Difficult cases

Difficult cases

Most people start their consideration of abortion from the standpoint that it would be better not to abort a foetus than to abort it.

Note: one of the Religion and Ethics team suggests that this is no longer true, and that as a result of increased consciousness of women's rights most people are neutral in their thinking about abortion.

However there are many cases in which people who think it would be better not to abort give serious consideration to an abortion. Some of these are listed below:

Cases where there is a serious medical problem

• the pregnancy endangers the life or health of the mother
• there are too many foetuses in the womb for them all to survive
• the foetus is so defective that it will die later in the pregnancy
• the foetus is so defective that it will not live after the birth

Cases where the child will not be 'normal'

• the child will suffer from some mental or physical abnormality that the parents (correctly?) think will very seriously damage its quality of life

Cases where the pregnancy is entirely unintentional

• pregnancy caused by rape
• pregnancy caused by failure of contraception where the potential parents are not to blame
• pregnancy caused by a badly done vasectomy
• pregnancy caused by the parties not knowing that sexual intercourse causes pregnancy
  • such cases would include persons who are not mentally capable of understanding this

Cases where the pregnancy is unintentional but where a risk was taken

• pregnancy caused by failure of contraception within the known risk of that contraceptive method
• pregnancy caused by carelessness in the use of contraception
• pregnancy caused by failure to use contraception

Cases where the pregnancy has lifestyle consequences

• having a child would prevent the mother achieving some life objective
• the mother is incapable of looking after a child
• the mother is incapable of looking after another child
• another child would lower the family's standard of living
• there is not enough food to support the child
• having another child would result in criminal proceedings against the parent
• the child is not of the preferred sex
• coping with the child's disability would damage the family's lifestyle
• coping with the child's disability would disadvantage existing family children