Laws restricting abortion should prudently and justly acknowledge the need to preserve the mother's life when threatened in a way that can be medically addressed.

 

And it is not unjust because both the mother's and the child's lives are at stake; surely it is not unfair to the child to save the mother. And even when either one could be saved, it is reasonable and not unfair to recognize the mother's authority in deciding what shall be done; if she decides to put her own life at risk to save the child, her authority should be respected, but it should not be overridden if she chooses otherwise.

The case of ectopic pregnancy is similar. The various ways in which ectopic pregnancy can be permissibly addressed have in common that the death of the unborn child is no means to the saving of the mother's life. Rather, removal of a diseased part of the fallopian tube, or of a child whose location is a threat to both lives, is a permissible means to an upright end. And again, there is no unfairness: the child in an ectopic pregnancy is sadly doomed whatever is done.

So again, physicians committed to the life and health of both patients need not--should not--think they are performing abortions to save the life of the mother. They are rather engaging in life-saving medical procedures that have as an unintended but justly accepted side effect harm to the fetus. The cases are similar to those in which physicians accept as a side effect a heightened risk of death in performing surgery, administering high doses of pain medication, or removing life-sustaining but burdensome medical technologies.

A completed miscarriage is even further from posing a genuine medical dilemma. But what if a miscarriage is underway, and medical intervention is needed to save the mother, but at the cost of hastening the child's demise? Must the physician wait, while putting the health of the mother at risk?

No: once more, intervention to save the mother's life or prevent a grave health deficit is morally permissible when the harm to the child is a fairly accepted side effect. Physicians should act prudently to preserve maternal health in such cases and are not, when acting rightly, engaged in a "preemptive" abortion.

The law should acknowledge these moral truths: laws restricting abortion should prudently and justly acknowledge the need to preserve the mother's life when threatened in a way that can be medically addressed. Indeed, Dobbs notes that "By the end of the 1950s, according to the Roe Court's own count, statutes in all but four States and the District of Columbia prohibited abortion 'however and whenever performed, unless done to save or preserve the life of the mother.'" Permitting medical intervention in defense of the mother's life is part of our nation's legal history and tradition in a way that the right to abortion is not.