Therapeutic abortion

Therapeutic abortion is abortion induced following a diagnosis of medical necessity. Such abortions are carried out in order to avoid the risk of substantial harm to the mother. In many countries therapeutical abortion is legal, including some where induced abortion is illegal.

According to Robert E. Cooke, the word therapeutic means “pertaining to treatment or healing.” The word "abortion" in biology means "the arrested development of an embryo or an organ at a more or less early stage."

Many therapeutic abortions are performed today, with some degree of controversy regarding the quality of life, if the baby has a genetic condition which is thought likely to lead to a shorter life than that of a healthy child (among such conditions would be: severe cases of certain genetic conditions, conditions which entail the inability of certain vital organs such as the heart or liver to function without sustained support which are not amenable to surgical repair or transplantation, severe cases of profound mental impairment, the lack of portions of the brainstem or the higher brain, such as the cerebral hemispheres, or anencephaly, among others). Often health providers will pressure mothers to consent to such abortions, and mothers are strongly dissuaded from carrying their babies to term, despite the proven benefits for the natural grief process (in the case of terminally ill unborn babies) and the wider benefits to society of having disabled people and children in our midst. It is thought cost implications in the care of terminally ill children or long term disabled children play a large factor in health providers strong promotion abortions, and that some doctors have used the term "therapeutic abortion", implying that the pregnancy poses a substantially greater and imminent risk to the maternal health than a 'normal' pregnancy.

There is little evidence that a pregnancy with a disabled child is any more dangerous for the mother than that with a healthy child. All pregnancies pose some risk to maternal health, but it is extremely rare that a problem with the baby's health significantly increases the risk to the mother's health. In the vast majority of cases, pregnancies with babies with abnormalies progress without any extra risk to the mother. Hence the controversy of using the term "therapeutic abortion" as a justification for aborting a baby with abnormalities. Dangers in pregnancy to a mother's health normally are the result of some underlying medical condition of the mother's alone.

In developed countries in the West (i.e., most European countries and the United States, among others), the state of medical care for those pregnant women or those women who could become pregnant (who can get access to affordable contemporary care and are given it in a timely manner) is such the rare cases that would pose an indisputable threat to the mother's life (e.g., most cases of ectopic pregnancy, uterine cancer, and certain other causes) this can be diagnosed in a timely enough manner that a medical or surgical therapeutic abortion is performed before the situation becomes medically unstable. That is decidedly not the case in remote areas of the Third World (many areas of Asia and sub-Saharan Africa) with little access to advanced medical care, or in areas (or social, relational, and familial situations) where a woman's right to emergency medical care is violated. Many secular and religious ethical codes- even those that consider other abortions to be extremely immoral- will usually allow for an abortion, under the principle of double effect, where the medical crisis is the result of a natural biological phenomenon and is absolutely necessary to save the woman's life; disagreement persists, however, about what does or does not constitute an ethical justification for a non-elective therapeutic abortion, particularly regarding genetic disorders or mental impairment. There are many situations in which therapeutic abortions are performed that do not involve a grave threat to the pregnant woman's life, mobility, or physical health, and there are many cases where therapeutic abortions are performed in situations where the embryo or fetus is capable of surviving outside the mother's body, with or without assistance or significant impairments. In some developed societies, merely a pregnant woman's stated desire to terminate her pregnancy is the only criterion necessary for an abortion to be deemed "therapeutic", though this should not be confused with a therapeutic abortion performed because of a medical emergency.

...
Wikipedia