Case 2. Medical Abortion

Caia, a Catholic mother of a family and already four months pregnant, was suffering from almost continual vomiting. The physician summoned to her declared that the indicated remedy for the vomiting was abortion, and that unless she procured it, she herself with the fetus would most certainly die within one or two months. If abortion were procured in time, the fetus could be baptized, and the mother herself would very probably be saved. Caia asked her confessor whether in the stated circumstances she could bring about abortion. Hence it is asked:

1. By what principal arguments is it defended that abortion is lawful in order to save the mother?

2. How is it proved that abortion is always intrinsically evil?

3. What is to be said of the case?

1. What were the chief arguments by which it was argued that abortion is allowed in order to save the mother’s life?

We are not concerned here with the arguments used by materialists, who look upon the child before birth as a portion of the mother which may be destroyed if it threatens her life, and see no difficulty in killing one in order that the other's life may be preserved when both can not be saved. We are only concerned with theologians, some of whom thought that in such cases as we are now discussing medical abortion may be permitted. They defended this view on the following grounds: Abortion is usually caused by puncturing the membranes, and this may be done to relieve the mother when pregnancy is threatening her life, though the puncturing also causes abortion and the consequent death of the fetus. In a collision between the right to life of the mother and that of the fetus, the fetus may be said to cede its right in favor of the mother, especially as otherwise both would perish, and the fetus would not be baptized; whereas if aborted, it can be baptized.

2. How is it shown that abortion is always intrinsically wrong?

Direct abortion is always intrinsically wrong because it is direct killing of the innocent. For to cause abortion is to deprive the fetus of the medium in which alone its life can be preserved, which is to kill it directly just as much as thrusting a man under water or into a chamber exhausted of oxygen is killing him directly. As, then, the puncturing of the membranes is the direct killing of the fetus, it is not allowable, even when necessary to save the life of the mother; for evil may not be done that good may come. Nor can the fetus renounce its right to life in favor of the mother, and permit itself to be killed directly ; for not man but God alone is the Lord of life and death. In a collision of rights the owner of the better right takes something to himself which is his; his better right gives him no title to take away that which is another's, and so collision of rights can not be applied to justify direct abortion; it takes away the life of the innocent victim.

3. The case. From what has been said it is clear that Caia may not consent to abortion, as the fetus is not viable. She must ask the doctor to prescribe some other remedy or palliative which will at least save her conscience if not her life. This solution is confirmed by the decree of the Holy Office, July 24, 1895, which declared that such medical abortion as is described in this case is not lawful.¹

1 See Lehmkuhl, Theol. Mor., vol. i, n. 844, ed. 9.