Should a woman be required to die rather than permit an abortion to save her life?

Question

"I would limit abortion to rape and life of the mother and incest, but for my personal standpoint, I would not have an abortion for any of those cases."
Katherine Harris - U.S. Representative

Answer 1

Its real easy to say that you would never have an abortion for any reason until you are sitting in the doctors office faced with the choice. I know from experience that when it comes down to it, an abortion sounds better than death.

Answer 2

I have heard doctors say that today, there is no reason why an abortion would save a mother's life. This is doubly true of the "partial birth abortion," where the baby would only need a tug to be born and be free from the mother's body.

I believe that if a choice were necessary, the mother's life should be saved, but if at all possible, both should be saved by everything in medical science.

Answer 3

I think we can all agree that something is lost when an abortion takes place. But we cannot begin to decide for others under which circumstances they can make this choice. In countries where abortions are illegal, the abortion rate is actually higher. So from a utilitarian perspective, we should stay out of this arena. I hate that this argument still comes up. We cannot force a mother to keep her child. It's awful, I know. But women who really don't want to keep their pregnancy will find a way to end it. Sure, they should have had safer sex, blah, blah, blah - but it's too late for that. Let's launch a pro-information campaign instead of an anti-abortion campaign. Let's focus on prevention.

Answer 4

I don't believe in abortion. I think its wrong to take a life. I think its morally wrong and it's against my religion. I would NEVER get an abortion because there are alternatives if you don't want children... you can always give the child to someone that will love and care for it.

However, I don't feel that I have the right to push my beliefs on anyone else. Any woman that finds themselves in that unfortunate position should be able to make that decision for themselves.

As far as rape, incest and life threatening cases... I just don't know. I'm sure it must be an agonizing decision to make and I hope that me or my daughter will never have to make it. It's difficult enough having to deal with ones moral and religious beliefs, we shouldn't have to deal with the legal aspect.

Answer 5

No, of course not (does anyone acutally think that?). But I can understand an individual choosing to not have an abortion even if their life hung in the balance.

Your quote doesn't seem to match your question, to me. The quote seems more to ask the question, "should a woman be allowed to die rather than require an abortion to save her life." Katherine is saying she would be for allowing abortion to save the life of the mother.

Answer 6

no way. a woman should NOT be required to continue a pregnancy for any reason. Ethically, I think a woman is bound after the first trimester, and personally I would not get an abortion if I was past 40days or so post conception. However, a woman should be in control of her body. If the choice is between a sentient woman who can survive on her own or a miscroscopic embryo that lives at the expense of the woman and has no consciousness, the decision is clear.
The key word here is "be required" which would imply that the state, or someone private group imposing their belief on others, would force a woman to die fpr THEIR beliefs.

Answer 7

In rape and incest: What crime did the child commit that it must die?

For the life of the mother: over 90% of all cases, the child CAN be removed from the mother in order to save her life.

In the cases where the child is too young, there is an increased chance that the mother can wait until the child grows to the point where it can live outside the mother.

The only cases I have heard of that require action is in the case of cancer that is spreading like crazy or some other odd problem that is not a normal occurance.

Tubular pregnancies, I discount as not being apart of this type of discussion as the child is not located in the womb and can not live no matter what.

Answer 8

That is just WRONG thinking.....I believe that abortion is a less vicious path than a baby born to a hopeless crack addict who wanted an abortion, that although she loves the child, does not have the human strength to protect him/her from the pitfalls/predators of this planet...

Katherine needs to take off her rose-colored glasses and come work with me in an inner city hospital for a week, and see what the social structure of this great nation is really like.

Answer 9

She's saying that SHE, herself, would choose to die under those circumstances. She's not saying that she feels that there should be a law to force every woman to do what she's willing to do.

And, in answer to your question, IF you're a devout Catholic, that IS the "Party Line." And Catholic hospitals will save the life of the baby if it's a choice between saving the mother OR saving the baby in an emergency situation.

FWIW, many mothers would rather die if their babies could be saved and only one of them could be saved. Statistically, this is true for more first-time mothers than it is for women who already have children to take care of...for women with older children, those statistics go down, presumably because they want to be around to take care of their current children. Judging from those statistics, I'd imagine that this sort of thing might have a biological origin, as well as being a religious belief for some women. The desire to reproduce oneself is so strong (for most animals and people) that they'll willingly DIE in an attempt to mate, reproduce, etc. With a new mom, I'd guess that she's trusting that someone will be around to raise her infant in her absence.

Disclaimer: I, personally, do not hold any of those views. I'm only stating what OTHER people believe. (I'm one of those militant childfrees who says, "Better dead than bred!")

Answer 10

To make it clear from the outset, my answer is in line with the doctrine of the Catholic Church with regard to medical ethics.

No one EVER has to have an abortion to save their life. A clinical abortion is the intentional killing of the life in the womb for whatever reason. Note 'intention'.

A pregnant woman whose life is in danger may be advised to undergo a certain surgical procedure in order to save her life but which will also result in the death of the unborn child. Example - a cancerous womb. The surgeon advises a hysterectomy. This procedure will cause the child's death but the death of the unborn child is not the purpose of the surgery but a regrettable consequence, even though the death is foreseen as inevitable. A woman has the moral right to elect for such life-saving surgery although some very courageous and self-sacrificing mothers choose to swap their life for the child's. Plainly, this is not the same thing as an abortion. There are however, many other factors to consider e.g. a husband and young family who already need their wife/mother.

Obviously, the situation can be complicated by a host of medical issues but our principal (which I believe is eminently reasonable) is that intentional killing of an unborn child is utterly unacceptable but the incidental death of such a child through life-saving surgery carried out for the sake of the mother, while regrettable, is morally permissable.

For the sake of comparison, consider the issues involved in separating Siamese twins. No surgeon wants to kill a child but often an operation (to prevent them both dying!) will involve saving the life of one while the other dies as a consequence of the surgery despite the fact there was no deliberate intention to take his/her life.

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Just read this from Cyn-

"And, in answer to your question, IF you're a devout Catholic, that IS the "Party Line." And Catholic hospitals will save the life of the baby if it's a choice between saving the mother OR saving the baby in an emergency situation. "

That is emphatically not the teaching of Catholic Church and I would challenge anyone to produce a single authoritative document to prove otherwise.

As regards the Catholic hospitals assertion, again produce a document to verify this assertion. If medical employees of Catholic hospitals acted thus without the consent of the patient or next of kin, they would be sued from here to Kingdom Come. I recall no such plethora of suits. Likewise they would be hauled up before the competent ecclesiastical authorities for failing to comply with basic Catholic ethics.

These are no more than (widespread) caricatures of Church teaching.

Answer 11

Yes, unless the infant is completely unviable at that point. So pretty much, during the fifth month and later, yes.

If the mother cannot survive to month five, then the choice becomes her or the baby. Without her, the baby dies, so, the choice is both or the baby. Better to lose one than both.

And before you accuse me of being a right wing nutcase fundamentalist -- I'm a complete and total atheist who believes with my whole being that there is no god. I base this entirely on my research in biology and the philosophy of ethics.