All people have an inherent right of self defense. It is a modernist, humanist and false interpretation of Scripture to deny the right of self defense embodied in it.
The right of self defense is why traditionally if the mother’s or child’s life was in danger, as doctors tried to save both mother and child, if that became impossible, certainly they would seek to save the mother’s life. They did not set out to end either life, but to save them both. The decision to give up on saving the child’s life and to save the mother’s life was only in cases where there was a forced decision between the two. The reasoning is that the mother has a right of self defense and the child being born is not entitled to kill his or her mother that the child might live.
Sometimes mothers, like one recently who refused cancer treatments, make a decision to give their unborn child an almost certain chance of survival while unselfishly reducing their own if that would most certainly kill their unborn child. This particular case was not a decision to commit suicide, which is also defies the commandments of Scripture. Instead, it was a case where there was a strong probability that the mother would have died anyway; her chances of survival with treatment were by no means 100%, but far less, and her unborn child most certainly would have been killed by the cancer treatments. It’s critically important to note that the unborn child was not responsible for the mother’s cancer and posed no threat to the mother’s health in and of themself. In that case, the mother was laying her life down for her child’s much the same as a righteous soldier does - “no greater love”.
Any other case of abortion is a case of the mother or other people desiring that the child never be born and taking the life of the unborn child, which is unequivocally murder.
Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution requires the President to take the following oath of office:
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
As far as enforcing the laws passed by Congress, by all means they should be seeing that this is done.
That being said, one can hardly say that the Constitution was intended to condone the murder of unborn children, rather it was most certainly intended to preserve life up until the Lord takes it in his time. So we now have legal precedent in the United States which is at odds with the intent of the Constitution - actually in an enormous number of ways, this being only one of the more heinous.
Life does indeed begin at conception, to say otherwise is trying to escape natural law (that law revealed to us by God through the Bible) for our own convenience through invented technicalities, which are acknowledged to be a farce in the case of a ninth-month abortion but somehow people hold their nose and tolerate with a second-month abortion. We have sunk to the depths of institutionalized murder of convenience.
Those who seek to retain the legal option to kill their children in the womb may take generations to come to the realization that this option hurts them much more than it helps them. While a President may not be able politically and legally to right this wrong on the first day of their administration, if they are to fulfill their oath of office in good conscience they most certainly must make it their business to work towards that goal.
Please don’t make the “life of the mother” issue into a “self-defense” matter. That’s profoundly mistaken. Self-defense applies when a guilty aggressor threatens me or those for whom I’m responsible. The baby is innocent, so cannot be a guilty agressor.
Instead, if the pregnancy poses a threat to the life of the mother we have two innocent lives involved.
Hence, we have a moral obligation to take care of the health of both. If the treatment of the mother results in the death of the baby it is NOT self-defense but double-effect. Assuming the method of treating the mother was the best possible choice taking account of both lives, if the baby dies, it is a double effect of the treatment of the mother and is morally legitimate.
It is NOT self-defense.
The mother is free but not morally obligated to sacrifice her life by refusing treatment or choosing a treatment that risks her life in order to save the baby’s life.
Self-defense is not involved in any way whatsoever.