Indirect abortion

In Catholic theology, Indirect abortion is not seen anywhere as "Indirect abortion" in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Indirect abortion is any medical procedure which has a therapeutic medical effect but also results in an abortion as a "secondary effect". This could still be an abortion since "abortion" is in the name "Indirect abortion".

For example, if a woman is suffering an ectopic pregnancy (a fetus is developing in her fallopian tube, not the womb), a doctor may remove the fallopian tube as therapeutic treatment to prevent the woman's death. The fetus will not survive long after this, but the intention of the procedure and its action is to preserve the woman’s life. It is therefore considered a direct abortion.

This view is also held in Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical Humanae vitae, which says that "the Church does not consider at all illicit the use of those therapeutic means necessary to cure bodily diseases, even if a foreseeable impediment to procreation should result there from—provided such impediment is not directly intended for any motive whatsoever". Paul VI quotes Pius XII in a 1953 address to the Italian Association of Urology. For example, the removal of a cancerous uterus is allowed if life at conception and beyond is not present in uterus, so removal of uterus is allowed but procreation is not possible when uterus is removed.

According to Archbishop Jose Antonio Eguren in Peru, indirect abortion is not the same as a therapeutic abortion. Eguren asserts that indirect abortion is an extraordinary moral case which has nothing to do ‘therapeutic abortion’ ; in Catholic doctrine, therapeutic abortion simply does not exist, since abortion is never a cure for anything.

According to Elio Sgreccia, President of the Pontifical Academy for Life, a great number of indications for such abortions have lost their raison d'être. He further asserts that the progressive extension of these indications beyond the scope of medicine has often been driven by political reasons, part of which are related to the eugenics movement.

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Wikipedia