If there are no symptoms of maternal hemorrhage but the fetus is evidently dead, the fetus is to be removed. If it is evidently alive, or doubtfully alive, the treatment must be expectant. The woman is to be removed to a hospital and kept under constant watch, day and night, with everything prepared for immediate operation. Any woman while bearing an ectopic fetus is in constant grave danger of death, but the moralists hold that her danger is not so imminent before actual rupture as to justify the death of the fetus by precautionary removal.
In 1886 the Archbishop of Cambrai proposed the following list of questions to the Holy Office for decision:
1. May a pregnant woman in danger of death from eclampsia or hemorrhage be prematurely delivered of a viable child?
2. May a woman in the same condition be delivered in urgency by means which will kill the infant?
3. May a woman in articulo mortis be delivered of a viable child if the delivery will somewhat hasten her death?
4. May the woman in question 1 be delivered of an inviable fetus?
5. May the woman in question 3 be delivered of an inviable fetus?
6. May a woman who is about to become blind, paralytic, or insane from her pregnancy be prematurely delivered of a viable child?
7. May the woman in question 6 be delivered by means which will kill the fetus?
8. May the woman in question 6 be delivered of an inviable child?