Facebook removed a fact-check on anti-abortion video after Ted Cruz complained

1. https://www.thoughtco.com/stipulative-definition-1692143

A lot of those other factors seem to be failing for President Trump right now, so his administration and other Republican supporters are leaning into abortion as a topic for the next election.

The general election is not until early November 2020, but Democrats are getting a ton of air time now with their primary process, and Republicans don't have much success to sell right now other than all the federal judges they've confirmed. Basically these judges have been the #1 focus of the Republican-controlled Senate for the past 2 years.

There are a lot of reasons they have been focused on judges, but abortion is the easiest way to talk about it with large groups of Republicans.

The Catholic heirarchy views that no differently than other natural death, which, while it might be something better to reduce, is not an active moral wrong the way homicide (including, in the view of the heirarchy, direct abortion) is.

(I say “heirarchy” rather than “Church” here because the evidence suggest that the mass of the faithful, the body of the Church, aren't particularly in line behind the heirarchy on this issue—polls in the US, for instance, fairly consistently see virtually no difference in distribution of political views on abortion between Catholics and Americans generally.)

Note that the Catholic heirarchy is, in fact, opposed to all forms of conception that don't involve a sex act between married partners, including homologous artificial insemination within marriage.

> However, within the 'Catholic bubble', fertility clinics probably get as much ire.

They really don't; they rarely get mentioned outside of fairly academic discussions of the relevant theology, even by most of the people within the Church that engage in intense advocacy on abortion and/or family issues.

They do get some ire by extremists on the opposite side of the heirarchy’s position than the general society, the types that put out pamphlets or go on Catholic radio using arguments like “clones—and IVF babies—have no souls” (seriously). But they don't get a lot of attention in mainstream circles. If a couple asks their pastor about it, they’ll probably have the official positioned mentioned, but unlike abortion it's not something you're likely to hear mentioned in a Sunday sermon or as the focus of a heirarchy-led public advocacy campaign.

This description, unlike the quoted material that precedes it, is an inaccurate application of the principle of double effect on a number of levels.

The principle of double effect does not make an act that results in death through intentional acts with the actual and known-in-advance-to-be-likely effect of necessarily licit (even if done with good intent) or even not-homicide (nor does it make them not-abortion if it involves termination of a pregnancy and the incident death of the embryo) it makes them indirect homicide (and indirect abortion) rather direct homicide/abortion. Indirect homicide (including indirect abortion) is (as the material you quote before your summary notes) only licit when committed for proportional reasons (which would apply to termination of an ectopic pregnancy where there is a moral certainty that both the mother and embryo.)

That is—critically to the attempt to justify the videos creative definition of abortion and thesis that abortion is never medically necessary that depends on that definition, by using the principle of double effect—under the principle of double effect, termination of an ectopic pregnancy (with the accompanying and certain, but not actively sought as either an ends or means, death of the embryo) to save the mother’s life would generally be a licit (in part because of medical necessity, though that alone would be insufficient to make it licit) act of indirect homicide and abortion, not not-abortion or not-homicide.