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1 1 I am very much indebted to James Thomson for discussion, criticism, and many helpful suggestions.

2 2 Daniel Callahan, Abortion: Law, Choice and Morality (New York, 1970), p. 373. This book gives a fascinating survey of the available information on abortion. The Jewish tradition is surveyed in David M. Feldman, Birth Control in Jewish Law (New York, 1968), Part 5, the Catholic tradition in John T. Noonan, Jr., “An Almost Absolute Value in History,” in The Morality of Abortion, ed. John T. Noonan, Jr. (Cambridge, Mass., 1970).

3 3 The term “direct” in the arguments I refer to is a technical one. Roughly, what is meant by “direct killing” is either killing as an end in itself, or killing as a means to some end, for example, the end of saving someone else’s life. See note 6, below, for an example of its use.

4 4 Cf. Encyclical Letter of Pope Pius XI on Christian Marriage, St. Paul Editions (Boston, n.d.), p. 32: “however much we may pity the mother whose health and even life is gravely imperiled in the performance of the duty allotted to her by nature, nevertheless what could ever be a sufficient reason for excusing in any way the direct murder of the innocent? This is precisely what we are dealing with here.” Noonan (The Morality of Abortion, p. 43) reads this as follows: “What cause can ever avail to excuse in any way the direct killing of the innocent? For it is a question of that.”

5 5 The thesis in (4) is in an interesting way weaker than those in (1), (2), and (3): they rule out abortion even in cases in which both mother and child will die if the abortion is not performed. By contrast, one who held the view expressed in (4) could consistently say that one needn’t prefer letting two persons die to killing one.

6 6 Cf. the following passage from Pius XII, Address to the Italian Catholic Society of Midwives: “The baby in the maternal breast has the right to life immediately from God – Hence there is no man, no human authority, no science, no medical, eugenic, social, economic or moral ‘indication’ which can establish or grant a valid juridical ground for a direct deliberate disposition of an innocent human life, that is a disposition which looks to its destruction either as an end or as a means to another end perhaps in itself not illicit. – The baby, still not born, is a man in the same degree and for the same reason as the mother” (quoted in Noonan, The Morality of Abortion, p. 45).

7 7 The need for a discussion of this argument was brought home to me by members of the Society for Ethical and Legal Philosophy, to whom this paper was originally presented.

8 8 For a discussion of the difficulties involved, and a survey of the European experience with such laws, see The Good Samaritan and the Law, ed. James M. Ratcliffe (New York, 1966).