Another amateur attempt at moral reasoning

I held off commenting on this highly-charged moral issue until the dust settled a bit. As most people know, last week in Brazil, a nine year-old girl turned up pregnant with twins. Her pregnancy was the result of her step-father repeatedly raping her. It is difficult to imagine a case that would provoke more emotion. Add to this the public announcement that Archbishop José Cardoso Sobrinho, of Recife and Olinda, excommunicated the girl's mother and the doctors who performed an abortion to save the life of the pregnant 9 year-old.

Archbishop Rino Fisichella
The dust settled for me over the weekend when the voice of reason and conscience was raised in the Vatican by Archbishop Rino Fisichella, in an article he wrote for yesterday's edition of the Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano. As with most high-ranking prelates in the Vatican, Archbishop Fisichella is not just any old someone. He is the head of the Pontifical Academy for Life. Expressing the same concern as did the girl's doctor, namely that the life of pregnant 9 year-old was endangered, not just by giving birth, but by carrying the twins to a point at which they could survive on their own, His Excellency wrote that the excommunications were unwarranted because her mother and doctors did it in order to save the life of the 9 year-old.

Predictably, far from settling the dust, this pronouncement has stirred things up once again, especially among those who, while staunchly pro-life, are unfamiliar with the Church's moral teaching. I surmise that the moral principle under which the abortion was performed was the principle of double-effect, which sets forth the criteria for acting in a way that has both good and bad consequences (i.e., a "double effect"). It states that an action having an unintended, harmful effect (e.g., an early death) is defensible on four conditions as follows:

 the nature of the act is itself good (e.g., its nature is to relieve someone of pain or distress);
 the intention is for the good effect and not the bad;
 the good effect outweighs the bad effect in a situation sufficiently grave to merit the risk of yielding the bad effect (e.g., risking a patient's death to stop intolerable pain); and
 the good effect (relieving pain) does not go through the bad effect

Here is where my amateur attempt comes in: If I understand the reasoning in this case correctly (I readily admit that I may not), the four conditions were met in something like the following way:

 The abortions were performed to save the life of 9 year-old mother, as it is certainly mortally dangerous for a girl of that age either to give birth naturally or carry the children in her until such a time as they can be born and live
 the intention is to save the life of the 9 year-old mother, who is the victim of a horrible crime, not to take the lives of the twins, whose survival was doubtful at best
 the good effect in this case certainly outweighs the bad effect, as it is, again, likely that none of the three would survive, at least by doing this the life of the 9 year-old girl is saved
 in this case, while the good effect goes through, as it were, the bad effect, it is mitigated by the fact the lives of all three were seriously imperiled anyway

This is a moral judgment far superior to what appears to be an unfortunate reaction on the part of the local ordinary. It is a judgment that is in perfect harmony with authentic Christian morality. Archbishop Fisichella's judgment is not one determined by a false sense of mercy, by sentiment, nor is it caving in to public opinion. With words directed to the little girl in the center of this storm, Archbishop Fisichella wrote: "There are others who merit excommunication and our pardon, not those who have allowed you to live and have helped you to regain hope and trust." Amen.

Thanks to Deacon Greg Kandra, writing over at The Deacon's Bench, for bringing this much needed clarification to my attention. This post began with comments I made in the discussion that resulted from Deacon Greg's post.

No matter what happened afterwards, this is just a heart-breaking event. Oh, the things we do to each other. I was moved by what yesterday's Gospel said of those who "began to believe in his name": "Jesus would not trust himself to them because he knew them all, and did not need anyone to testify about human nature. He himself understood it well" (Jn 2:23).