Posted on 09/04/2012 7:06:00 PM PDT by bronxville
This is not a zero sum game. An abortion = 100% guarantee of a death. A high risk pregnancy that is not aborted does NOT = 100% guarantee of death. Ensuring that there is NO abortion under any circumstances is the only way we can truly be pro life, and ensure that our position promotes more life than any alternate position.
Hope that makes sense.
It doesn’t make any sense and has nothing to do with any “case” that I made.
That's what I expected.
I put "abortion" in quotes because the procedure to save a woman's life when a pregnancy presents life threatening medical complications it is not considered an abortion in medical terms. In those situations the doctors will do everything they can to save both lives.
If the fetus is too young to save by any known method the medical battle for its life is already lost and the doctors won't waste time trying to do what they cannot do. That doesn't in any way imply that they made a moral or ethical decision to favor the mother's life over the baby's life. It's a simple recognition of the technical limitations of medicine.
If the fetus is old enough to potentially be saved then the ethical dilemma is the same as that of any triage situation. It is hoped that both patients can be saved but if time and technical abilities create limits that proscribe any reasonable chance of saving both patients then the one with the best chance of survival is the one they focus on. That would almost always be the mother. The chances that a situation would present where the fetus could be saved and the mother could not would be almost zero and has most likely never happened.
In an abortion there is never any intention to save the baby. The very purpose of abortion in the first place is to kill the baby. The baby is never considered a patient in an abortion.
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