well, we are still going back to God, just the long way around."
Well, to be fair the article says that the doctors told the mother that that Gabriel's certain impending death could kill Ieuan. So it seems she thought she had no choice but to hasten Gabriel's death to save Ieuan's. (The stupidity of "ending Gabriel's suffering sooner rather than later" or "letting [groan-n-n] him die in the womb beside his brother" I won't even respect with a comment.) But aborting him to save Ieuan's life? Is this analogous to killing an unborn baby to save the mother's life? It seems so, but I wonder if that rationale for abortion is moral. Should we say that God will decide? I don't know. But I am beginning to think maybe so...
No John, the principle of double effect does not allow evil to be the chosen means to achieve a good result. In this case, the good result of saving the stronger twin's life is achieved by the evil means of killing the weaker twin. Neither is the death of the weaker twin's life besides the intention of the medical procedure: severing the umbilical cord or cutting the placento both have the direct intention of removing the weaker twin's source of nutrition. Just as it is unethical to remove nutrition and hydration from an elderly individual, it is also immoral to deprive an infant of its natural maternal sustenance. The moral description and evaluation is very clear: it can't be ethically chosen by the doctor or the mother.
Exactly Thomas! The Church is unequivocally clear: not even saving the mother's life is reason to directly attack the baby's existence. I am sorry, I am being devil's advocate to prove, perhaps poorly, a point. If we cannot let a baby's life be stopped by direct means to save a mother's life, how then can we risk (without complete assurances to the contrary) the baby's life merely to save the mother from nine months of pregnancy, even perhaps a distressing pregnancy due to rape? Plan B is direct means: to introduce a motherlode of drugs to the uterine environment with the express target being the process by which a human comes into being and to believe that that cocktail will do no collateral damage, without certain proof of that belief or hope, is I think taking direct means that could end in taking the baby's life. Forgive me if I have taken liberty to make my point, but when I see the risks of Plan B compared to possible fatal side effects of legitimate medical treatments or to driving a car, I need to find a way to differentiate the difference. There are many critical steps from medical treatment and driving a car to possible fatality, there is only one step from Plan B to possible conceptus death.
Not legitimate to kill one baby to save the brother's life either, of course! Writing too fast.
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