Shouldn’t We Permit Abortion Only to Save the Life of the Mother?

By Brian Clowes, PhD

Abortion is completely legal in more than one hundred nations. In almost every case, population controllers first drove in the ultra-thin wedge of allowing abortion when the mother’s life is in danger.

This is a brilliant strategy for two reasons.

First, abortionists can easily stretch any law, no matter how strict or precisely written, into abortion on demand. Since they falsely consider abortion to be safer than childbirth, pro-abortionists can easily justify all abortions under the “life of the mother” exception. In fact, abortionists have claimed that all abortions are medically necessary.

This is certainly not a new development. For example, in 1980 abortionist Lise Fortier asserted, “Each and every pregnancy threatens a woman’s life. From a strict medical viewpoint, every pregnancy should be aborted.”¹ Even earlier, abortionist David Zbaraz claimed that all first-trimester and most second-trimester abortions are medically necessary since, as he alleged, they are safer than childbirth.²

The second reason that the “life of the mother” exception is so pernicious is that it gets people in nations with pro-life laws accustomed to the concept of abortion so that it can be rapidly expanded in the future. After all, if we can legalize abortion when the mother’s life is in danger, why not legalize it to preserve her physical and mental health as well ― and then for social and economic reasons?

Time and again, this has happened. Health exceptions are used as a tool to expand legal abortion access even when they were not intended to be, and doctors abuse such exceptions to allow them to perform abortions. The definition of what is and is not medically necessary becomes increasingly wide to accommodate more procedures and increase the number of abortions.

Rarity of the “Hard Cases”

People habitually overestimate the number of abortions committed for the classic “hard cases” of rape and incest, eugenics and life and health of the mother, a common error that is not at all discouraged by pro-abortionists.

Thirty years ago, Dr. Irving Cushner, Professor of Obstetrics at the UCLA School of Medicine, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. When one of the Senators asked him how often abortions are necessary, whether to to save the life of the mother or to preserve her physical health, Dr. Cushner, who was strongly pro-abortion, answered, “In this country, about one percent.”³

This number has not changed. During the years 1996 to 2020, the states of Florida, Louisiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Utah compiled data on the reasons women obtain abortions. Of the 2.4 million aborting women surveyed, only 1.14% replied that they were having abortions to protect their lives or physical health.

Source: tabulation of reports on “Induced Termination of Pregnancy” from Florida [1998-2020], Louisiana [1996-2018], Minnesota [1999-2019], Nebraska [2001-2019], South Dakota [1999-2019], and Utah [1996-2018].

Modern medicine has virtually eliminated avoidable maternal deaths due to pregnancy, as many leading experts attested decades ago:

• Alan Guttmacher of Planned Parenthood did more to promote and spread abortion on demand throughout the world than any other individual. Nearly fifty years ago, he commented, “Today it is possible for almost any patient to be brought through pregnancy alive, unless she suffers from a fatal disease such as cancer or leukemia, and if so, abortion would be unlikely to prolong, much less save the life.”⁴ Certainly, with all of the advances in medicine since then, cases in which a woman’s pregnancy threatens her health are even rarer today.
• In 1990, reformed abortionist Bernard Nathanson said, “The situation where the mother’s life is at stake were she to continue a pregnancy is no longer a clinical reality. Given the state of modern medicine, we can now manage any pregnant woman with any medical affliction successfully, to the natural conclusion of the pregnancy: The birth of a healthy child.”⁵

Abortionist Dr. Bernard Nathanson aborted his own child and 5,000 others in his career. But then ultrasound came into being, and he saw a baby react to being aborted live, on screen. It caused his radical conversion.

• In 1974, the “Father of Fetology,” Hymie Gordon, M.D., Director of Medical Genetics at the Mayo Clinic, stated, “In more than 25 years now of medical practice, I have come to learn that if a woman is healthy enough to become pregnant, she is healthy enough to complete the term ― in spite of heart disease, liver disease, almost any disease. As far as I’m concerned, there are no medical indications for terminating a pregnancy.”⁶
• In 1981, Dr. Jasper Williams, Jr., of the Bernard Hospital in Chicago, Past President of the National Medical Association, said, “Since 1953, I have never seen a patient die because she needed an abortion and it could not be performed. Doctors now have the tools and the knowledge with which to work so that they can handle almost any disease a patient may have, whether that patient is pregnant or not, and without interrupting the pregnancy.”⁷

What if the Mother’s Life Really Is in Danger?

The number of medically necessary abortions is essentially zero. In those extremely rare cases when the mother’s life truly is threatened by pregnancy (such as with cancer of the uterus or ectopic pregnancy), she may undergo an operation whose purpose is to save her life, even if the preborn child may die as an indirect result of the procedure. This principle is known as the “double effect.”

Though it may at times be necessary to induce delivery early to save the mother’s life, it is not necessary to kill the child intentionally. Every effort should be made to preserve both lives. Killing the child should never be the goal, as it is in every abortion.

The Lie that Life = Health

Many public opinion polls show that a large majority of people do not want to pay for abortions, so pro-abortionists grossly overestimate the alleged “dangers” of pregnancy and childbirth in order to frighten people into supporting public abortion funding. Perpetuating the lie, they define a threat to the life of the mother in the same terms as a threat to her health. This way, abortion when the mother’s life is in danger leads to abortion for any reason at all:

• Abortionist Michael Burnhill of the National Abortion Federation (NAF) said that a “life of the mother” exception would allow him to perform all abortions he considered “medically necessary,” all those that would preserve a “condition in which one can actively participate in one’s total life.”⁸
• According to another author, “A Colorado abortion clinic director claimed that his extensive research showed that carrying a pregnancy to term is about 100 times more life threatening than having an abortion. He, therefore, considered any pregnancy life-threatening and used that as justification, certifying that the mother’s life was endangered.”⁹
• Abortionist Jane Hodgson testified under oath: “In my medical judgment, every pregnancy that is not wanted by the patient, I feel there is a medical indication to abort a pregnancy where it is not wanted. In good faith, I would recommend on a medical basis, you understand, that, and it would be 100.… I think they are all medically necessary.… I am considering the woman’s physical, mental, emotional and social and welfare and family and environment and all that.… I am concerned with the quality of life, not physical existence.”¹⁰

Hodgson also summarized the general pro-abortion attitude when she said, “A medically necessary abortion is any abortion a woman asks for.”¹¹

In short, pro-abortion advocates can stretch exceptions allowing abortion when the mother’s life is in danger, making this exception cover abortion for any reason.

Summary

Due to the principle of the “double effect,” surgical procedures that save the mother’s life while causing the undesired and unintended death of the preborn child are permissible, so it is actually unnecessary to allow an exception for abortion when the mother’s life is in danger.

Pro-lifers must vigorously oppose the “mother’s life” exception because of the inherent dishonesty of abortionists who expand it to mean abortion on demand. Additionally, if surgical procedures intended to save the life of the mother are labeled “abortions” in those many countries that still have pro-life laws, people will get used to the idea of killing preborn children much more easily, paving the way for a rapid expansion of exceptions and eventual abortion on demand.

Footnotes

This article has been reprinted with permission and can be found at hli.org/resources/abortion-to-save-life-of-mother.