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" So I guess you have to go after the author to stop the abuse of his mother? Get real. Yes, a woman will have to bear a child for nine months that she didn't choose. Guess what: it happens all the time, even with married people. Moral people for whom murder is not an option just deal with it as they always have. Immoral people kill because they can get away with it."

Your response makes no sense to me. What do you mean "go after the author"?

Abortion is the killing. Killing can be murder as it is with most abortions, or it can be manslaughter, or self-defense.

One can take the position that killing in self defense is the same as murder, but that is an extreme position that is not shared by me, or 99 percent of the Christians of various faiths.

When people in the pro-life movment take the extreme position that a child should not be aborted to protect the women's life, they do harm to the pro-life movment. The result of this extreemism is that more babies are aborted. Understand, the number of cases where the women's life is at risk is very, very small in this country.

A tubular pregnancy, for instance, without an abortion will end in the death of the mother. Assuming (as I do) that life begins at conception, this abortion takes a childs life. How would you handle this? Let the mother die?

If you don't support abortions to save the life of the mother, you must. Unless you think there is a middle ground where sometimes it's acceptable... or would be for you.

I am very much pro life. To the extent that I would like to see women who have abortions charged with and prosicuted and jailed for life for murder, along with the doctors that preformed them just nas in any other homicide case. However, self defense is not murder. Never has been, never will be...

Would I personally kill someone that was going to do me bodly harm, but short of taking my life? Probably not. but I would be justified in doing so if I did. The standard for someone doing bodly harm to my wife or daughter or grand daughter would be much lower.

>>>If you don't support abortions to save the life of the mother, you must.<<<

The Moral Question of Abortion

The Health and Life of the Woman

Is abortion justified when it is deemed necessary for preserving the health or life of the woman? Cases where the woman's health or life is threatened by pregnancy are now extremely rare, perhaps so rare as to be virtually non-existent. For example:

According to one obstetrician, "After many years' work in several large gynecological hospitals, I have never yet seen a woman's life in danger, necessitating abortion." In contrast, he adds, "I have seen two extremely sick women offered abortions because of serious heart-lung disease: both refused, and both delivered normal children, normally... Similarly, Dr. David Decker of the Mayo Clinic states that there are "few, if any, absolute medical indications for the therapeutic abortion in the present state of medicine."⁵⁸

To evaluate such cases, I suggest the following three principles. The first two have already been noted.

There must be full and equal concern for all persons involved, the woman and the child. Each is fully a person, each has the same dignity and preciousness of being a person; each has the same right to live as the other.
We cannot kill innocent person B to save person A.
Where complications arise, we must try to save both the woman and the child. Dr. Everett Koop describes this situation:

When a woman is pregnant, her obstetrician takes on the care of two patients - the mother-to-be and the unborn baby. If, toward the end of the pregnancy, complications arise that threaten the mother's health, he will take the child by inducing labor or performing a Caesarean section.

His intention is still to save the life of both the mother and the baby. The baby will be premature and perhaps immature depending on the length of gestation. Because it has suddenly been taken out of the protective womb, it may encounter threats to its survival. The baby is never willfully destroyed because the mother's life is in danger.⁵⁹

One person is saved, the other person would be saved if that were possible. So, one saves one person and regretfully fails to save the other. The other is not killed. To apply a medical procedure to person A instead of to B - where both need it to survive but where it can be given only to one - is to save A, and to unwillingly withhold treatment from B. Unwillingly withholding treatment, in such a situation, differs sharply from doing something that kills. So, if it is the child who is to be saved, treatment is unwillingly withheld from the woman, but she is not killed. Conversely, if it is the woman who is to be saved, treatment is unwillingly withheld from the child, but he is not killed. No abortion is performed. To withhold treatment from the child - because it cannot be given both to him and to the woman, and the woman is selected instead - is not to abort the child.

If two people are bitten by a poisonous snake and I have an antidote serum for one but not for the other, I give it to one and withhold it from the other. I regretfully cannot save him but must let him die. I have not killed him. So too with the mother and child.

Difficult situations failing under these principles typically involve removal of the child. What kinds of "removal" are justified, and what kinds are not?

We may remove the child to save the woman, even if the child dies as a result. A typical case is the removal of the child in an ectopic pregnancy, where she begins to develop in the fallopian tube instead of in the uterus. If nothing is done, both mother and child will die. Clearly it is right to remove the child in order to save the mother. What is intended is only her removal, not her death. And the method of removal is not one that actually constitutes killing, but is genuine removal. Death follows as a result of the moving, it is clearly not intended. A similar situation occurs when a child is removed from a cancerous womb in order to save the woman, even though the child's death is foreseen.
We may remove the child to save the child, if his death is otherwise certain, even if there is a risk to the mother. Just as we may remove the child to save the mother, if her death is otherwise certain, even if there is a risk to the child.
The primary kind of "removal" that is not justified is an action that is in fact the killing of the child but labeled "removal." Thus suction, where the child is torn to pieces, is a form of removal (as are all the other methods). The removal is accomplished by means of the suction. But the act of suctioning is itself the act of killing. Such acts of removal are really acts of murder. Abortion is that kind of act.
Removal, to be justified, must be genuine removal. It cannot be a de facto killing, which is then labeled "removal."
Another kind of removal that is not justified is the case in which it means the certain death of one person (as an unintended result), while it only increases the chance of life for another. We cannot remove a sick child to increase his chances of life if doing so would result in the certain death of the woman. So too, we cannot remove a child to increase the chance of life for his mother, if doing so would result in his certain death.

It is extremely important to be clear about these matters, specifically the three principles and the justified and unjustified forms of removal. The failure to be clear on these things accounts for the fact that a large majority of people who see the wrongness of abortion for all the reasons indicated here, nevertheless want to make an exception for the life of the woman. They fail to distinguish clearly between justified removals - where no one's death is intended - and abortion, which is intentional killing. Or they fail to see that not saving the child - because both cannot be saved, and one tries to save the woman - is radically different from killing the child by abortion. If one wants to save the woman (instead of the child), and one is not clear about these things, confusing them with abortion, one is likely to consider these procedures forms of abortion, and thus to favor abortion when necessary to save the life of the woman.

The view defended here is not, as so often charged, an extreme view. It is simply the result of a careful analysis of such cases by applying the two basic principles that all persons are to count equally, and that we may not kill one innocent person to save the life of another.

Abortion for rape is wrong because it destroys the innocent child. It is also wrong because it is an assault on the woman. It poses grave risks of harm to her, psychologically, physically, for possible future pregnancies, even for her life. Women are the second victims of abortion, in addition to their murdered babies. What is needed is a positive approach, of true understanding, loving support, and counseling. Abortion is not a solution to the problem of rape - it destroys one person and poses grave dangers for another.

The Deep Connection

Abortion is wrong because it is the destruction of a child. It is wrong because it is an assault on a woman. There is a deep connection between these two. The woman and the child, though absolutely distinct as individual persons, are nonetheless intimately joined together, not only physically but in a meaningful personal way. The child is entrusted to her, sheltered and secured in her being. She carries the child in herself Abortion is a violent attack on this intimate union. The child is forcibly ripped out, against his instinctive clinging to remain in his secure resting place. In this way, abortion is also an attack on the woman. Such an attack is bound to take its toll, physically and psychologically. That abortion is bad for women is what we should expect; it would be strange if it were not so. When it seems not to be, when women say they are better off having had an abortion, one wonders whether this optimism does not mask a deeper hidden wound. Sometimes they realize it later, as Nancyjo Mann did: "The abortion killed not only my daughter; it killed a part of me."38