“Are we ever justified in killing an unborn child in order to save the mother’s life?
“This is a burning question, and the sooner and more satisfactorily it is settled, the greater will be the peace to the medical mind and conscience.
“In answer to the question, I, at the outset, reply No, and claim that, under no conditions or circumstances, is it ever allowable to destroy the life of the child in order to increase the mother’s chances of living. And the day may arrive when, by the law of the land, the act will be considered criminal and punished as such. In support of this opinion, and to illustrate this position, allow me to take a purely ethical and medico-legal view of the subject, and to relate to you a parallel case, as also the decision arrived at by the Lord Chief Justice of England, Judge Coleridge, than whom there is not a greater jurist living.
“The case is that of the British yacht ‘Mignonette.’ On July 5, 1884, the prisoners Dudley and Stevens, with one Brookes and the deceased, an English boy between 17 and 18 years of age, part of the crew of the ‘Mignonette,’ were cast away in a storm at sea 1,600 miles from the Cape of Good Hope, and were compelled to take to an open boat.
“They had no supply of water, no supply of food, and subsisted for twenty days on two pounds of turnips and a small turtle they had caught. They managed to collect a little rain-water in their oil-skin capes.
“On the eighteenth day, having been without food for seventeen days and without water for five days, the prisoners suggested that some one should be sacrificed to save the rest. Brookes dissented, and the boy, to whom they referred, was not consulted. On that day Dudley and Stevens spoke of their having families, and of their lives being more valuable than that of the boy. The boy was lying in the bottom of the boat, quite helpless, extremely weak and unable to make any resistance; nor did he assent to be killed to save the others. Dudley, with the assent of Stevens, went to the boy and, telling him that his time had come, put a knife into his throat and killed him. They fed upon his flesh for four days. On the fourth day the boat was picked up by a passing vessel, and the sailors were rescued, still alive but in a state of extreme prostration.
“The prisoners were carried to the port of Falmouth and committed for trial, the charge being murder. Their excuse was that, if they had not killed the boy and fed upon his flesh, there being no sail in sight, they would have died of starvation before being rescued. They said that there was no chance of saving their lives, except by killing some one for the others to eat. The prisoners were committed for murder and sentenced to death, but appealed to the mercy of the court, pleading ignorance. It was found by the verdict that the boy was incapable of resistance, and authorities were then quoted to prove that, in order to save your own life, you have the right to take the life of an unjust aggressor in self-defence—a principle the truth of which is universally admitted.
“But the evidence clearly showed that the defenceless boy was not an unjust aggressor against their lives, and, consequently, their only plea was that of expediency.
“In a chapter in which he deals with the exception created by necessity, Lord Hale, quoted by Justice Coleridge, thus expresses himself:
“‘If a man be desperately assaulted and in peril of death, and cannot otherwise escape, except by killing an innocent person then present, the act will not acquit him of the crime and punishment of murder; for he ought rather to die himself than to kill an innocent.’