ffect;
then give the medicine to save the mother, and permit the probable death
of the child.

2. If the medicine is not necessary to save the mother's life, though
very useful, for the sake of such an advantage, you cannot justly expose
the child's life to serious danger.

3. But if the danger it is exposed to is not serious but slight, and the
remedy, though not necessary, is expected to be very useful to the
mother, you may then administer the medicine; for a slight risk need not
prevent a prudent man from striving to obtain very good results.

4. But what if the drug is necessary to save the mother, and as
dangerous to the child as it is beneficial to her; can you then give the
medicine with the moral certainty that it will save her and kill her
child? When we know principles clearly we can apply them boldly. I
answer then with this important distinction: you can give such medicine
as will act on her system, her organs, in a manner to save her life, and
you may permit the sad effects which will indirectly affect the child;
but you cannot injure the child directly as a means to benefit her
indirectly; that would be using a bad means to obtain a good end.

Suppose, then, what is said to be a real case of occasional recurrence
in obstetrical practice, namely, that a pregnant mother is seized with
violent and unceasing attacks of vomiting, so that she must die if the
vomiting be not stopped; and you, as well as the consulting physician
called in, can discover no means of relieving the vomiting except by
procuring an abortion, by relieving the womb of its living burden.
Abortion is then the means used to stop the vomiting. Are you justified
in using that means? Abortion is the dislodging of the child from the
only place where it can live and where nature has placed it for that
purpose. Therefore abortion directly kills the child, as truly as
plunging a man under water kills the man. Can you thus kill the child to
save the mother? You _cannot_. Neither in this case nor in any other
case can you do evil that good may come of it.

You notice, gentlemen, that I lay great stress on, this principle that
_the end can never justify the means_. It is an evident principle, which
all civilized nations acknowledge. Its opposite, that the end justifies
the means, is so odious that the practice of it is a black stamp of
ignominy on any man or any set of men that would be guilty of it. The
Catholic Church has, all through her cour