The Exception To Abortion's Immorality

Convenience, ignorance, and stubbornness are never logically or morally valid reasons for committing an immoral act, and the majority of reported cases of abortion are motivated by one of these three things.  Nevertheless, there is one situation where a mother does not sin in choosing an abortion, even if she is fully aware that it results in the death of an actual human being.  This exceptional scenario, of course, exists when the life of a mother and the life of a baby cannot both be preserved at the same time.

Many aspects of abortion are far from logically, scientifically, and Biblically unclear.  The issue of abortion to save a mother's life, however, is usually perceived to be at least somewhat more ambiguous than whether or not a fetus is a baby, and with good reason.  It is a very self-contained matter, with some who espouse pro-life ideology conceding that it deserves more than a casual dismissal.

In very specific scenarios, the process of carrying or giving birth to a baby might kill the mother.  Some Christians are willing to admit that there is a difference between casually murdering an unborn baby and killing it in order to save the mother's life--if that is truly what is necessary to save her--but what often goes completely unaddressed is the fact that there is no Biblical obligation at all for a mother to die so that her unborn child can live (Deuteronomy 4:2, 12:32).  While self-sacrifice and putting another person ahead of oneself are certainly good on the Christian worldview, no woman is in moral error if she opts to prolong her own life at the expense of her baby's.

There are Christians who would quickly point to Jesus' self-sacrificial willingness to die as if it is something that all people should emulate, but Jesus was never obligated to allow himself to die.  It follows from this that no one else is either: one supererogatory act cannot make another supererogatory act obligatory.  The self-sacrifice argument for mothers always choosing to die so that their babies can live fails because of this.

This truth needs to be emphasized, but so does the fact that abortion in other instances is not legitimized by this exception.  That a mother whose pregnancy endangers her life can legitimately choose to terminate the baby to save herself does not mean that abortion itself is not inherently wrong under other circumstances.  It only means that no one is morally required to suffer or die on another person's behalf.