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The plea of self-defence against unjust aggression being thus ruled out of court in all such cases, and no other plea remaining for the craniotomist, we have established, on the clearest principles of Ethics and Jurisprudence, that it is never allowed directly to kill a child as a means to save its mother's life.
You notice, gentlemen, that the eminent physician whom I have been quoting speaks with much indignation of the killing of the embryo, when he calls it a "massacre of the innocents." By this odious term we usually denote the massacre of the babes at Bethlehem, ordered by the infamous Herod to defend himself against the future aggression, as he imagined, of the new-born King of the Jews. A craniotomist would, no doubt, feel insulted at being compared with Herod. And yet, if we examine the matter closely, we shall find that the two massacres, Herod's and the craniotomist's, could only be defended by the same plea, that of necessity. "Necessity knows no law," writes Dr.
When necessity is used as a synonym for a "very strong reason," as it is in the plea of the craniotomist, then it is utterly false that very strong reasons for doing an act cannot be set aside by a divine law to the contrary; what is wrong in itself can never become right, even though the strongest arguments could be adduced in its favor.
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