Christian Healthcare Ethical Issues

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Christian Healthcare Ethics April 17, 2013 Ethical Issue Paper “A total 32.4% of these victims did not discover they were pregnant until they had already entered the second trimester; 32.2% opted to keep the infant whereas 50% underwent abortion and 5.9% placed the infant for adoption; an additional 11.8% had spontaneous abortion.” (National Center for Biotechnology Information, 2009) Many people believe that rape victims who become pregnant from this act have a good reason for them to have an abortion. In some medical situations, we have to ask ourselves if the procedures that are being performed on a patient are ethical or not. Should a 22 year-old rape victim have an abortion? To answer this question, we can apply the “four-box” method…show more content…
To have the abortion would avoid harm towards the patient, relieve mental suffering and lead toward the improvement of the patient’s mental health status. For example, if she would go through with the abortion, it would relieve the psychological suffering of the woman because she would know that her child would be from the man who raped her. Every time see would see her child, it would remind her of her traumatic experience and this could harm her mentally. Keeping the baby would not necessarily harm her health in a physical way, but there is a possibility that her mental health would be dramatically altered to a point where she would need to seek professional help to heal after being raped. Even though the goals of medicine are altered to fit mental health, they should still apply the same way to the…show more content…
If you dig deep enough into the case you can see that if she had the abortion it would at least be indifferent. It would be indifferent because the good would go towards the psychological well-being of the woman, but the bad could be the aborting of the fetus. Most people, especially those who are pro-life, would see it as a selfish act and be completely bad because she would be killing the fetus. I see this case passing the first step in double effect because I see the psychological effects of the situation. I can also see that when she was raped, it was not a morally good act so the decision to pass the first step would be a little more complicated than what it seems. I believe that this case however would not pass the “the good must come from the direct action, the bad from the indirect” rule. Even though we know she is a rape victim who became pregnant because of that incident, it would still directly harm the fetus. The woman might benefit from the abortion in more than one way, but her decision would kill the fetus and would not pass the second

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