The assertion that an undeveloped fetus in the womb is not as valuable as the mother of a family is beside the question, and in certain vital distinctions it is untrue. Any human life, as such, whether in a fetus or an adult, is as valuable as another, inasmuch as no one but God has any authority to destroy it, except when it has lost its right to existence through culpable action. Secondly, the quality of motherhood is an accidental addition to a mother's life, not substantial as is the life itself. This quality of motherhood does not create any juridic imbalance of values which justifies the destruction of the rights inherent in the fetus. That the fetus may not be able to enjoy these rights if the mother dies is, again, an irrelevant consideration. There is no question of a comparison of values. A life is a life, whether in mother or fetus, and the destruction of an innocent life by any one except its creator, God, is essentially an evil thing, like blasphemy. An innocent fetus an hour old may not be directly killed to save the lives of all the mothers in the world. Insisting on such comparisons supposes ignorance and sentimental opposition to truth. It is a good deed to save a mother's life; but such saving by killing an innocent human being ceases to be good and becomes indescribably evil, an enormous subversion of the order of the natural law, as it is a usurpation of the dominion over life possessed by God alone. If I owe a man a vast sum of money and the payment of this debt will ruin me and my children, it would be a good thing for me and them to have this creditor put out of the way by death, but that fact is no justification whatever for me to kill the man. The fetus in the womb in a case where there is question of therapeutic abortion is like this creditor: it would be well for the mother to have this fetus out of the way, but that is no justification whatever for her to kill the fetus, or to let it be killed by a physician. The physician who kills such a fetus is exactly like a hired bravo who assassinates a troublesome creditor for a fee, except that the physician does the nasty job for less money.
To hasten even an inevitable death is homicide, and that quality of merely hastening adds nothing for extenuation: every murder is merely a hastening of inevitable death. To give a dying man a fatal dose of morphine "to put him out of misery" is as criminal a murder as to blow out his brains while he is walking the streets in health; to ease pain is not commensurate with the horrible deordination of taking a human life. This subversion of the moral law in the interest of mawkish sentimentality is one of the gravest evils of modern social ignorance. Physicians are constantly mistaking inclination, or the mental vagaries of the nurses who influenced their childhood, for rules of moral conduct. A physician is not a public executioner, nor a judge with the power of life and death: his business is solely to save human life, never to destroy it.