Is Abortion Ever Permissible?

Is Abortion Ever Permissible?

Some people hold the position that while abortion should not be allowed in most cases, it should be permissible in cases of rape, incest, and the health of the mother (“health” here defined as not a life-threatening condition yet still a source of pain for the mother).
 
Is it possible to have this position as a Catholic and a person of goodwill?  
 
Abortion is in an intrinsically evil act, meaning that no intention, no matter how seemingly reasonable that intention is, could justify it. Admittedly rape, incest and the health of the mother are unfortunate and in some cases horrible realities that cause great suffering to the mother and others. In the case of rape, the mother has to bear a child half of whose DNA is from a man who violently attacked her. And to not have optimal health is obviously regrettable.  But are those reasons serious enough to justify ending a life?

The person in the womb is a person with dignity. As calamitous as the three circumstances named are, none of them are proportionately grave enough to end a person’s life.
 
There is one case in which allowing the death of the child in the womb is “permissible”, and that is one in which there is a proportionate reason, namely that the life of the mother is at stake. This is not, however, an “abortion”, since abortion is defined as an intentional, direct killing of a fetus. In this case I am about to outline, the death of the preborn child is not intended or the result of a direct action.
 
In the case where a mother’s life is truly at risk, she is pregnant, and the surgery or medicine that would save the life of the mother would put the life of the child at risk, we must look to the principle of double effect for guidance. That principle says that it is morally allowable to perform an act that has an evil effect, under certain conditions. For example, a mother could take medical treatment or undergo a surgery that is necessary to save her life, even if she knows that the medical treatment could end the life of her preborn baby.  
 
There are four conditions all of which must be met for this to be morally acceptable, however (source: Milton A. Gonsalves, Fagothey’s Right & Reason: Ethics in Theory and Practice.  9^th Edition, page 40):

1. The act itself must be good in itself or at least indifferent. In this example, there is nothing wrong with a person taking medicine or undergoing surgery to try to save one’s life.  It is a good act in and of itself.
2. The good intended must not be obtained by means of the evil effect. This condition would be violated in the case of a person who has an abortion in the case of rape, for example.  In that case, the person may have the good intention of eliminating anything that reminds her of the man who raped her, but this would not permit her to abort her child, since this would mean that the evil act (the abortion of the child) is the means used to achieve the “good intention”.  As the principle states, the good intended must not be obtained by means of the evil effect.  In the scenario of the mother who needs lifesaving medicine or surgery, on the other hand, the mother’s intention is a good one, to save her own life, and the means she uses to do so are not evil (taking medicine or undergoing necessary surgery). The killing of the fetus is not the means by which she attains her goal of saving her life. In fact, the mother does not even want the death of her child to occur; if it does, it would be a tragic and unwanted ‘incidental by-product’ of her decision to have treatments or surgery.
3. The evil effect must not be intended for itself but only permitted. The mother would be thrilled if both she and the baby survived; she is not intending to kill her child.
4. There must be a proportionately grave reason for permitting the evil effect. In this case, there is proportionality. The child’s life is put at risk, but the reason is that the doctor is trying to save the life of another, the mother. They are at least equivalent. Rape, incest and the health of the mother would not be proportionate reasons to end another person’s life.

The mother, of course, should make certain that the treatment contemplated is truly the only effective remedy, given that its effects may end the life of her child.
 
Thus, the death of a child in the womb is “permissible” only in the case where the doctor is trying to save the life of the mother and all four conditions of the principle of double effect are met.  The child’s death is not intended or the result of a direct action, and thus should not be called an “abortion”.  The child’s death is a terribly unfortunate “by-product” of another action proportionately grave, again the attempt to save the life of the mother.