what are your feeling as this type of abortion?

Question

My husband and his family and myself got into this conversation last night i was wondering what are your thoughts on this. They're christians and im a JW we where all split on the thought of this so you know abortion is against biblical principles you'd never get an abortion but what if you had a tubular(sp?) pregnancy? (where the fertilized egg implants itself in your (significant others) falopian tube) the baby stays there and grows you both die, you get the baby out the its technically an abortion. what are your thoughts on this and what would you/did you do in this situation?

this isn't my personal experience i was just wondering what other people thought about this

Answer 1

This is not really an abortion situation. The baby cannot survive when there is a tubal pregnancy. So, there IS no choice about whether to end the baby's life or not. There already can be no baby.

A friend underwent this trial and had surgery to remove the fallopian tube. The elders in the congregation viewed it as a miscarriage.

Answer 2

From a religious perspective you would not get an abortion because of the simple fact that its against your views from a biblical perspective. Getting the aborition would mean you were playing God (deciding for yourself that you would live and the baby would die).

The same could also be said about not getting the abortion (you are deciding in effect that both will die) however the difference is that since you are religious that would mean you believe that it was God's will that the pregancy take its course that way since it was his will that created the pregnancy. Hence what God 'wants' is for the pregnancy to continue its natural course, which in turn means you as a follower of God should not get the abortion and leave it in the hands of God.

Personally I am not religious (I am agnostic) and I think that common sense would tell you the right thing to do in this situation is to do the abortion, even if you are against abortions, because the baby will die anyway, and unless the abortion is done the woman will also die. In effect you could think of the abortion as not 'killing' the baby since the baby would die regardless, but in effect it is saving the mother.

Answer 3

I am pro-life, and here's what's important to remember about ectopic pregnancies:

1. If the baby is outside the womb but inside the abdomen, he may be able to survive. (This situation is exceedingly rare.) If the baby is inside the fallopian tube, he has zero chance for survival.

2. In the vast majority of tubal ectopic pregnancies, the baby will die naturally and be reabsorbed into the mother's body. The doctor can keep an eye on the situation by ultrasound.

3. If the doctor sees that the baby is NOT being reabsorbed and that the tube is in danger of rupturing, he can surgically remove the baby. The baby is usually dead by this point and therefore it is not an abortion.

4. Doctors often encourage women to take a drug to directly kill the baby in the tube. I do not believe this is ethical. Sometimes, a woman is pregnant with a baby in her tube and a baby in the womb at the same time. If she takes the drug, it can kill both babies. This has actually happened:
http://rightremedy.org/tracts/9

In summary, if someone came to me and said they had an ectopic pregnancy in their tube, I would encourage them to have their doctor monitor them to see if the baby can be allowed to die naturally and be reabsorbed into their body. I would encourage them NOT to take a drug to kill the baby. If necessary, the baby can be removed from the tube surgically. I do not consider this an abortion in the usual sense of the word.

Answer 4

I have often pondered this myself. It has to come out or kill the mother. But I have wondered why they can't just move it while they are in there. I think I tend to think of it as surgery-period. I'm totally opposed to abortion in all forms, regardless of reason though. To me, that's not abortion.Because the goal isn't to kill the child. I can't say what I'd do because I can never have children.But I know someone who had a ectopic pregnancy. They remove the baby to keep the fallopian tubes from bursting.Sorry, if that's no help. It's a hard question w/ no good answer/solution. I say pray and follow God's lead.

Answer 5

One should avoid to parse words from the bible and "biblical" principles. Fundamentalists have often forgotten or have never understood that the bible was written by righteous wise men, who lived in their formative world. It would be totally absurd to take every written word literally with the many contradictions in the bible. Thousands of religious thinkers over the millenniums have tried to explain these. The religious authors were not almighty or omnipotent in their wisdom. They established the laws and regulations of commonwealth and belief. They could not cover everything in our life, but they gave the basic structure for the believing people. Therefore, we should not hesitate to apply one "biblical" principle and that is to act as free agents within our ethical framework. Without any convoluted and misleading thinking. So, if a pregnancy is not as it was intended by the biological process, it has no ethical or religious value.

Answer 6

In a tubal pregnancy the baby is going to die regardless (yes, there have been babies that have survived, but there are only two or three instances in the history of the world) and rarely does the mother survive if left untreated.

In my opinion, not aborting a tubal fetus is tantamount to murdering the woman.

Answer 7

A tubal pregnancy is not viable. The baby will die. And the mother will die. I am fully and outright against abortion. I believe it is murder and should never, ever happen...unless....
-you have a situation like this, where the life of the mother is in danger
-incest or rape

Answer 8

I'm Roman Catholic and had an ectopic pregnancy. I consulted a Roman Catholic Priest of high authority who gave his blessing to go ahead with the operation. This is not classed as an abortion as there was no hope of survival for the baby and it was not necessary for both of us to die.

best wishes

Star

Answer 9

Where did you get the idea that bible was against abortion??? There is no mention of abortion in the Bible! These are all modern debates, created by modern churches.

And the old testament is full of stories about sacrificing children (and I mean children, not fetuses). Killing unwanted children was a very common practice during the Biblical times. It is not even clear if the Bible is squarely opposed to that, since children were not considered full human beings.

Answer 10

Proverbs 4:6,7 6Do not forsake wisdom, and she will protect you;... 7 Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding.

This scripture isn't just talking about the wisdom of God but it's also talking about the common sense wisdom that God has given the human race. God created doctors, science, and the ability for people to be healed or cured through them. God gave us the intelligence that has grown by leaps and bounds since the first man. Do you think God would give us something like that and then tell us not to use it for the purpose in which it was created? God knew that man would need to know how to take care of himself and the world we live in. And God wants us all to live healthy, productive, and purposed lives. Of course He would not want a woman who had an ectopic pregnancy to suffer death because her body didn't place the embryo in the right spot. Furthermore, God created both the woman and the embryo; He knew it would happen that way. Look at it this way; maybe it’s a way of our further advancement in wisdom to have to deal with increasingly complex medical, scientific, and technological circumstances. I just can't believe that God would command a woman to die for the sake of an embryo that has no chance of life at all. Mistakes happen in the body. Disease happens. Cancer happens. To not remove the embryo would be the same as choosing to die not removing anything else such as cancer in the body. God wants us to live an abundant life. It can't be lived suffering the excruciating pain of an ectopic pregnancy onto death.