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PBA202H: Medical Dilemmas

Guiding Principles

The guiding principle, recognizing the human rights of the pre-born, is not that either the life/rights of the child or mother takes precedence over the other, but that we're dealing with two patients in any complication surrounding pregnancy and we need to do our best to attend to the well-being of both.

The Principle of Double Effect

http://www.unmaskingchoice.ca/training/classroom/circumstances/danger

Principles:

  1. Can't do evil (the action taken must be good or morally neutral)
  2. Can't intend evil (the evil effect must not be intended)
  3. Can't depend on evil (the evil effect must not be the means through which the good comes about – the ends doesn't justify the means, we cannot do evil so that good may come about)
  4. There needs to be a really good (proportionate) reason to tolerate evil as an unintended but foreseen side-effect

FIXME Dan Bader Nov 2008 tutorial

==== Catholic Health Care Services Ethical Directives The Ethical and Religious Directives established in the United States for Catholic Health Care Services provides thoughtful guidelines that respect both lives (not because they're Catholic, but because they're pro-life)1):

47. Operations, treatments, and medications that have as their direct purpose the cure of a proportionately serious pathological condition of a pregnant woman are permitted when they cannot be safely postponed until the unborn child is viable, even if they will result in the death of the unborn child.

49. For a proportionate reason, labor may be induced after the fetus is viable.”

Mother's Health

FIXME

Child's Health

1)
http://www.unmaskingchoice.ca/blog/2013/06/05/good-medical-care-not-abortion-answer-el-salvador