`Within the Catholic tradition we would always have distinguished between a direct and indirect abortion," explained Father Paul Tighe, the Dublin diocese moral theology expert. He was asked by Archbishop Desmond Connell to clarify this in response to a question posed by Jim O'Keeffe, vice-chairman of the All-Party Committee on the Constitution, at the public hearings on abortion on July 5th.
Father Tighe proceeded to explain what direct abortion meant to him. However, he did not explain what indirect abortion meant. Remarkably, he was not asked to do so throughout the subsequent 90 minutes of exchanges between the committee members and the five-member Irish Catholic Bishops' Conference delegation led by Archbishop Connell.
This omission was remarkable because the exchanges opened with Mr O'Keeffe saying: "I take it that you are quite firmly behind Option One in the Green Paper - an absolute Constitution ban on abortion. Would that be a fair summary of your position?"
Archbishop Connell responded: "We would have to say that the way in which it is put in the Green Paper would perhaps create some difficulty, depending on how one understands abortion. If you say an absolute ban on abortion, it may include indirect as well as direct abortion. So we are unable to say that we would endorse Number One, but quite certainly what we believe Number One intends is what we would wish."
Mr O'Keefe then asked him to define "abortion". Father Tighe was asked to respond and began as stated above. He defined not abortion in general, but its "direct" form. He said it was "an abortion which happens where there is a direct and intentional killing of an unborn child". But he did not define its "indirect" form for which, our Catholic bishops say, our laws must somehow provide. That was the first time they publicly accepted that our laws may provide for a form of abortion.
In fact, this acceptance-without-definition accords with what has been described as the "most authoritative teaching that he [Pope John Paul II] has made in his pontificate", that is, the 1995 Encyclical Evangelium Vitae:
"Therefore, by the authority which Christ conferred on Peter and his successors, in communion with the bishops - who on various occasions have condemned abortion and who in the aforementioned consultation, albeit dispersed throughout the world, have shown unanimous agreement concerning this doctrine - I declare that direct abortion, that is, abortion willed as an end or as a means, always constitutes a grave moral disorder, since it is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being."
Like Father Tighe's explanation, this authoritative declaration says abortion is the "killing of an innocent human being". This is in line with the definition offered the committee by obstetrician Dr Michael Darling, a former Master of the Rotunda Hospital, as a member of the Church of Ireland delegation: "To me the definition [of abortion] is very clear: any removal of pregnancy before viability is an abortion." In short, what may be called a TBV (termination before viability) is an abortion, "viability" meaning the potential of a baby to be viable (i.e. to live) outside the womb. A TBV at any stage from conception onwards is an abortion.
Unlike Father Tighe's explanation, the Pope's declaration talks about "willed" rather than "intentional" (Father Tighe's word) killing. "Intent" refers to the end (i.e. purpose) of the killing, whereas "willing" refers to assent to the killing. There are few things more deliberate than surgery which entails highly professional expertise.
Like Father Tighe, the Pope declined to define "indirect" abortion, which is not condemned. It may be significant that, by limiting his definition to "direct" abortion, he chose not to follow the worldwide episcopal practice which "condemned abortion" without qualification. The non-definition of "indirect" abortion, however, leaves our legislators with this problem: how can they provide for what is not defined?
Subject to correction - and in fairness to those who wish to be loyal Catholics, as well as to legislators, any error should, in this vital area, be corrected with alacrity - clues gathered over the years suggest to me that what our church means by "indirect" abortion is this: a TBV which is the secondary effect of surgery primarily for other ends. This surgery is primarily to safeguard the life or health of the mother, that is, to save her from death or ill health (i.e. temporary, non-fatal effects) which continuation of pregnancy might cause.
However, though that primary end is intended, the termination is deemed necessary to achieve it; that is, it is a means to an end. That brings "indirect" abortion, as I have defined it, back within the Pope's definition of "direct" abortion - "abortion willed as an end or as a means". On that account, it too "always constitutes a grave moral disorder". Maybe that is why Father Tighe was happy not to define "indirect" abortion. Mothers, surgeons and legislators cannot be so reticent.
Perhaps the way out is the age-old practice which accepts that, at times, the end may justify the means; that is, doing good may justify doing wrong for its achievement. After all, telling lies is always wrong. Yet we readily tell lies when telling the truth would, we reckon, hurt. Similarly, we readily take pride in our achievements, and find that beneficial, despite pride being one of our Seven Deadly Sins. Does the same logic not apply to the "grave moral disorder" which is the abortion wrongdoing?
The important point here is that an end justifies use of wrongdoing; a means does not make wrongdoing other than wrongdoing. The end is such that resorting to, say, lies or pride to achieve it, is justified; that is, untainted by guilt. Indeed, when we say to people, "How do you justify what you have done?", we and they accept what was done was wrong, and the focus switches to discerning if the reasons are acceptable.
My dictionary gives these among its uses of the word "justification": "Law, a satisfactory reason or excuse for something done", and "Theology, a freeing or being freed from the guilt or penalty of sin".
So, when an abortion is "willed as a means" it may be justified. That is why our Constitution or Oireachtas laws may not ban it totally. What laws may do is to specify ends which, to achieve, may justify recourse to wrongdoing. In the abortion case, the safeguarding of both life and health may be considered for that purpose. After all, with the possible exception of conceptions due to rape, mothers and surgeons kill unborn babies as a means to the life/health end, rather than as an end in itself.
What our 1983 Constitution amendment and the Finlay interpretation of 1992 have done is specify saving "the life, as distinct from the health, of the mother" as the only end which justifies abortion here, provided "it is established as a matter of probability" that death "can only be avoided by the termination of the pregnancy". In other words, TBVs deemed necessary to save mothers' lives are legal here and those deemed unnecessary for that purpose are illegal.
That is not surprising. Necessity may justify wrongdoing (for example, stealing) for death avoidance. In this case, it justifies killing an unborn child to save the life of his/ her mother. As the Muslim representative told the committee, to justify in like manner, the child is without responsibilities whereas the mother may have many.
While awaiting correction or confirmation of this reasoning, three subsidiary points are important.
One concerns the extent to which there is recourse to abortion in our State. Dr Darling said TBVs to save mothers' lives were "about one in 30,000 pregnancies". That leaves out terminations of ectopic pregnancies which, according to the Green Paper, occur "in approximately one in 100 pregnancies" and are routinely terminated. With an annual birth rate of around 55,000, that works out at around 550 abortions performed, with justification, annually by surgeons in this part of Ireland.
Secondly, it is legitimate, in a democracy, for those seeking the option of recourse to abortion to safeguard the health, as distinct from the life, of the mother, to campaign for that purpose. Just as we Catholics and Muslims argue that the end does not justify recourse to that means, others may argue otherwise.
After all, as was pointed out in the Presbyterian submission, "in a parliamentary answer in 1992, it was revealed that in England and Wales 151 abortions out of 3.6 million were carried out to save the life of the mother." That means 99.996 per cent of the abortions were "a means" to the health end. Anecdotal evidence suggests the figure is probably 100 per cent for those who travel from here to Britain for abortions probably illegal here.
Thirdly, it is regrettable that the reasoning of this article was not publicised by our Catholic clergy during our exchanges on contraception. As one involved in them from their beginnings in the 1960s, it would have made a colossal difference, during them and the subsequent exchanges on abortion, if our clergy had said to mothers fearful of pregnancies which might kill them: "If your pregnancy may kill you, you may if necessary, with justification, have it terminated".