I was reading a story where one of the jersey shores wife participants had a miscarriage and they said they were going to try again… and there was a story about another celeb “finally having a child after so many miscarriages” that i cant find
Now I understand that most people will try again… but when or if does it cross the line from “keep trying” to what a relative considers manslaughter?
(her daughter knowing she couldn’t carry a child refused to take or do anything to not become pregnant and had at least 4-5 we know of…)
Of course it might depend on how far along it happens to be considered life…
A miscarriage (a normal one, not a trauma- or poison- or disease-induced one) is just a natural process. It can be pretty traumatic, especially if fairly far along (believe me, I know intimately how traumatic that can be) but it’s not something anybody actually did. There doesn’t need to be any negligence involved, it’s often just the body rejecting something that was never going to go to term anyway. Adding accusations of manslaughter on top of the existing trauma is … unkind at best.
Add to that the number of women who have one or even several miscarriages, and then go on to have a healthy baby anyway, and I don’t see how you can judge trying as immoral at all.
I’m trying to think how it could be. Maybe if you’re really anti-abortion? But if it’s for religious reasons (I’m assuming it almost always is?) then maybe it’s up to God whether you carry to term. So I don’t see how it could be a problem.
Maybe you could make some argument about straining medical resources but I’m not sure I could buy that.
My views of the preborn are from the Bible. Yes they are a soul and do have conscientious (Luke 1:41) , however, even though their human life body is being created inside the mother by God , their soul is not inside their body yet, but in ‘hidden places’ underground with God in the womb (Ps 139:15). My take on the womb is that it is biblically not the uterus. There are many biblical cites for the word womb which is used more in the context that it is not in the woman’s body or not completely inside and is something very strange to us. The best I can piece it together the womb is described as a gateway between realms which God can open and shut which has one side inside the mother, the other side is also part of the mother, in this the uterus is just one side of basically a ‘stargate’ to use a SciFi term, but both sides are of the mother.
As such miscarriages such as the OP describes and even abortion, is not a moral issue. Also to me it is the reason the Bible does not mention abortion. It’s just closing the door, not ending the life. The Bible is, among other things, a guideline for life, and the reason that it doesn’t even mention abortion would seem to me because it’s a non-issue, ironically this hot button topic overflowing with moral issues, judgements and condensations on the human side is a total non-issue to God as God has not given us the ability to kill the unborn, just close the door.
With that said I would also add what I believe to be revelation of what it’s like in the womb, and from that it’s just a natural transition to life with God and the soul is pulled out of the body before any destruction of the body. No pain, no condemnation, no anger towards anyone. It’s a simple come with me your body is about to be destroyed, and the soul goes.
Did her mother think the daughter was just being careless? I find that hard to believe. The first part of pregnancy is terrible–that’s when you have morning sickness and when you are profoundly exhausted. And miscarriages are usually not medical emergencies (assuming they happen in the first few weeks) but they aren’t fun.
When you are trying for a baby, you get a lot of shit from people who, for reasons I don’t understand, feel offended or frustrated by infertility in others. From almost day one, it’s “maybe you just aren’t meant to have children” and “have you considered that God/the Universe/whatever has a different plan for you?”. I mean, women who are trying the most basic interventions get this shit. So adding “Is it possible you are a murderer?” to the list seems cruel.
There’s also lots of women who have several miscarriages and go on to have a healthy baby.
I believe that all deliberate attempts to reproduce, when the world is already so overcrowded, is somewhat selfish and immoral. I don’t believe doing so after a miscarriage is any worse though.
The “manslaughter” aspect is a complete non-starter.
The only way I could consider it in the least “immoral” was if I questioned it in terms of medical resources being consumed, or if it imposed a significant emotional strain on those most immediately involved.
I have sympathy for couples whom I’ve heard of who experienced multiple miscarriages. I cannot imagine how challenging that would be on so many fronts. Personally, I do not know when I would encourage my wife that we should stop trying.
a) It’s never an issue as far as I’m concerned. A fertilized ovum is (to me) quite obviously alive, and quite obviously human, but has no investment in that life yet, no consciousness or aspirations.
b) I don’t comprehend the singular horror attached to killing people. There are far far worse things you can do to a person than kill them. People eventually die anyway. What you do to a person when you kill them is rob them of the future experiences they would otherwise have. But coercion and torture and otherwise imposing horrible experiences on a person seems far worse to me. In the case of a miscarriage, there’s not much risk of protracted physical pain, zero risk of significant emotional agony, experience of coercion or moral compromise etc. The individual who is experiencing those things in this situation is the woman who keeps getting pregnant in hopes of giving birth, and in most cases probably her partner and other friends and family members, and they’re presumably doing this volitionally.
Yes, thank you, AHunter3. I’ve been pointing out for a long time that a zygote is, unambiguously, not just alive but human life, but that that fact is completely irrelevant. When does personhood begin, now that’s both a much more relevant and much more difficult question.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say immoral, but I think I see where the OP is coming from.
It’s one thing if you want 2-3 kids and you have a few miscarriages along the way. That’s how the biology works out. But I’ve heard tales of couples who have some really high number of miscarriages- like 6-8, who are still trying to have a kid (or another kid). At some point, I have to question their motivation- clearly there’s something that’s not working in the usual way, and at that point, they know it and keep on with the same behavior, knowing full well that they’re liable to end up with the same outcome. I want to point out that this isn’t good old Catholic Roulette I’m talking about here, but deliberate attempts to conceive a child.
I’m not sure if that’s immoral or not, but it’s definitely a willful disregard of the facts.
Why? I mean, let’s say you have a 1/4-chance of having a viable pregnancy, because you and your spouse each have an unfortunate gene. Six or even 8 miscarriages would not be wildly improbable, but you’d have pretty good odds of having a successful pregnancy eventually, like within a dozen pregnancies.
I suppose I could see an argument if a woman had a medical condition such that it was possible for her to get pregnant but impossible for her to gestate the baby to the point where a viable birth was possible. If a miscarriage was the only possible result of a pregnancy, then it would seem like the pragmatic thing to do would be to take action to prevent pregnancy in the first place. Pragmatism and morality are not the same thing, but I think it’s moral to try to prevent a traumatic situation from happening. Is the converse true when applied to this hypothetical? I don’t have a definite opinion, but I can understand an argument that inaction is immoral.
That said, I don’t know if such a medical condition actually exists. I believe that’s one for General Questions.
My mother had several miscarriages during the first four years of her marriage. She was told to just accept that she was sterile. When she went to her Gyn after missing her period four times in a row, he wanted to have a D and C then and there, because it was “impossible” that she’d be pregnant; the cause of the missing periods clearly had to be some kind of tumor.
The tumor typing this has two younger brothers.
Forgive my selfishness, but I’m kind of glad my parents didn’t stop trying.
I don’t see any moral problem with having multiple miscarriages. The closest I could get would be people having multiple children with severe disabilities or way more children then they can take care of.