Blood Transfusions and Medical Ethics
I had a question posed to be that asked if getting a blood transfusion could ever be a mortal sin. This falls into the category of Catholic moral ethics that discerns the difference between ordinary means and extraordinary means in terms of medical care. Generally as a Catholic you have the obligation to pursue ordinary means of medical care both for yourself and for others, particularly those you have a specific fiduciary duty to care for, namely children, etc. This is where ethics comes in because with the huge advancements in medical care in the last 50 years, the goal post has shifted in the medical profession as to procedures that are now generally considered ordinary means which at one point would have been in the extraordinary means category. So, there is a lot of grey area within the medical profession and even among Catholic theologians in terms of what is ordinary means and what is extraordinary means. Part of the problem with medical ethics an...