Triage

I am extremely pro-life. But I'm not a black and white simplistic thinker. And for that reason, the one situation I waver on in my pro-life tendencies is the issue of triage.

This isn't just about abortion. It can happen in an accident on the freeway- where two victims come in to the emergency room, there are enough resources to only treat one, and the other has little chance of survival.

The old TV Show M*A*S*H had an excellent episode where one soldier had his aorta shot out, another soldier had a head would with 3/4ths of his brain missing- and they waited until the one with worse injuries died to harvest the aorta for the one they could save.

And yes, it happens in abortion as well. The liberal at church who attacked me so vehemently a few weeks ago, is an emergency room nurse. Back in the 1980s, before she became pro-choice, she was faced with a woman in the emergency room in a coma from a 7 month undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy. Today, there'd be an excellent chance of performing a cesarean and having both mother and child survive- back then it simply wasn't possible to save both. So in support of the seven other children the mother already had- they saved the mother.

I'm often asked what I'd like to see happen legally with abortion. Evangelium Vitae *requires* faithful Catholics to oppose legal abortion- in all instances.

But I'm not real sure we should punish doctors in a triage situation with jail. Here's another option that I think is more correct, yet recognizes that "Safe, Legal, and Rare" is a lie and that abortion is always and forever evil:

I’m for replacing *all* medical abortions after 20 weeks with cesarean birth, making all non-medically necessary abortions illegal, and *requiring* any doctor performing an abortion for *any* reason to fill out a triage report and pay for the decent burial and funeral of the fetus, which the mother should be required to attend, and in which the triage report is read into the public record. And Catholic women who find themselves in this situation should go to a Project Rachel weekend as soon as possible.

In other words, I recognize in this fallen world, abortions before 20 weeks *might* be necessary in a “save the patient you can because your skills aren’t good enough to save both” scenario. But evil should never be easy, and should always come with a cost. And that cost is often psychological as well as physical.