Three Cases of Abortion - The Irish Couple

Hint: Natural law allows for situations like this by the principle of double effect. Remember that there are three elements to natural law thinking – the intention, the act itself and the consequences. Here the consequences are dire – a woman in labour dies because the abortion didn't happen. Double effect says that if the intention is good (to save the mother’s life) then a bad consequence (the death of a foetus) is morally acceptable. The doctrine recognises that we cannot have the best of all possible worlds and in reality we often have to choose least bad consequences which appear to break one of the primary precepts – in this case preservation of life of the foetus, in order to keep that same precept for a mother. The problem here appears to be (as with utilitarian ethics) we need to assess consequences and this may be difficult or even impossible. If the doctors had known for sure that the mother would die, the morality might have been clear-cut to have a termination. But they didn’t and they delayed. All theories that adopt a consequentialist perspective (e.g. utilitarianism, natural law) suffer from this difficulty.

This is one interpretation of what Natural Law might suggest is right in this scenario, but can you think of alternatives ?"