the mother.
Interview with Dr. George Isajiw, MD
https://www.priestsforlife.org/media/interviewisajiw.htm
"There is no such thing as an abortion to save the life of the mother. As a matter of fact for a while.. several years.. I was very interested in that question in my formative years and I would ask every obstetrician and gynecologist that I met anywhere. And I said have you ever had a case where you had to do something to kill the baby to save the life of the mother. I have not come across one case, you know. People think of in the movie, the story the Cardinal, where the woman was delivering the child and got into complications and they crushed the baby’s head. And that is just not a part of modern medicine. That is not necessary to be done.
Where the confusion arises is the so-called indirect abortion. Or those cases where both mother and child are dying because of a situation, there are really only three situations like this that I can think of and that’s ectopic pregnancy, cancer of the uterus, and perhaps trauma, or an accidental traumatic injury to the uterus. And if you don’t do anything then both mother and child will die. Now if you treat the mother for whatever needs to be treated, the uterus is bleeding, and you remove the uterus and the baby is still in there, and you do nothing to kill the baby, that is if you had a means an artificial incubator, some day we will have it, I’m sure, you could put that baby in there, so in no way do you directly attack the life of the baby. But you can foresee that that baby will lose its life, but it will lose its life anyhow but without directly attacking. Those are the three instances, very rare, very rare, but those are not abortions. If you look at the five ways that abortions are done, which is the only purpose is to kill the child, none of these techniques are the methods used in these operations. So there is no such thing as an abortion necessary.
And you don’t need a law, you don’t need an exception because for ages that treatment of ectopic pregnancy, once the mother starts bleeding or has life-threatening complications, the treatment of cancer of the uterus, that has been always permissible without …having to legalize abortion. So the answer is simply no. There is no such thing as an abortion to save the life of the mother, sometimes early delivery, sometimes it is so early that the baby has a great risk of dying perhaps, but the baby is delivered, the baby is placed into intensive care, is given all the possible support, and may or may make it, but there is no such thing as an abortion to do that."