Oops, what I meant by "this case" was the part that involved the church authorities, obviously the original rape is far and away the worst thing. Having since then found out that the rapist didn't get excommunicated, something is truly wonky in the system of priorities here. (Thankfully he has been arrested at least.) That's well out of horrifying and into plain odd. I'm guessing the causes are a) religions that are thousands of years old tend to tie themselves in knots when trying to update rules that were originally from a very specific social context (this is what causes most of the oddities in Orthodox Judaism), and b) the Catholic Church has somehow ended up putting a disproportionate focus on abortion.
I'm looking it up, and to my surprise it does seem that saving the mother's life isn't considered a valid reason for exception in Catholicism. However, abortion is permissible in cases where the pregnancy could not survive anyway and the mother's life is at risk, for instance in cases of ectopic pregnancy or uterine cancer, although they don't like calling it abortion, they're talking about hysterectomies and so on instead. I'm trying to find out more about this, since it may be relevant in this case (there's too much on this page for me to skim, I have crappy eyes I'm afraid, but I think someone said that both the child's life and the unborn twins' lives were at risk if the pregnancy continued), but I've found this (http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/592962.html):
There are two questions at issue here. One is medical (Is there ever need for an abortion to save the mother's life?) and the other is moral (Would an abortion in that case be justified?) The answer to both questions is no. There is no medical situation whose only solution is a direct abortion, as many doctors have testified.
Very blinkered thinking there. My cousin is currently going through assisted reproduction, and one reason why she's doing this is because a pregnancy would literally kill her (she has Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy and is very severely disabled. I don't even dare ask what the Catholic church would say about her therefore having to use contraception, they'd probably tell her she shouldn't be allowed to marry). On further googling, a lot of people seem to be very anxious to deny that the situation where the mother's life would be at risk is even possible. Then there are the ones who grudgingly admit that it could happen, but say that life-threatening complications in pregnancy always occur so late that you could just whisk the babies out and into an incubator. No one seems to be addressing the simple point that if the mother dies during pregnancy, the foetus is most likely to die as well.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2009-03-10 04:45 pm (UTC)I'm looking it up, and to my surprise it does seem that saving the mother's life isn't considered a valid reason for exception in Catholicism. However, abortion is permissible in cases where the pregnancy could not survive anyway and the mother's life is at risk, for instance in cases of ectopic pregnancy or uterine cancer, although they don't like calling it abortion, they're talking about hysterectomies and so on instead. I'm trying to find out more about this, since it may be relevant in this case (there's too much on this page for me to skim, I have crappy eyes I'm afraid, but I think someone said that both the child's life and the unborn twins' lives were at risk if the pregnancy continued), but I've found this (http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/592962.html):
There are two questions at issue here. One is medical (Is there ever need for an abortion to save the mother's life?) and the other is moral (Would an abortion in that case be justified?) The answer to both questions is no. There is no medical situation whose only
solution is a direct abortion, as many doctors have testified.
Very blinkered thinking there. My cousin is currently going through assisted reproduction, and one reason why she's doing this is because a pregnancy would literally kill her (she has Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy and is very severely disabled. I don't even dare ask what the Catholic church would say about her therefore having to use contraception, they'd probably tell her she shouldn't be allowed to marry). On further googling, a lot of people seem to be very anxious to deny that the situation where the mother's life would be at risk is even possible. Then there are the ones who grudgingly admit that it could happen, but say that life-threatening complications in pregnancy always occur so late that you could just whisk the babies out and into an incubator. No one seems to be addressing the simple point that if the mother dies during pregnancy, the foetus is most likely to die as well.