Abortion: From the Right to Life …

Abstract

As one cannot speak of a right to abortion without entering the fray, let us talk about the right of women to take a moral and responsible decision when they feel they cannot, in conscience, bring their pregnancy to full term. This is a decision that the Catholic Church does not recognise since it views abortion as an ‘abominable crime’ which no circumstance, however exceptional, can make into a moral act. It only reconciles the right to life of the mother with that of the foetus by the double effect principle: if by trying to save the life of the mother from immediate danger, one ends inadvertently that of the foetus (as in cases of an extra-uterine pregnancy or a cancer of the uterus). Is there no other way to reconcile the rights of the woman with that of the foetus when they are in conflict? Is it not possible to come closer to the Protestant concept of the problem? Any woman involved in this moral dilemma deserves all the compassion from her fellow citizens, who should recognise she is well able to take a moral decision. Should not the state adopt this kind of approach which admits ‘there are cases when …’?1 These questions are particularly acute in Ireland, where it has become impossible, since 1992, to reconcile the doctrinaire position of the Catholic Church with the fact that a growing number of Irish women effectively take the decision to have an abortion.