Miss D termination case

panda100

While this is being discussed on After hours religon has been mentioned more than once and so I thought it would be intresting to see what fellow Christians had to say on this delicate case.

Personally,I dont really believe in abortion.I like the laws as they stand at the moment. However,this case I strongly believe the girl should be allowed a termination.From my catholic faith I believe that all life is sacred.However,I just think its inhumane to allow a young girl carry for 9months and give birth to a dead baby.

What would be Catholic/Christian stance in this matter?Is abortion ever acceptable in these circles such as for cases like this one?

anto1208

Personally i think there are times when its ok very rare but i don t think the church would agree with me . But we rarely do agree these days

kelly1

panda100 wrote:

While this is being discussed on After hours religon has been mentioned more than once and so I thought it would be intresting to see what fellow Christians had to say on this delicate case.

Personally,I dont really believe in abortion.I like the laws as they stand at the moment. However,this case I strongly believe the girl should be allowed a termination.From my catholic faith I believe that all life is sacred.However,I just think its inhumane to allow a young girl carry for 9months and give birth to a dead baby.

What would be Catholic/Christian stance in this matter?Is abortion ever acceptable in these circles such as for cases like this one?

Hello Panda, I don't think abortion is ever acceptable.

No matter what abnormalities the baby may be born with, killing the baby is never morally justifiable regardless of whether the child is born alive or dead.

The child still has a human God-given soul. It's fate should be left in God's hands. We have no right to kill this child!

Regards,
Noel.

Sangre

What if God intervenes through a miracle and the baby is born alive?

Nevyn

The chances are it will be born alive but will not have enough brain function to sustain it's own body and will die.

fatmammycat

"The child still has a human God-given soul. It's fate should be left in God's hands. We have no right to kill this child!"
It's not a child at all, it's a fetus, a deformed fetus. And whatever chance it had of becoming a child died the moment it's frontal brain did not develop.

PDN

I've been there. My second daughter was diagnosed with a severe abnormality while still in the womb. We did not opt for abortion because we believe that we do not have the right to destroy another human being. Her condition was not as severe as in this case. The prognosis was that she would require 24 hour care and would die before her 5th birthday (she died aged 4 years and 10 months). It was 5 years of sheer hell, but I still believe we made the right choice.

I also understand a scared young girl seeing abortion as her only answer.

My concern is that this desperately tragic case has come to light during a General Election campaign. Now all we need is some opportunistic politician to come up with a kneejerk reaction that opens the doors to thousands of healthy babies being aborted.

Whether you agree with abortion or not, this case should move us all to pray for the young girl concerned and for her unborn child.

jhegarty

The thing here is, who are we to decided that this baby should not live for that length of time....

The baby won't be born dead, but will survive 1 -3 days.... who are we to say 3 days is too short, how about 5 days , a month , a year , how about 10.... its not our place... unless someone wants to set the numbers of days you need to make a life worth it ?

Every baby who is born will die , be it in 3 days or 100 years......

fatmammycat

jhegarty wrote:

The thing here is, who are we to decided that this baby should not live for that length of time....

The baby won't be born dead, but will survive 1 -3 days.... who are we to say 3 days is too short, how about 5 days , a month , a year , how about 10.... its not our place... unless someone wants to set the numbers of days you need to make a life worth it ?

Every baby who is born will die , be it in 3 days or 100 years......

Respectfully I would then ask who are we to say this girl should carry full term is she does not want to do so? It's a horrible situation to be in and I cannot imagine the fear and heartbreak she is enduring, but we don't have a right over her body. We don't have the right to FORCE her to carry on with a non viable pregnancy.

PDN

fatmammycat wrote:

Respectfully I would then ask who are we to say this girl should carry full term is she does not want to do so? It's a horrible situation to be in and I cannot imagine the fear and heartbreak she is enduring, but we don't have a right over her body. We don't have the right to FORCE her to carry on with a non viable pregnancy.

If it were just her body then that would be a different matter. The unborn child within her is not a part of her body.

And, yes, the fear and heartbreak is hard for any of us to imagine.

philologos

fatmammycat wrote:

"The child still has a human God-given soul. It's fate should be left in God's hands. We have no right to kill this child!"
It's not a child at all, it's a fetus, a deformed fetus. And whatever chance it had of becoming a child died the moment it's frontal brain did not develop.

Whether or not the being is a child or not (I would consider it to be one). God has commanded us not to unlawfully murder. It may be a fetus, but it it a human fetus and as such we should still regard it as a human being. I'm 100% against abortion of any shape or form.

kelly1

fatmammycat wrote:

"The child still has a human God-given soul. It's fate should be left in God's hands. We have no right to kill this child!"
It's not a child at all, it's a fetus, a deformed fetus. And whatever chance it had of becoming a child died the moment it's frontal brain did not develop.

FMC, when did you receive the power to decide who lives and who dies? If this were your baby/foetus, would you carry out the termination (assuming you had the means/training)? Would you abort a baby with Down's syndrome? Where do you draw the line?

All human life is sacred. God creates life so we have no right to destroy God's work! The child should be baptized at birth and if s/he dies at birth, all if well for that blessed child! I know of course death would be traumatic for the parent(s), but there would be no agony of conscience to deal with.

God bless you,
Noel.

Lemming

Here's a little thought for you all ....

What if God already decided the fate of this unborn? I use that term deliberately because it is for all intents and purposes already dead and thus will never be an actual "child" - I wont list the clinical issues because they should be wildly f*cking obvious to anyone who has half a brain (no pun intended, no matter how tasteless)

In short, you are condoning forcing a child to endure 5 months knowingly carrying an already dead foetus to term and then go through the danger and trauma of giving birth to something that is already dead, for the sake of pompous piety. Do you think that God would not turn a shade of deep red embarrasment at that being carried out in his name? To know that the sole reasoning is out of a level of utter, utter selfishly induced suffering so that you can feel morally "comfortable"?

The level of puritanical absoluteism being portrayed is truly vile and representitive of the worst dregs of human cruelty. I have to say that I find myself checking my calendar and wondering if we've left the dark ages and the inquisition at all.

You call yourself Christian. I can see no empathy here. No feeling for fellow humanity or love for your neighbour. Only cold dogma.

fatmammycat

How does the imagined rights of a deformed fetus that cannot survive, live, partake in life, take precedence over the rights of a woman and her express wishes.
This is not a debate I would enter into lightly. I do not see this as a theological debate at all, but rather a practical and compassionate one. This fetus is beyond salvation, the mother is not. She should not have to carry this burden to full term if she chooses not to. To my mind-and I realise we do not all feel the same-it is as simple as that.
I think religion should be for the religious and should keep its biased hand out of the medical.
I would ask, would any of you force any daughter of yours to go through this ordeal if she did not want to?
I'm guessing you would not. Well this girl had no real family to speak of and forcing her-at 17- to carry a dying fetus to full term to cover some spurious ethic is barbaric in my eyes.

fatmammycat

kelly1 wrote:

FMC, when did you receive the power to decide who lives and who dies? If this were your baby/foetus, would you carry out the termination (assuming you had the means/training)? Would you abort a baby with Down's syndrome? Where do you draw the line?

All human life is sacred. God creates life so we have no right to destroy God's work! The child should be baptized at birth and if s/he dies at birth, all if well for that blessed child! I know of course death would be traumatic for the parent(s), but there would be no agony of conscience to deal with.

God bless you,
Noel.

Noel- I didn't.
Yes.
Yes.
That would depend on viability.
Is that so?
Did he indeed?
Says who?
Are you sure about that? You pin that view on your religious affiliation. I have none and perhaps this girl Miss D has none either. In which case your points are moot.

OctavarIan

Lemming wrote:

Here's a little thought for you all ....

What if God already decided the fate of this unborn? I use that term deliberately because it is for all intents and purposes already dead and thus will never be an actual "child" - I wont list the clinical issues because they should be wildly f*cking obvious to anyone who has half a brain (no pun intended, no matter how tasteless)

In short, you are condoning forcing a child to endure 5 months knowingly carrying an already dead foetus to term and then go through the danger and trauma of giving birth to something that is already dead, for the sake of pompous piety. Do you think that God would not turn a shade of deep red embarrasment at that being carried out in his name? To know that the sole reasoning is out of a level of utter, utter selfishly induced suffering so that you can feel morally "comfortable"?

The level of puritanical absoluteism being portrayed is truly vile and representitive of the worst dregs of human cruelty. I have to say that I find myself checking my calendar and wondering if we've left the dark ages and the inquisition at all.

You call yourself Christian. I can see no empathy here. No feeling for fellow humanity or love for your neighbour. Only cold dogma.

You said everything I was thinking but put it into words much better than I could have

robindch

Jakkass wrote:

God has commanded us not to unlawfully murder.

But in the UK, where I believe she wants to go, abortion is legal. Doesn't that mean that you therefore support abortion in the UK?

Schuhart

I don't think abortion ethics work outside of the personal realm. There has to be some arbitrary start placed on when a foetus is given rights, but it is arbitrary and I don't think we can fool ourselves that its otherwise. Why does an extra day suddenly switch on a whole load of rights that didn't exist yesterday?

I can respect Kelly1's position as a personal ethic, even to the extent of no individual health professional being compelled to assist in an abortion where they shared that ethic.

I don't see, though, what we can do apart from setting an arbitrary point where a pregnancy is deemed irreversible and leave the rest to individual decision. I don't see what objective criteria for viability can be set to distinguish between this case and that. In particular, I don't see how we could establish that a pregnancy that would result in a child being born with Down's Syndrome could be terminated in situations where a foetus with no known disabilities would be required to go full term.

I don't think anyone suggests other than that abortion should be avoided. General ethics would surely demand practical steps that remove the need for abortion, rather than prohibition.

kelly1

Lemming wrote:

What if God already decided the fate of this unborn? I use that term deliberately because it is for all intents and purposes already dead and thus will never be an actual "child"

The child isn't dead. Do you measure someone's worth by their usefulness to society? Do you condone euthanasia too?

Lemming wrote:

In short, you are condoning forcing a child to endure 5 months knowingly carrying an already dead foetus to term and then go through the danger and trauma of giving birth to something that is already dead, for the sake of pompous piety.

Moot point, the foetus isn't dead.

Lemming wrote:

Do you think that God would not turn a shade of deep red embarrasment at that being carried out in his name?

No.

Lemming wrote:

To know that the sole reasoning is out of a level of utter, utter selfishly induced suffering so that you can feel morally "comfortable"?

Non-sense. Who say's the child will/does suffer? Isn't it far more selfish to terminate the life of a defenceless child and for what purpose?

Lemming wrote:

The level of puritanical absoluteism being portrayed is truly vile and representitive of the worst dregs of human cruelty.

I'm condemning murder and you say this about me??

Lemming wrote:

You call yourself Christian. I can see no empathy here. No feeling for fellow humanity or love for your neighbour. Only cold dogma.

Who's self-righteous now? Of course I feel empathy for the predicament the mother is in. But nobody knows at this stage what will be the outcome if the child is born.

Noel.

Asiaprod

robindch wrote:

But in the UK, where I believe she wants to go, abortion is legal. Doesn't that mean that you therefore support abortion in the UK?

Robin, while your point is very valid the OP stated "What would be Catholic/Christian stance in this matter?Is abortion ever acceptable in these circles such as for cases like this one?" I would like to leave this with the Christians for the moment. I am really interested to see how this can be Justified or condemn. I do not want an important issue like this one to turn into another the good vs the better. Thanks for your, and all non Christians, understanding.

robindch

...my point was related to one which wolfsbane made earlier in the year and I should have made that linkage clearer. Wolfsbane mentioned that that the "don't kill" commandment should be modified with an appropriate context to the extent that he believes that "do not kill" actually means "do not kill unless required to do so, or permitted to do so, by law".

This assertive contextualization occurs, I believe largely exclusively, in protestant variations of christianity and I am (still) interested to know whether the UK's law permitting abortion could therefore be thought -- in Jakkass's explicit use of the word "unlawfully" -- to override the "don't kill" commandment which is usually the one used to justify opposition to abortion.

The point, poorly made, is directly related to how christians extract meaning from the text of the bible and try to apply it to real-life situations which is what I understood the OP was asking.

BTW, I'm not arguing one way or the other about abortion. This thread, if not forum too, is much too small a place to contain that particular shouting-match!

Asiaprod

robindch wrote:

...my point was related to one which wolfsbane made earlier in the year and I should have made that linkage clearer.

Understood, and it was that missing linkage what threw me.

philologos

robindch wrote:

But in the UK, where I believe she wants to go, abortion is legal. Doesn't that mean that you therefore support abortion in the UK?

Unlawful as in against scriptural law. We aren't permitted to kill any human being, whether in fetal form or not.

Mitch Connor

kelly1 wrote:

Non-sense. Who say's the child will/does suffer? Isn't it far more selfish to terminate the life of a defenceless child and for what purpose?

All medical professionals - the child is likely to 'live' for only a few hours, and be in horrible pain for the duration.

panda100

Jakkass wrote:

Unlawful as in against scriptural law. We aren't permitted to kill any human being, whether in fetal form or not.

Yes I know this but God has already sentenced this baby to death.Having the termination would be the most humane option both physically and menatlly for the young mother. Doesnt the bible teach us to be humane and bring comfort to our fellow human beings?

kelly1

kelly1 wrote:

The child isn't dead. Do you measure someone's worth by their usefulness to society? Do you condone euthanasia too?

Moot point, the foetus isn't dead.

wiki:

Anencephaly is a cephalic disorder that results from a neural tube defect that occurs when the cephalic (head) end of the neural tube fails to close, usually between the 23rd and 26th day of pregnancy, resulting in the absence of a major portion of the brain, skull, and scalp. Infants with this disorder are born without a forebrain, the largest part of the brain consisting mainly of the cerebral hemispheres (which include the isocortex, which is responsible for higher level cognition, i.e., thinking). The remaining brain tissue is often exposed - not covered by bone or skin.

Emphasis mine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anencephaly

PDN, I'm glad you felt you made the right choice, but I would like to point out to people that it was a choice, and it should remain so for anyone else.

If you have religious issues with abortion yourself [addressing not just PDN here] then don't get one but don't put someone else through this suffering.

I'm condemning murder and you say this about me??

Noone is talking about murder, we are talking about a possible legal abortion.

kelly1

Tauren wrote:

All medical professionals - the child is likely to 'live' for only a few hours, and be in horrible pain for the duration.

From what I've read about Anencephaly, the foetus/child is not likely to have the capacity to feel pain. What reason do you have for saying that the child will be in horrible pain?

N.

Lemming

kelly1 wrote:

From what I've read about Anencephaly, the foetus/child is not likely to have the capacity to feel pain. What reason do you have for saying that the child will be in horrible pain?

N.

No it wont feel pain. Nor will it feel anything else. In fact it wont even be put onto a ventilator to help it breath as medical experts would appear almost universal in simply agreeing that nature should simply be allowed to occur without interference given the end result is an utterly foregone conclusion. This foetus, if brought to term, WILL die very shortly after death - up to about a maximum of 3 days. Could be 3 minutes. But it will not be aware, it will not feel anything.

A cow on a conveyor belt to the slaughter-house has more cognitive ability. Sorry to seem so clinical and cold, but this foetus will literally be a slab of meat with twitching motor responses.

You want to push the girl through this absolute hell? God decided that it would die the moment this condition manifested itself. Any protestations of "feeling" ring cold after your insistence on pushing her through this. As I said, unchristian and inhumanly cruel.

Nevyn

Look I understand the religious point of view that the baby when born may live long enough to be baptised and enter a state of grace free from orginal sin and so when it does die it will go to heaven.

Great fantastic no issue with that what so ever other then this is clearly not what the mother believes or wants and we are ment to be living in a republic which does not put any religion or sect over any other in terms of law.

philologos

It was clear that in the last referendum the people voted against legalising abortion, and for the better I'd say.

Nevyn

Yes but they voted for the right to travel.