“My own opinion is that such a course (the repetition of abortion) ought not to be adopted, but that pregnancy should be allowed to proceed, without interruption, to the full period; and when labor declares itself, that the infant should invariably be extracted by the Cæsarean section,”[151] which, when performed in season, is by no means necessarily fatal to the mother, and may preserve life to the child.
The question now so plainly put, is one for the profession soberly to discuss and to answer.
We have already shown that in many cases where instrumental delivery or the induction of premature labor is apparently requisite, the mother, if a Catholic, is sacrificed to the supposed impossibility of administering the right of baptism to the child. We do not, with some, allow that the physician is here justified in deliberately and falsely asserting the child’s death, where such has not taken place, but we have revived the suggestion of a method by which this great and fundamental obstacle may be overcome. We assert that the negligence too often shown by physicians in these cases, the custom of practically leaving the mother and her child to their fate when instrumental delivery shall have been refused upon religious grounds sincerely entertained,[152] is, however wide it may appear from the point, directly incentive to the increase of criminal abortion. Provided the question of necessity is determined, but one course in these cases should be pursued, and that the performance of intra-uterine baptism.
The objections usually made to the induction of premature labor, namely, the uncertainty of all pelvic measurements and of the exact period of gestation, the greater liability to malpresentation, and, from the uninvoluted state of the cervix, to the evils of a lingering labor, lose much of their force when tested by our preceding remarks. If resorted to, the means of its induction are various, and, as regards their justifiability, they present a decided choice. We here omit the consideration of the methods indirect or of doubtful efficacy, as draughts, general or local baths or bleedings, forced exercise, fatigue, and voluntary falls or blows, so frequently resorted to by the uneducated, or used, in addition to other procedures, by the designing to mask the reality; these will be subsequently considered, and we confine ourselves, in comparing the other and more direct methods, only to ascertaining that which is safest and most efficacious, for these points alone can decide their respective justifiability.
The direct and reliable means of inducing abortion, in the physician’s possession, are only instrumental. Draughts of all kinds, whether purgative, emmenagogue, or so-called specific,—aloes, ergot, or savin,—or energetic poisons, expelling the fœtus through a sudden and profound disturbance of the whole maternal system, as arsenic or cantharides, are too unreliable, unscientific, or dangerous either to mother or child. The justifiable methods are confined to those acting directly on the uterus and its contents, by dilating the os or detaching the membranes.
They are, rejecting the local application of belladonna as utterly inert:
1. Local or distant and sympathetic irritation
- By the hand;
- medicinal applications;
- electricity or galvanism.
2. Puncture of the membranes, and evacuation of their fluid contents.