Partial Birth Abortion Ban Upheld

Read it for yourself:
FindLaw for Legal Professionals – Case Law, Federal and State Resources, Forms, and Code

I want to take a moment to speak about those unusual cases where a woman’s life and health is truly in jeopardy and where ending the pregnancy is the only known effective treatment. I blogged extensively about this similarly back in 2005.

The principle of the double effect is at work in each of these two directives. Actions that might result in the death of a child are morally permitted only if all of the following conditions are met: (1) treatment is directly therapeutic in response to a serious pathology of the mother or child; (2) the good effect of curing the disease is intended and the bad effect foreseen but unintended; (3) the death of the child is not the means by which the good effect is achieved; and (4) the good of curing the disease is proportionate to the risk of the bad effect. Fulfillment of all four conditions precludes any act that directly hastens the death of a child.

I seem some condemning mothers who have been in very difficult positions, saying that they “murdered” their babies even when all medical opinions clearly would agree that the mother’s life was in jeopardy unless the pregnancy ended. So from a Catholic perspective, delivering an infant prematurely either vaginally or via C-section is clearly not illicit.

We have to remember though that the baby is a little person. His life has value and meaning even if it is to be a very short life. As such that little one has to be treated with dignity and respect and that may mean being blanketed and given palliative care until a natural demise. I blogged about that here.