The Irish Catholic in its edition of November 29th
has published a letter from Anthony McCarthy, Education and Publications
Manager of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children concerning
Catholic Church teaching on abortion
“The Church clearly distinguishes treatments when a mother
is at risk”
Dear Editor, The sad and painful death of Savita
Halappanavar, in circumstances that are still very unclear, is prompting
discussion of abortion definitions in Church teaching itself (as distinguished
from Irish law and medical practice).
Abortion is not always defined by the Church in terms of
deliberate killing - though
certainly such killing will always be abortion - but sometimes in terms of deliberate expulsion or
‘acceleration of birth’ before viability
(a good source here is John Connery’s book Abortion: the Development of
the Roman Catholic Perspective).
Pius XII in his Allocution to Large Families refers to life-saving
interventions on a pregnant woman, “independently of her pregnant condition”,
which are permitted, even if they have the unintended, but inevitable, effect
of causing the death of her baby. These words were cited by the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith as recently as 2009.
Such treatment could include the giving of antibiotics or
blood transfusions, the clamping of the woman’s blood vessels to prevent
bleeding, hysterectomies for uterine cancer and, for ectopic pregnancy, the
removal of a damaged fallopian tube. Irrespective of the unborn child’s
continued presence, the damaged tube or uterus would need to be removed: an operation which targets the woman’s
body alone, and is therefore legitimate, despite its impact on the child.
In short, the Church herself distinguishes between
deliberately abortifacient procedures which are aimed at destroying and/or
removing a pre-viable child (though in practice they also require a harmful
separation of foetal tissues) and procedures which may result in a baby’s death
or miscarriage as a genuine side-effect of treatment aimed to help the pregnant
woman (in the words of Pius XII) “independently of her pregnant condition”.
Foetal removal should not be deliberately intended, any more than foetal death.
Yours etc.,
Anthony McCarthy
Education and Publications Manager,
Society for the Protection of Unborn Children
London,
Britain.
