1. Daniel Callahan, Abortion: Law, Choice and Morality (New York, 1970), p. 373. This book gives a fascinating survey of the available information on abortion. The Jewish tradition is surveyed in David M. Feldman, Birth Control in Jewish Law (New York, 1968), Part 5, the Catholic tradition in John T. Noonan, Jr., “An Almost Absolute Value in History,” in The Morality of Abortion, ed. John T. Noonan, Jr. ( Cambridge, Mass., 1970 ).
2. Cf. Encyclical Letter of Pope Pius XI on Christian Marriage,St. Paul Editions (Boston, n.d.), p. 32: “however much we may pity the mother whose health and even life is gravely imperiled in the performance of the duty allotted to her by nature, nevertheless what could ever be a sufficient reason for excusing in any way the direct murder of the innocent? This is precisely what we are dealing with here.” Noonan (The Morality of Abortion,p. 43) reads this as follows: “What cause can ever avail to excuse in any way the direct killing of the innocent? For it is a question of that.”
3. Cf. the following passage from Pius XII, Address to the Italian Catholic Society of Midwives: “The baby in the maternal breast has the right to life immediately from God.—Hence there is no man, no human authority, no science, no medical, eugenic, social, economic or moral ‘indication’’ which can establish or grant a valid juridical ground for a direct deliberate disposition of an innocent human life, that is a disposition which looks to its destruction either as an end or as a means to another end perhaps in itself not illicit.—The baby, still not born, is a man in the same degree and for the same reason as the mother” (quoted in Noonan, The Morality of Abortion,p. 45).
4. For a discussion of the difficulties involved, and a survey of the European experience with such laws, see The Good Samaritan and the Law, ed. James M. Ratcliffe (New York, 1966 ).