Persuasive Pro Life: How to Talk about Our Culture's Toughest Issue

by Trent Horn

In the second case, in very early pregnancy when there is essentially no hope the child can be saved, it is permissible for doctors to perform a lifesaving operation on the mother with the indirect result being the death of the child. According to the U.S. Catholic bishops’ directives for Catholic hospitals, “Operations, treatments, and medications that have as their direct purpose the cure of a proportionately serious pathological condition of a pregnant woman are permitted when they cannot be safely postponed until the unborn child is viable, even if they will result in the death of the unborn child.”254 The most notable example of this case is an ectopic pregnancy that occurs when the embryo implants in some place other than the uterus, which in almost all cases ends up being in the fallopian tube. Unlike in late pregnancy, the child cannot be removed and safely placed somewhere else, such as an incubator. Any removal of the child will result in his death. In these cases it is morally acceptable to remove the damaged section of the fallopian tube where the child implanted.255