Quote:
Originally Posted by AOII Angel
Okay....now I understand what you're trying to say! I was completely on a different page than you! 
How is "we're going to save the mother's life/our goal is not to terminate a pregnancy" when performing an abortion for an ectopic pregnancy and different than "we're going to save the mother's life/our goal is not to terminate a pregnancy" when performing an abortion for a patient dying from right heart failure? That's where I get lost in all this. |
I don't know that it is different -- it's not to me. I think we were just on two different pages.
That said, if I understand the principle of double effect correctly, the problem comparing the ectopic pregnancy and removing the fallopian rubes (I understand there are different/better medical procedures) with an abortion for the patent dying from heart failure is that,
applying that principle, the method used cannot itself be immoral (which the Catholic Church would consider the abortion to be). Removal of the fallopian tubes would, standing alone, be considered morally neutral. Under that principle, the means has to be, at worst, morally neutral, the intent has to be morally good, and that moral good must outweight the unintended, even if inevitable, morally bad consequence.
When you, with all your medical mojo
, put forward the possibility of dealing with ectopic pregnancy by inducing an abortion rather than by removing the fallopian tubes, you -- if I understand the principle of double effect accurately -- put forward the possibility of replacing an acceptable way of dealing with the pregnancy with an unacceptable way. So while the inducing of an abortion might be preferable from a medical standpoint, it would not be preferable (or permissible) from an ethical/moral standpoint framed using the principle of double effect.
To be honest, I think probably it is a principle that was first articulated to help in what would otherwise be hard cases like this. I'm just not sure the philosophy underlying the principle of double effect has kept up (or adjusted) to take into account medical advances.