Domenico Bettinelli points out there is more to this story than what's reported.
* We're talking about babies who are anacephalic (i.e. have not developed most of their brain), and have no chance of living outside the womb.
* They're delivered early, in some circumstances, to give the mother relief from various complications.
* They are NOT delivered until they would be (otherwise) viable. They die, not because of the premature delivery, but because they were going to die whenever they were delivered.
* The purpose of the delivery is NOT to kill the child, and it's misleading to call the procedure an abortion.
Actually, Domenico Bettinelli is not entirely correct about the facts, and he's way off about the morality of the situation. Unless you're a hardcore pro-lifer like me, you may be thinking that what these hospitals did wasn't so bad after all (this is in line with the widespread culture of death in the west; i.e. pro-life except for rape, incest, and health of the mother).
That is to say, this story at a second glance won't seem horrifying to most pro-lifers in the USA, but for the Catholic Church it's still a direct abortion and therefore intrinsically evil.
See http://www.ewtn.com/library/PROLIFE/bcdanen3.htm
By this criterion the infant with anencephaly is not dead, but is a living person with a profound, although, like a person in the "persistent vegetative state", not total destruction of its primary organ. It is for this reason that if and only if the total brain is dead is a person dead; and since the living child with anencephaly cannot be safely judged to have suffered total brain-death, he or she must be treated as a person with the rights proper to such.
In this case, the Catholic Church is holding a much, much higher standard than an overwhelming majority of its adherents. In this case, the prudent strategy for the Church will be to convert the flock rather than excommunicate the whole lot.
BTW, to answer the question in the title (in case it hasn't sunk in yet), yes, it's an abortion.
Posted by Bob at September 16, 2004 10:55 PMBut is it always an abortion if you are inducing labor on a fully formed and viable child that will never be able to live on his own outside the womb, no matter whether you allow him to stay in the full 40 weeks or not?
Posted by: Domenico Bettinelli at September 18, 2004 12:34 AMThanks for stopping by, Dom.
It's an induced labor for the purpose of terminating a pregnancy and the child dies. It's an abortion.
Is this a semantic issue? Are you hung up on the "viable" part? Do you use a different term for post-viable late term abortions, otherwise known as partial birth abortion?
That child has a right to life, which means we cannot shorten the pregnancy (i.e., the child gets to live the entire natural full term of pregnancy) except for proportionate reasons, of course.
See ANENCEPHALIC INFANTS AND THEIR CARE
Physicians and other medical professionals can be a great support for the parents struggling with the news that the child for whom they would have had such great hopes suffers from so distressing a condition. While medical professionals must give the parents full and truthful information about the child's diagnosis and prognosis, they do them a grave injustice to suggest abortion, premature induction of delivery except in the situations just cited, or neglect of the newly born child. Nor can they ethically cooperate if she herself chooses such courses of action to the child's detriment.Posted by: Bob at September 18, 2004 10:51 PM
I'm with you, Bob. But then you probably already knew that. I do get a little ticked when pundits spout off on issues without doing a little more research or talking to the experts, but hey, we are all human here.
While 23 weeks may be 'viable' with extreme intensive care, it sure isn't the best time in pregnancy to be born. An anencephalic baby born at 23 weeks will die of prematurity long before the anencephly would have killed him or her. There are lots of fetal anomalies incompatable with life, but their natural course is variable, and prenatal diagnosis is not 100%, either. I was absolutely horrified when I heard that Catholic hospitals were performing prenatal euthanasia. The 'proportionate reasons' have not seemed to me to be proportionate. Maybe too I'm colored by watching how carefully we (midwives and OB docs) weigh the decision to induce labor or perform a cesarean in the face of maternal disease, even sometimes serious maternal disease, vs the known risks of prematurity (even for a 35 weeker). You sit and watch that blood pressure, sometimes seeing the mom every other day, until you are reasonably sure the baby is mature or until you have no other choice but to deliver. That is proportionate reason. Oh, and I also don't do elective inductions of labor just because the mom is STOP (sick and tired of pregnancy), even on her due date. Not proportionate reasons, nope, not at all.