Moral Principles and Medical Practice: The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence

by Charles Coppens

2. If the medicine is not necessary to save the mother’s life, though very useful, for the sake of such an advantage, you cannot justly expose the child’s life to serious danger.

3. But if the danger it is exposed to is not serious but slight, and the remedy, though not necessary, is expected to be very useful to the mother, you may then administer the medicine; for a slight risk need not prevent a prudent man from striving to obtain very good results.

4. But what if the drug is necessary to save the mother, and as dangerous to the child as it is beneficial to her; can you then give the medicine with the moral certainty that it will save her and kill her child? When we know principles clearly we can apply them boldly. I answer then with this important distinction: you can give such medicine as will act on her system, her organs, in a manner to save her life, and you may permit the sad effects which will indirectly affect the child; but you cannot injure the child directly as a means to benefit her indirectly; that would be using a bad means to obtain a good end.

Suppose, then, what is said to be a real case of occasional recurrence in obstetrical practice, namely, that a pregnant mother is seized with violent and unceasing attacks of vomiting, so that she must die if the vomiting be not stopped; and you, as well as the consulting physician called in, can discover no means of relieving the vomiting except by procuring an abortion, by relieving the womb of its living burden. Abortion is then the means used to stop the vomiting. Are you justified in using that means? Abortion is the dislodging of the child from the only place where it can live and where nature has placed it for that purpose. Therefore abortion directly kills the child, as truly as plunging a man under water kills the man. Can you thus kill the child to save the mother? You cannot. Neither in this case nor in any other case can you do evil that good may come of it.

You notice, gentlemen, that I lay great stress on, this principle that the end can never justify the means. It is an evident principle, which all civilized nations acknowledge. Its opposite, that the end justifies the means, is so odious that the practice of it is a black stamp of ignominy on any man or any set of men that would be guilty of it. The Catholic Church has, all through her course of existence, taught the maxim that the end cannot justify the means. She has impressed it on the laws and hearts of all Christian peoples. She inculcates it in the teachings of all her theologians and moral philosophers and in all her channels of education. And since we Jesuits are among her leading educators and writers, we have maintained that thesis in thousands of printed volumes, as firmly as I am maintaining it before you to-day. No Jesuit ever, nor any Catholic theologian or philosopher, has taught the contrary. And yet even such pretentious works as the “Encyclopædia Britannica” have carried all over the earth the slander that we teach the opposite maxim, that the end does justify the means, and the odious term Jesuitry has been coined to embody that slander.

Is it not strange then, very strange, that they who thus falsely accuse us are often the very men who will procure an abortion to save the mother’s life, who will do wrong that good may come of it? And you find such men maintaining the lawfulness of abortion on the plea that the operation, whether licit or not, is a necessary means to obtain a good end.

IV. Gentlemen, if once you grant that grave reasons would justify abortion, there is no telling where you will stop in your career of crime. To-day, for instance, you are called to attend a mother, who, you think, must die if you do not bring on a miscarriage. You are urged to do it by herself and her husband, and perhaps by other physicians. There are money considerations too, and the possible loss of practice. Will you yield to the temptation? The next day you are visited by a most respectable lady; but she has been unfaithful to her marriage vow. The consequences of her fall are becoming evident. If her husband finds out her condition, he may wreak a terrible vengeance. Her situation is sadder than that of the sick mother of the preceding day. You can easily remove the proof of her guilt, we will suppose, and spare a world of woes. Will you withstand the temptation? The third day comes a young lady, a daughter of an excellent family; bright prospects lie before her; her parents’ lives and happiness are wrapped up in that girl. But in an evil hour she has been led astray. Now she is with child. She begs, she implores you to save her from ruin, and her parents from despair. If you do not help her, some other Doctor or a quack will do it; but you could do it so much better. If you should have yielded on the two former occasions, if you have already stained your heart with innocent blood, will you now refuse? Where are you going to draw the line?

The passions of men are insatiate, even in modern society; the more you yield to them, the stronger grows their craving. Let me illustrate my meaning by a fact that happened a few years ago in Russia. It is just to our point. During a severe winter, a farmer, having his wife and children with him on a wagon, was driving through a wild forest. All was still as death except the howling of wolves in the distance. The howling came nearer and nearer. After a while a pack of hungry wolves was seen following in the track of the wagon. The farmer drove on faster, but they gained on him. It was a desperate race to keep out of their reach. At last they are just back of the wagon. What can be done? The next moment the wolves may jump on the uncovered vehicle. The children, horrified, crouch near their trembling mother. Suddenly the father, driven to despair, seizes one of the little children and flings it among the pack of wolves, hoping that by yielding them one he may save the rest. The hungry beasts stop a few moments to fight over their prey. But soon they are in hot pursuit again, fiercer because they have tasted blood. A second child is thrown to them, and after a while a third and a fourth.

Human society, gentlemen, in this matter of sacrificing fœtal life is as insatiable as a pack of hungry wolves. Woe to any one of you if he begins to yield to its cravings; there is no telling where he will stop. In proof of my statement, let me read to you an extract from a lecture on Obstetrics, delivered by Doctor Hodge, of Philadelphia, to the medical students of the University of Pennsylvania: “We blush while we record the fact, that, in this country, in our cities and towns, in this city where literature, science, morality, and Christianity are supposed to have so much influence; where all the domestic and social virtues are reported as being in full and delightful exercise; even here individuals, male and female, exist who are continually imbruing their hands and consciences in the blood of unborn infants; yea, even medical men are to be found who, for some trifling pecuniary recompense, will poison the fountains of life, or forcibly induce labor, to the certain destruction of the fœtus and not infrequently of the parent.

“So low, gentlemen, is the moral sense of the community on this subject, so ignorant are the greater number of individuals, that even mothers, in many instances, shrink not from the commission of this crime, but will voluntarily destroy their own progeny, in violation of every natural sentiment and in opposition to the laws of God and man. Perhaps there are few individuals in extensive practice who have not had frequent applications made to them by the fathers and mothers of unborn infants (respectable and polite in their general appearance and manners) to destroy the fruit of illicit pleasure, under the vain hope of preserving their reputation by this unnatural and guilty sacrifice.