However, if
medical treatment or surgical operation,
necessary to save a mother's
life, is applied to her organism
(though the child's death would, or at least might, follow as a regretted but unavoidable consequence), it should not be maintained that the fetal life is thereby directly attacked.
Moralists agree that we are not always prohibited from doing what is lawful in itself, though
evil consequences may follow which we do not desire. The good effects of our acts are then directly intended, and the regretted
evil consequences are reluctantly permitted to follow because we cannot avoid them. The
evil thus permitted is said to be indirectly intended. It is not imputed to us provided four
conditions are verified, namely:
- That we do not wish the evil effects, but make all reasonable efforts to avoid them;
- That the immediate effect be good in itself;
- That the evil is not made a means to obtain the good effect; for this would be to do evil that good might come of it — a procedure never allowed;
- That the good effect be as important at least as the evil effect.
All four
conditions may be verified in treating or operating on a
woman with child. The death of the child is not intended, and every reasonable precaution is taken to save its
life; the immediate effect intended, the mother's
life, is good — no harm is done to the child in order to save the mother — the saving of the mother's
life is in itself as good as the saving of the child's
life.