Texas Style right to life

[Pure]

Hi Shang,

Originally Posted by Pure
//on the other hand some are stricter than my list, and will not permit many abortions when the pregnancy would seriously put the mom at risk, or even cause her--as an incidental result-- to die (Catholic position). //



Shang: This is not the stance of the Catholic church. They permit self-defense when the mother's life is in danger.

This is incorrect, and 'self defense' is not an accepted official Catholic ground.
Suggest you research the doctrine of double effect, which is official, and *requires* --if it comes to that--the saving of the newborn while allowing the mother to die. The fetus may not intentionally be killed. So the ONLY allowable official 'ground' is, for instance, if the mother has uterine cancer, and the uterus must be removed along with the tumor, to save her life [that being the primary intention], and that uterus just happens to have a small fetus in it.

Of course, where there are two adults, and A attacks B with murderous intent, and B kills A defending himself, that is without moral blame for B; but it is a critically different situation. A is not innocent, as the fetus is.

----
http://www.trosch.org/phi/dbl-efft.htm

link from the Sacred Heart Major Seminary

http://www.aodonline.org/SHMS/Faculty+5819/Janet+Smith+9260/Janet+Smith+-+Useful+Websites.htm


Principle Of

DOUBLE EFFECT


A rule of conduct frequently used in moral theology to determine when a person may lawfully perform an action from which two effects will follow, one bad, and the other good.

Conditions. Theologians commonly teach that four conditions must be verified in order that a person may legitimately perform such an act.

The act itself must be morally good or at least indifferent.
The agent may not positively will the bad effect but may merely permit it. If he could attain the good effect without the bad effect, he should do so. The bad effect is sometimes said to be indirectly voluntary.
The good effect must flow from the action at least as immediately (in the order of causality, though not necessarily in the order of time) as the bad effect. In other words, the good effect must be produced directly by the action, not by the bad effect. Otherwise, the agent would be using a bad means to a good end, which is never allowed.
The good effect must be sufficiently desirable to compensate for the allowing of the bad effect. In forming this decision many factors must be weighed and compared, with care and prudence proportionate to the importance of the case. Thus, an effect that benefits or harms society generally has more weight than one that affects only an individual; an effect sure to occur deserves greater consideration than one that is only probable; an effect of a moral nature has greater importance than one that deals only with material things.

Of these four conditions the first two are general rules of morality. A person is never allowed to perform a morally bad action. Nor may one ever positively will an evil effect of an action, even though the act would otherwise be lawful. Thus, a censor of books, who is allowed to read obscene literature, may not take deliberate pleasure in the evil thoughts arising in consequence, though he necessarily permits them to enter his mind. The third and fourth conditions enumerated above pertain specifically to the principle of the double effect.

Typical Situations. Situations calling for the application of this principle occur frequently in connection with pregnancy. Thus, a pregnant woman bearing a nonviable fetus is found to have a cancerous womb that will cause her death if it is not excised as soon as possible. The operation of hysterectomy is morally lawful, for this operation is permissible in itself as a normal means of saving the woman's life. She does not positively will the death of her child, but permits it as an unavoidable evil. Both the benefit to her health and the death of the child follow from the surgery with equal directness or immediacy in the order of causality, though the death of the child is prior in the order of time. The woman's chance of restoration to health (the good effect) is sufficiently desirable to compensate for the death of the fetus (the bad effect), which would probably not survive even if the operation were not performed.

However, if the woman is suffering from kidney disease, heart trouble, or tuberculosis, which would be easier to care for if she were relieved of the pregnancy, it would be immoral to perform an abortion. For in such a case the third condition for the proper use of the principle of the double effect would be lacking. The relief to the woman would come as an effect of the abortion, not directly as an effect of the surgery. Hence, a bad means would be employed to produce a good end.

Even if the woman's life would be gravely endangered unless an abortion were performed (a situation rarely verified in view of modern medical progress), it would be a grave violation of God's law to kill directly an innocent child to save her life.

----
New Catholic Encyclopedia * * * *Volume 4 * * * *1967

 

[Pure]

Texas style right to life; Tom DeLay

THE TERRI SCHIAVO CASE
DeLay's Own Tragic Crossroads
Family of the lawmaker involved in the Schiavo case decided in '88 to let his comatose father die.


By Walter F. Roche Jr. and Sam Howe Verhovek, LA Times Staff Writers


CANYON LAKE, Texas — A family tragedy that unfolded in a Texas hospital during the fall of 1988 was a private ordeal — without judges, emergency sessions of Congress or the debate raging outside Terri Schiavo's Florida hospice.

The patient then was a 65-year-old drilling contractor, badly injured in a freak accident at his home. Among the family members keeping vigil at Brooke Army Medical Center was a grieving junior congressman — Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas).





More than 16 years ago, far from the political passions that have defined the Schiavo controversy, the DeLay family endured its own wrenching end-of-life crisis. The man in a coma, kept alive by intravenous lines and oxygen equipment, was DeLay's father, Charles Ray DeLay.

Then, freshly reelected to a third term in the House, the 41-year-old DeLay waited, all but helpless, for the verdict of doctors.

Today, as House Majority Leader, DeLay has teamed with his Senate counterpart, Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), to champion political intervention in the Schiavo case. They pushed emergency legislation through Congress to shift the legal case from Florida state courts to the federal judiciary.

And DeLay is among the strongest advocates of keeping the woman, who doctors say has been in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years, connected to her feeding tube. DeLay has denounced Schiavo's husband, as well as judges, for committing what he calls "an act of barbarism" in removing the tube.

In 1988, however, there was no such fiery rhetoric as the congressman quietly joined the sad family consensus to let his father die.

"There was no point to even really talking about it," Maxine DeLay, the congressman's 81-year-old widowed mother, recalled in an interview last week. "There was no way [Charles] wanted to live like that. Tom knew — we all knew — his father wouldn't have wanted to live that way."

Doctors advised that he would "basically be a vegetable," said the congressman's aunt, JoAnne DeLay.

When his father's kidneys failed, the DeLay family decided against connecting him to a dialysis machine. "Extraordinary measures to prolong life were not initiated," said his medical report, citing "agreement with the family's wishes." His bedside chart carried the instruction: "Do not resuscitate."

On Dec. 14, 1988, the DeLay patriarch "expired with his family in attendance."

 

[Goldie Munro]

I have some personal experience with this as I used to be in the medical profession:

We have the technology today to keep people alive on ventilators or respiritory machines that then make us have to decide to switch them off.

We have the technology to transplant organs - shit we can even bring people back grom the dead with electricity...

all of this leaves us with ethical dilemas that we never had before - there are cases of people in comas who have woken up after nth amount of years etc - but there are no hard and fast rules - do we agree wit the doctors? Or do we wait and see how it goes?

Put yourself in the position of the patient - think about it.

 

[cantdog]

You're right, Goldie, and a voice of smooth sanity besides.

This is at least two threads, now, but it would be a good idea to touch on the notion that what Goldie says here is all too true. And we all have to make, sometime, some pretty lousy choices, or be there when they are made.

It is imperative, I think, that we be allowed to make them. These are in essence private, family matters in which the state has little business. There is already a framework in which the decisions must be made. So-and-so is the next of kin, so-and-so has the durable P.O.A., the doctor must inform the family, and so on.

Even if the informed person makes a sinful decision, that too, is taken care of already. If you think it sinful, you must also believe God is on the job. Becoming informed, being prepared to face these moments; discussion with your spouse and others, making out living wills or other papers-- all this is for naught if the decision has to be made for you by some other pack of yahoos, however "disinterested."

 

[BlackShanglan]

----
New Catholic Encyclopedia * * * *Volume 4 * * * *1967

This is your problem. Church doctrine has since shifted.

 

[Pure]

Is there a 'pro life' package? (a coherent set of ethical positions on abortion, capital punishment, euthanasia, withdrawal of life support, etc.)

Shang: //Church doctrine has since shifted.// [to the view that abortion is permissible to save the life of the mother, such an abortion being 'self defense.']

I don't doubt there are liberal catholics; I'm married to one. You may be one.
But what are the documents on which you base your claim of a 'shifted position'?

In a brief search I did get a sense of slight shift from 'mother's duty' to 'mother's imitation of Christ' [to give her life for the child's].

Ess's remark, at conference
forum on "Religious Perspectives on Abortion" 1/15/97
http://caae.phil.cmu.edu/Cavalier/Forum/abortion/shrage_ques.html

b) Noonan allows for therapeutic abortion under some circumstances, but implies by way of closing that a mother who held the image of Jesus' self-sacrificial love before her might choose to give up her own life in order to save her child.

From John T. Noonan, Jr. ed., The Morality of Abortion: Legal and Historical Perspectives (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), c. 1970.
-----

Speaking of shifts, I gather that through the early 90s, and the first edition of the Catechism (1992), the Church had no problem with the limited and just use of capital punishment. That's its historic position.

It's quite interesting to see this whole idea of a 'pro life' package of ethical positions (as embodied in the original 9 points I posted). Certainly the liberal Catholic package has much to recommend it, since they removed the most egregious item of capital punishment.

The protestant package, for evangelical, socially conservative Christians, esp. from the South, retains the Christian tradition of supporting a governments use of capital punishment in some cases, based on the famous passage of St. Paul, that the magistrate shall not bear the sword in vain.

It's also interesting that Quakers--of whom I have some connections-- have undergone a similar shift, from guarded support, in the 17th century, to clear opposition now.

Is 'pro life' just a buzz word? I.e., is it any less applicable to a left liberal set of positions on these 'life and death' issues, as embodied in cantdog, shereads, etc.

 

[BlackShanglan]

I think you've got the right "take" at the end, Pure. There are a variety of positions, and really "pro-life" has become one of those big, flabby, umbrella-shaped words, a sort of overgrown verbal fungus such as Orwell describes in his attacks on meaningless speech. It's not simply that it's hard to define; it's that many people have a vested interest in not defining it. No one wants to say "I hate life" (or, concomittantly, "I hate choice"), so all sorts of people claim to represent those words - including an abortion rights activist I recently read arguing that abortion supporters should pre-empt and reclaim the phrase "pro-life." It's such an emotionally loaded phrase that everyone want to claim it - not because it clearly identifies any specific position, but because it brings warm fuzzy connotative value with it. I think that on the whole it is as meaningless now as "conservative" and "liberal" have come to be. Team colors to some extent; not much more. In short, I don't believe that there is a "pro-life" package in practice. I personally seek coherence and consistancy in my beliefs, but different people will see consistancy in different things depending on their assumptions and principles.

The info on your last on abortion is largely what I've been taught. I don't actually have a problem with the idea that one might choose to give up one's life for one's child; I've heard many parents express that willingness, and don't see that it makes a great deal of difference whether the child has yet been born or not. Some people feel that that sacrifice is important to them; I honor and reverence them for their selflessness without feeling that others should be forced to such sacrifice themselves. I think that a very personal decision, and of course my heart goes out to anyone caught in such an awful position.

Shanglan

 

[cantdog]

I stand foursquare against abortion, which I see as very much a last-ditch thing. I am as adamantly for keeping it legal, available, and safe. I think it is destructive (and selectively destructive of poor people) to kick the whole thing into the hands of black markets.

But I would take some very strong convincing to think it was the best decision, just the same.

 

[BlackShanglan]

I stand foursquare against abortion, which I see as very much a last-ditch thing. I am as adamantly for keeping it legal, available, and safe. I think it is destructive (and selectively destructive of poor people) to kick the whole thing into the hands of black markets.

But I would take some very strong convincing to think it was the best decision, just the same.

Understood. My own opposition to its legalization lies in my belief that human life begins at conception. Because I believe that abortion involves the killing of a human being, I can't personally put it in the "choice" category because I feel it denies life to a human being.

Shanglan

 

[cantdog]

Exactly. I do like babies. I like kids. I like human beings. But I simply can't imagine how unutterably creepy carrying a rapist's baby to term for all those months would be. I can see the need, sometimes, to say no, for sanity's sake. I can't subscribe to the sacred.

Many things that live, die. I kill them myself, and gladly. I kill infections, I pluck forth plants, I fish. I have animals slaughtered that I might eat, and I have done it myself. Death is not an ignominy of some kind, or a sin. It is a part of the process. I tailor it to order every day I wear leather. People, too, die, many times pointlessly, ridiculously, stupidly, innocently. By the most hideous diseases and by the whims of businessmen and heads of state. Heads of state I cannot respect, businesspeople who find others in the way of their cash flow, and have them removed. Some of it, this slaughter of people, is reprehensible and offensive. I include river blindness, Guillian Barré syndrome, clumsiness, ignorance, hate, in those categories. Your God is to blame as often as any.

So my fear, or reverence if you prefer the term, of death is very muted indeed. I find myself angered by it more than abashed.

And I consider the results for the poor of your eminently moral position. Rich women will have safe abortions regardless, Shang, and the poor will die of infection a hideous lingering death that could so easily have been prevented, if someone had refrained to forbid the sinful by law. Judgement is mine, the old guy said, and you should approach the prospect of legislating with a great deal of circumspection.

 

[BlackShanglan]

And I consider the results for the poor of your eminently moral position. Rich women will have safe abortions regardless, Shang, and the poor will die of infection a hideous lingering death that could so easily have been prevented, if someone had refrained to forbid the sinful by law. Judgement is mine, the old guy said, and you should approach the prospect of legislating with a great deal of circumspection.

I oppose the legalization of abortion, not on the grounds that it is sinful, but that it is unconstitutional. There are many things I consider sinful - adultery, for example, or suicide - that I would not wish to see made illegal. On the whole, they do not violate the rights of others in such a way as to make me feel that the government should intervene. Abortion, on the other hand, I believe to deprive a human being of his or her right to life, the first and primary right without which no other rights - liberty, property, fair protection under law - are possible.

While respecting your comments on the effects on the poor and on rape victims, I cannot feel that those effects are sufficient to merit the destruction of a human being who has committed no crime, and has merely found him or herself in the wrong place at the wrong time through no personal fault. I do not in any way wish to minimize the suffering of those caught in terrible positions; I only believe it wrong to murder an innocent person in an attempt to redress that suffering.

I do, of course, wholly understand the position that what is destroyed is not human. I simply cannot convince myself that this is true.

Shanglan

 

[Pure]

'pro life' position?

today's wire service
Schindler [Terri Schiavo's father] said he feared the consequences of the morphine drip given to his daughter to relieve any pain. ``I have a great concern that they will expedite the process to kill her with an overdose of morphine because that's the procedure that happens,'' he said.

Hospice spokesman Mike Bell said federal rules kept him from discussing Schiavo specifically, but ``a fundamental part of hospice is that we would do nothing to either hasten or postpone natural death.''

Comfort measures, including morphine drips, are taken in consultation with a patient's guardian, physician and hospice care team, Bell said.

---
Let's get this straight; the father and the clinic together have thwarted nature for more than ten years.
NOW, nature is to be honored by the clinic--with the approval of the father--, but letting the final expiry take up to two weeks.

Were she to get an extra few milligrams of morphine--hastening her end, nature's laws would be broken, and God's too.

 

[cantdog]

Neither can a lot of women. Give them their choice and take mercy upon the poor. Not every person will take the opportunity to snuff a young life if it be legal. And the sinners are still in the purview of the deity, law or none, not so? Who are you, as a legislator, to usurp the lord's prerogative?

 

[cantdog]

Humans are no better, you know.

 

[Pure]

cant //Not every person will take the opportunity to snuff a young life if it be legal.//

yeah, but ya gotta watch for 'em. selfish snuffers are not uncommon, and, it is said, this is especially true among the poor.

 

[cantdog]

I heard it was especially true among the rich. I believed it, but I am always ready to believe the worst of the rich.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Neither can a lot of women. Give them their choice and take mercy upon the poor. Not every person will take the opportunity to snuff a young life if it be legal. And the sinners are still in the purview of the deity, law or none, not so? Who are you, as a legislator, to usurp the lord's prerogative?

Yes, sinners are the purview of the diety. The constitution, however, is the purview of legislators. If one believes that abortion kills a human being, one cannot escape the conclusion that that human being has been denied its constitutional right to life.

Again, I understand that some do not see this as a human being, and I comprehend their position and find it consistant. I cannot, however, find it consistant to believe that something is human and to then deny it the right of life extended to other humans. It's not a question of moral right; it's a question of upholding a human's legal right to live. I feel that one can only consistantly call abortion a form of mercy on the poor if one does not believe - as I do believe - that each and every abortion kills a living human being. I understand not believing that. I simply wished to point out that if one does believe that, it's not possible to view it as mercy or support of choice, as it denies the killed human being the choice to live, which is the root of all other choices. I oppose abortion not because I dislike the idea of people having a broad variety of help and choices, but because I cannot believe it right to kill human beings to get those options.

Shanglan

 

[cantdog]

There are two big problems here, at the very least.

First, we do not have a constitutional right to life.

Second, there is the doctrine Pure posted above. Actions have results. Some good, some bad.


The prohibition on birth-control measures, by public-health agencies overseas (they do not dare do this here, although they are trying very hard in the schools with their abstinence program) which receive federal money, is equally despicable, in the face of an AIDS crisis beyond imagining. This is being done because of a moral distaste for birth control measures, tied in with the perceptions enumerated here. Health workers may not mention these things if the agency is to retain George Bush's government support. At whatever cost in lives or to the societies in the third world.

All these crimes-- depriving Africa of health care, sabotaging the reproductive health of a generation of schoolkids with "abstinence-only", erecting a black market for medical procedures by recriminalizing abortions-- are painted as matters of conscience and as quintessentially moral actions. Nothing could be further from the truth. They do these things, they receive their reward for doing them. They get more power, and they roll contemptibly in more money. Hey, that's success.

I have a deep inassuageable distaste for these "moral" people. The rightness or wrongness of the theological position beneath them is entirely beside the point. You may hold a belief. You may take any number of actions deriving from it. But the actions are not blameless because of the belief. The actions, the choices out of the available pool of actions, must be evaluated as actions. If they cause egregious harm, then the actions must be discontinued, the harm repaired. Some other action is clearly, obviously, better than these.

analogy

I believe that television on the whole, as a phenomenon, is harmful. I unleash thousands of SWAT teams around the country to break into every house and apartment, at night, so they can see the telltale glow of the screens. I exempt businesses. The SWAT teams break in, shout, threaten-- it's great training!-- and fire automatic weapons at the televisions they find, then leave. Tort reform guarantees that no repercussions can come to the SWAT members out of these raids, which are angelic in purpose, and a great reform.

My position on televisions is blameless. The action I have chosen, based on that belief, is causing great harm. I receive more support, politically, from my power base, for having the balls to act for the greater good. Power is money. I'm doing very well out of it. I stay the course, I display the courage of my convictions!

 

[Pure]

Hey Shang, Cant, and others. I'm fine with going around the bush on abortion, another time, but let's do it in another thread, OK?

For a start, would Shang answer the question: Wouldn't the (new) idea of a constitutional protection of all 'life' have rather great consequences for the US legal system? Consider the extreme case 1., admittedly hard to tell yet, with present technology: After a conception, does the woman commit murder (in moral or legal terms) if she takes the Morning After Pill (estrogen combination which--we will assume--prevents implantation). If it is murder, should she suffer a lesser penalty than, say, for strangling her one year old?

Consider extreme case 2, very possible. Scientist X has obtained a single egg from a woman whose tube are blocked. He fertilizes it on a slide (in vitro).
He goes to lunch, foolishly leaving the slide unprotected. When he returns it's dried up and the conceptus is not viable. Would this be a case of 'negligent homicide'? Should it be treated the same as taking his 2 year old to a swimming pool area and leaving it unattended, leading to its drowning?

 

[Pure]

Question: Hasten the end?

For Shang and any others--

Assume there is some nontrivial amoutn of suffering in Terri S.
Why is it wrong to give her a few extra milligrams of morphine, and say, (for the sake of argument), hasten her expiry by a couple days?

(As i posted above, the clinic is administering morphine, but only enough for comfort, and, they say, not so must as to hasten the end. Terri's father agrees with this approach [assuming he can't 'save' her, his preferred way]. The clinic may be doing it for legal reasons.)

 

[cantdog]

For Shang and any others--

Assume there is some nontrivial amoutn of suffering in Terri S.
Why is it wrong to give her a few extra milligrams of morphine, and say, (for the sake of argument), hasten her expiry by a couple days?

(As i posted above, the clinic is administering morphine, but only enough for comfort, and, they say, not so must as to hasten the end. Terri's father agrees with this approach [assuming he can't 'save' her, his preferred way]. The clinic may be doing it for legal reasons.)

I'll weigh in here. My brother died of his MS, and they were giving an opiate from time to time. The girl with the syringe searched our eyes every time, but we thought it important and had said so. I think she may have been imagining that, brain chemistry being variable, her injections might well "hasten the end," and she was wondering if her push of the thumb might not be the action which killed the boy.

It is good not to stray from the legal reasons. The girl may have felt like a maybe murderer, but she doesn't need the system crashing onto her about it. No one feels too comfortable about any of this. Someone has to push the plunger on the syringe, legal considerations notwithstanding.

Legal contentions on a case make everyone feel exposed, and sometimes with reason.

I have had to watch my dad and brother go out. I have also witnessed those "do everything" measures being done. Any family member who directs that the hospital staff "do everything they can" may be assuaging her conscience but she is requesting that her loved one go out in a welter of torture. It is torture. They should be made to see it being done, although for an unimaginative person I suppose there would be no effect.

This is what we are sparing people, and ourselves, by such directives as living wills: departing this veil in a crescendo of pain.

Both my father and my brother had medicine working for them, instead of against them, in my view. Providing ease rather than pain.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Thank you for the interesting questions, Pure, but I think I will bow out. I do not enjoy debates once they shift from the discussion of ideas to assumptions and complaints about groups of people with whom I am evidently lumped together.

Shanglan

 

[cantdog]

Pardon me, if you can. I had no intention of lumping.

 

[LadyJeanne]

The prohibition on birth-control measures, by public-health agencies overseas (they do not dare do this here, although they are trying very hard in the schools with their abstinence program) which receive federal money, is equally despicable, in the face of an AIDS crisis beyond imagining. This is being done because of a moral distaste for birth control measures, tied in with the perceptions enumerated here. Health workers may not mention these things if the agency is to retain George Bush's government support. At whatever cost in lives or to the societies in the third world.

I have a couple friends in the Peace Corps in Africa and they've been getting around the birth-control prohibition by teaching the 'ABC's'.

Abstinence first
Be monogomous
Condoms - and they do demos using wooden phalluses

These are people who work in areas where over 50% of the population has AIDS and more are HIV positive...nothing like preaching morality to the dying.

 

[Pure]

//I do not enjoy debates once they shift from the discussion of ideas to assumptions and complaints about groups of people with whom I am evidently lumped together. //

I don't remember complaining about a group or groups; the discourse seemed very civil, for a hot topic. I simply responded to some persons desire to discuss 'beginning of human life', and your assertion of a constitional right for fertilized eggs.

A number of groups favor a constitutional amendment on this 'beginning of life' or 'person' issue. It's a fairly big decision (and departure from precedent) to leave to the courts. (Yet upon reflection
possibly the only way to go, considering the difficulties of a 2/3 or 3/4 majority on this issue.)

I might have 'complaints' about some of these groups, but, hey, it's a democracy.

You apparently agree with the goal; I have no idea what you think would be a good means to bring this about. I call it imagination and 'discussion of ideas' to picture a scenario, for the US, for example, with a few million 'preborn' at all stages bearing legal rights.

Sorry if my brutish manner of expression, inane stereotyping, and inability to appreciate nuance have offended you.