I’ve always heard the “mother’s life is in danger” canard. What are the types of conditions that mean aborting a baby can save a mother’s life? I’ve never gotten any details.
Dr. C.E. Koop, back when he was conservative, said in his many years of practice he had never seen a case where abortion would save a mother’s life.
Tubal pregnancy is the only condition I know of. In tubal pregnancy, if nothing is done, BOTH mother and child die. By removing the baby from the tube, you kill the baby but the mother lives. The procedure is viewed morally as saving the mother’s life. With or without intervention, the baby is guaranteed to die.
What is used as “life of the mother” is if she is depressed, suicidal, says she’ll kill herself if she can’t abort. It’s total crap.
Every pregnant woman’s heart — even in women who are completely healthy — becomes overloaded with work during pregnancy and even more so during labor and delivery. In a patient who ALREADY suffers from pulmonary hypertension and whose heart is already under stress, the risks are particularly high and can often result in the death of both the mother and the baby.
It's a very rare condition, but deadly.
Sometimes an apparently healthy woman develops Pulmonary hypertension during the pregnancy. It is not certain what causes this, but it may have something to do with abnormal levels of placental growth factor which lowers the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood --- particularly prevalent in women who already have sickle-cell disease.
> Like I said, rare but awful when it happens.
I think the way it's treated now is to deliver the baby even if it is extremely premature. If (I should say "when") the baby dies, that is foreseeable and very sad, but not deliberate (i.e. they're trying to save the baby too, though they know the chances of baby's survival are very low.) and is neither medically nor legally considered an abortion.