The Ethics of Medical Homicide and MutilationO'Malley, Austin
Religion
The Ethics of Medical Homicide and Mutilation
O'Malley, Austin
Medical ethics
fewest ruptures after cesarean delivery. Olshausen had one in 120
cases, Leopold none in 232 cases, Schauta none in 177 cases, Küstner
none in 100 cases. Olshausen, in a series of 29 cases, operated on
two patients twice and upon three patients three times. As early as
1875, Nancrede of Philadelphia had operated the sixth time on the
same woman. In such cases the uterus is commonly so broadly attached
by adhesions to the belly-wall that it is opened without getting into
the peritoneal cavity. In 150 cases of repeated section collected by
Polak in 1909 the mortality was only 5 per cent.
[110] _Jour. Amer. Med. Assoc._, December 1, 1917.
A woman may not be sterilized by having the uterus removed, by
fallectomy, or otherwise, solely to obviate danger or morbidity from
subsequent pregnancies and cesarean deliveries. Such a sterilization
would be a grave mutilation without a present excusing danger, and
it would render the primary end of marriage always impossible. Such
sterilization of a woman is in contravention to the decretal of
Gregory[111] as given in the chapter on Vasectomy. It is also against
the bull _Effraenatam_ of Sixtus V., who extended all penalties
prescribed for abortionists to those who give women drugs which cause
sterility, and to those who purposely prevent the development of the
fetus or in any manner abet the deed; and the penalties are to be
applied to the women themselves who willingly use these means. These
penalties are enumerated in the chapter on Abortion. The Congregation
of the Holy Office, May 22, 1895, answered negatively the following
question: "Si sia lecita la practica sia attiva sia passiva di un
procedimento il quale si propone intenzionalmente come fine espresso
la sterilizatione della donne?"[112]
[111] _Corpus Juris_, lib. v, tit. xii, c. 5.
[112] Is any active or passive procedure licit which is
undertaken with the express end of sterilizing a woman?
The reason for these laws is that any act which deprives one of the
power to generate, and which prevents conception and makes the semen
fail of its end, is against the chief intrinsic end of marriage and
any benefit that arises therefrom, which is the good of offspring.
The act is also against the intrinsic end of the semen, which is to
generate; and since the semen cannot possibly effect its end, the
conjugal act degenerates into an equivalent of onanism. This act of
sterilization, done not to save the whole body from immediate danger,
is intrinsically evil, and therefore unjustifiable.
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