Depends on the 11-year old whether a pregnancy would be a danger. For most it would be, but the doctors were of the opinion it wasn't in this case. At some point you have to trust experts, or does that only apply to global warming? The pregnancy was well past the point where I think abortion on demand must be an option and close to the point where I think it should not be an option, so despite that not being in Paraguayan law, it didn't have much of an effect.
This is a hard case, but it looks like other than they should have caught on to what was happening sooner, I can't say that I fault the Paraguayan authorities here. The fetus was close to viability, the female was not at immediate risk, and I don't believe rape or incest should make abortions easier to obtain. The sole valid justification for restricting abortion is to protect what is considered to be a human life and no matter how vile the biological father is, that vileness has no bearing on whether it is a human life.
I'm glad someone agrees with me. I struggle to see how the circumstances, as horrific as they are, would justify termination of a child who had nothing to do with the situation at hand.
It is not circumstances, but a woman's live. It is easy to reduce this to something "principled" when you are a man and will never be in a similar situation.
You got one ruined life vs. one terminated life. The ruined life belongs to a person already in existence and therefore takes precedence. Try to think of it as the girl being traumatized to the point of being mentally dead. You then got two kinds of killing to weigh against each other. This is the ethical dilemma. Forcing an 11 year old to carry her rapists child is cruel and inhuman. Far more than killing an unborn. Psychical death is not always the most horrible destiny. It is much too simplistic to view it that way.
Let me take the emphasized text as a starting point. We ask doctors to make triage decisions when multiple lives are at risk in accidents, disasters, and war. Doctors are trained to make these decisions in a way no one else is. This case should be no different. The Paraguayan law is flawed in that it fails to give doctors enough deference to make the decision either way, but as Ernest notes that might not have mattered in this case.
edit: I don't think Ernest is a troll.
I was hoping that no one on Atlas would defend this, but I guess I was wrong. Disgusting.
No real poster did, only a fake troll.
