As it turns out, I re-read Tasha’s piece and while it remains simply splendid, I will comment on one thing I believe she got wrong:
It is wrong for anti-abortionists to seek to outlaw the practice entirely, when that would mean the denial of a woman’s right to bodily integrity, a return to back-alley abortions, or situations such as the recent case in Ireland where doctors refused to perform an abortion that would have saved the mother’s life.
As I’ve said many times before, abortion does not save women’s lives. Canada’s maternal mortality was sharply declining long before abortion became legal. I mentioned that in this piece, and I think it’s important to emphasize here.
To be perfectly clear, no one, not even the Catholic Church (gasp) has a problem when, in attempting medical care of a woman, the baby dies as a consequence of attempting to provide care. But this is not the same as deliberately targetting the baby for death.
I’ll happily hear from Catholics if I’m wrong on this one. I hope I’ve represented the Catholic view correctly.
Even if I’m wrong on that, then the Andrea Mrozek (TM) opinion still stands, which is that deliberate killing does not save lives. But sadly, sometimes, babies will die as doctors attempt to care for the mother (and baby).
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She got something else wrong too.
Here’s my comment from over there:
Abortion laws were NOT struck down by the Supreme Court because they violated a woman’s bodily integrity. The abortion laws were struck down because a majority of the Supreme Court judges found them to be unfair laws, but the court could not agree on just WHY they were unfair laws.. There were three different reasonings as to why the laws were unfair, each substantially different from the others. Yes, one of the reasonings was the bodily integrity argument, but none of the reasonings garnered enough support to establish precedent. Maybe I should say that again: Morgantaler established NO legal precedent.
Abortion is not necessary for a woman to have bodily integrity. Not in reality, and certainly not in Canadian law or jurisprudence.
Oh, and you’ve represented the Catholic view pretty darn well. It is called the double effect principle: a medical treatment may sometimes have negative consequences (ie. it causes the death of a baby) as well as as benefits. I would just add that you can’t invoke the double effect principle willy nilly–there has to be a grave reason to do so. And you WILL get plenty of Catholics (not all) who will argue that a woman has to be pretty much on her death bed before you are justified in invoking the double effect principle.
That is accurate. 3 examples would be abortion in the case of ectopic pregnancy, systemic cancer treatment which causes a miscarriage and septic abortion where there is infection within the uterus. These would be licit according to Catholic teaching. There are other circumstances, however, where the woman’s life might be “at risk” but where a direct abortion might not be licit. Pre-ecclampsia comes to mind as a tricky situation. In those kinds of situations it is not so straightforward.
You are correct regarding Catholic teaching. Two examples come to mind: end of life care and ectopic pregancies. You can provide very large amounts of painkillers to someone with the goal of relieving their pain even though this may cause death. The goal is pain relief, the side-effect is death. Giving the same painkiller in high doses with the goal of death is not accepted. In the case of ectopic pregnancy, the tube can be removed. This will save the woman’s life. The unfortunate side-effect of this is the death of the baby. Injecting a drug to kill the baby directly is not accepted. Unfortunately, I can’t really do the argument justice, but the basic idea is that an evil means cannot result in a good end. The means must be good, and the end will have both good and bad consequences.