Page Summary:
If continued pregnancy threatens the life of the mother, and there is no way to save the child, an ethical case can be made for the justifiability of abortion—whether you want to call it abortion or not.
The reason abortion is wrong is because it ends the life of an innocent and helpless human being. Unequivocally. But what if continued pregnancy will kill the mother, and thereby kill her child? Would abortion be justified then? Of all the possible variables we might attach to the abortion question, this one is the most ethically challenging. But before we examine the moral legitimacy of aborting a child to save the mother, here is some important context:
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It is only in extremely rare cases that abortion can even be mentioned as a potential means of saving the mother's life. Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, stated in a 1996 New York Times editorial that "partial-birth abortions are not needed to save the life of the mother."1 Sixteen years earlier, he'd written: "In my thirty-six years in pediatric surgery I have never known of one instance where the child had to be aborted to save the mother's life."2 Even Planned Parenthood's Dr. Alan Guttmacher acknowledged, “Today it is possible for almost any patient to be brought through pregnancy alive, unless she suffers from a fatal illness such as cancer or leukemia, and, if so, abortion would be unlikely to prolong, much less save, life.”3
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A life of the mother exception and a health of the mother exception are very different things. When the Supreme Court struck down all state abortion bans in 1973, it ruled that states could not prohibit abortion during the first two trimesters for any reason and could only prohibit abortion during the third trimester so long as the pregnancy was not a threat to the mother’s health. The Court then defined health to include "emotional, psychological, (or) familial" trauma—thereby making abortion effectively legal through all nine months. While it may be justified to perform an abortion to save a mother from dying, it is not justified to save her from “emotional trauma.”
Those who oppose abortion can and do differ about when, if ever, it is justified. But whether you allow for any exceptions or not, it is reasonable to make a categorical distinction between an elective abortion and what we might call an emergency abortion. That is, an abortion performed to save the mother from death. Some abortion opponents try to get around the difficulty by not calling such procedures an abortion, but this semantic maneuvering does not materially change what is happening. As an overarching principle, when the life of the mother is threatened by continued pregnancy, everything possible should be done to save both the mother and the child. During the second half of pregnancy, premature delivery and aggressive neonatal care may offer the best hope of saving both mother and child.
When pregnancy endangers the life of the mother during the first half of pregnancy, the most ethical course of action is much harder to pinpoint. Here's the tension. The fundamental reason that abortion is condemnable is because it kills an innocent human being. What do you do, then, when the existence of one human being, through no fault of their own, threatens the life of another human being? Do you end the life of the child, to save the life of the mother? This is the dilemma we face. Philosophically, we might justify the decision to abort a life-threatening pregnancy this way:
A) If the pregnancy continues, the mother will die. If the mother dies, the child will die.
B) If the pregnancy is ended through abortion, the child will die, but the mother will live.
In both instances the child will die. Since there is no way to save the child, but there is a way to save the mother, it is morally expedient (even necessary, perhaps) to save the mother by ending the life of the child—on the premise that it is better to save one life, than to lose two. This conclusion has nothing to do with valuing one life over the other. It merely recognizes that since there is no way to save the baby, the most ethical course of action is to save the mother.
Though such thinking may be ethically sound as it applies to the hypothetical conditions above, real-world circumstances are never so cut and dry. Quite simply, statement A is flawed. We can say with certainty that if the mother dies, her previable child will die also, but we can never say with certainty that if the pregnancy continues, the mother will die. In order to be accurate, the beginning of Statement A would need to be re-rendered as such:
A) If the pregnancy continues, the mother might die...
There is, of course, a huge difference between will and might, which is why this scenario is so difficult. Does the morality of aborting a life-threatening pregnancy depend on the severity of the threat to the mother? Is it a matter of percentages and probability? For a pregnant woman in the United States, there is currently a .018% chance that the pregnancy will kill her, which includes pregnancy-related deaths occurring up to a year after the pregnancy has ended.4 This number has been steadily rising for decades5 due to increases in average maternal age and decreases in average maternal health but is still less than two-tenths of one percent. In 2024, there were a reported 665 maternal deaths in the United States, which works out to 17.9 maternal deaths for every 100,000 live births.6 Pregnancy, by its very nature, carries the risk of death. It is generally an infinitesimally small risk, but a risk nonetheless. Is a .018% risk to the mother’s life severe enough to morally justify abortion? What if the risk to her life were 1%, or 10%, or 50%? What if there was a 90% chance the mother would die?
At this point, we would do well to get as specific as we can. What are the real-world scenarios in which continued pregnancy poses a legitimate threat to the mother's life, and it is not possible to end the pregnancy by inducing labor? The list is not a long one, though it can’t be definitively capped. Conditions that pose relatively minor threats in isolation can become serious problems if they stack up. Nor can every possible combination of complications be anticipated ahead of time. There are simply too many potential variables.
The most prominent individual threat to a mother’s life early in gestation is ectopic pregnancy—a condition that occurs when the embryo implants in the fallopian tubes (or in the ovary, abdomen, or cervix) instead of in the uterus. According to the Cleveland Clinic, approximately 2% of all pregnancies are ectopic and 90% of those occur within the fallopian tubes.7 An ectopic pregnancy is almost always fatal to the baby and can be fatal to the mother as well. WebMD identifies ectopic pregnancy as the leading cause of maternal deaths in the first trimester,8 and a 2023 study by the University of Illinois blames it for 5%-10% of all pregnancy-related deaths.9 Though the CDC's annual maternal mortality reports do not include ectopic pregnancy as a categorical cause of death, a 2024 study reports that 23% of pregnancy-related hemorrhage deaths owe to ectopic pregnancy.10 Based on these percentages, the number of annual maternal deaths in the U.S. owing to ectopic pregnancy could be as low as 20 women or as high as 70.
The American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) believes that in the context of ectopic pregnancy, “taking actions that end in the death of an embryo” is a morally-acceptable response.11 This is based on their conviction that “ectopic embryos are completely unable to survive a pregnancy at this time in history.” AAPLOG calls the embryo’s death “inevitable,” and yet, there are instances where an undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy has yielded a successful live birth. Such cases are exceedingly rare, but they do exist.
In 1999, a healthy baby boy was delivered in London after having implanted in his mother's fallopian tube.12 When the tube ruptured, the embryo attached itself to the mother's uterus and spent the rest of the pregnancy in the mother's abdominal cavity. The doctor who delivered the baby estimated that an embryo has a one in 60 million chance of surviving an ectopic pregnancy. In 2000, a healthy baby girl was delivered in Nottingham (UK) despite the fact that she spent the duration of her ectopic pregnancy attached to the lining of her mother's bowels.13 In 2005, a woman in Hertfordshire (UK) gave birth to a healthy baby girl who spent the entire pregnancy in her mother's abdomen.14 In 2008, an ovary-based ectopic pregnancy delivered a healthy baby girl in northern Australia.15
In 2025, a Los Angeles woman’s undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy ended in the birth of a healthy 8-pound baby boy. Her son had implanted on the sidewall of her pelvis and developed entirely within her abdomen. A 22-pound ovarian cyst prevented the mother and her doctors from discovering the pregnancy until days before her child was born. The U.S. News & World Report article covering the story cites a 2023 Ethiopian study asserting that the fetal mortality rate for abdominal pregnancies is up to 90%.16
Percentages are hard to come by, but BBC News reports that babies who implant outside the uterus only have a 5% chance of survival while there is a 10% chance that the mother will die.17 A 2003 Canadian Broadcasting story on the successful delivery of an ectopic pregnancy in Canada quotes Dr. Robert Sabbah as saying that the baby only had about a 1% chance of survival.18 Reports on ectopic pregnancy published by the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) tell us the following:
1) The mortality rate for ruptured ectopic pregnancy has steadily declined over the past three decades, and from 2011 to 2013 accounted for 2.7% of pregnancy-related deaths.19
2) The rise (in ectopic pregnancy) can be attributed partly to increases in certain risk factors but mostly to improved diagnostics. Some ectopic pregnancies detected today, for instance, would have spontaneously resolved without detection or intervention in the past.20
3) To date, at least 14 studies have documented that 68 to 77 percent of ectopic pregnancies resolve without intervention.21
4) Patients who choose expectant management (instead of medical or surgical intervention) should have β-hCG levels monitored every 48 hours, and medical or surgical management should be recommended if β-hCG levels do not decrease sufficiently.22
The first thing to note is that a significant majority of ectopic pregnancies are never treated, somewhere between 68–77%. In most of these cases, the embryo miscarries without medical intervention and the pregnancy ends without further incident. If we split the difference between between 68% and 77%, we get 72.5%. Guttmacher estimates there were 5.4 million U.S. pregnancies in 2020.23 If 2% were ectopic, that comes out to roughly 108,000 ectopic pregnancies—against as many 70 maternal deaths (based on our estimates above). Even if we assume that all 70 of those deaths were the result of untreated ectopic pregnancy, the likelihood of dying from an untreated ectopic pregnancy would still only be .06%
Pulmonary hypertension (PH), a progressive disease that causes high blood pressure in the arteries, is another condition that can threaten a mother’s life early in pregnancy. Though women with PH are generally advised against getting pregnant, up to a quarter of women suffering from pulmonary hypertension don’t receive the diagnosis until they’re already pregnant.24 It most commonly affects women between the ages of 30-60, and even in the absence of pregnancy, the median survival rate for women with untreated PH is only 2.8 years.25 A 2022 study from the University of Central Florida reports that though “society guidelines recommend offering pregnancy termination” to women with PH, “recent data suggests that maternal mortality among patients with PH is lower than previously observed.”26 When closely monitored and controlled, the estimated mortality risk for pregnant women with PH is 9-25 percent.27
In 2009, the ethics committee at a Catholic hospital in Phoenix deemed it morally appropriate to perform a D&C abortion on a woman with PH whose risk of mortality at 11 weeks was “approach[ing] 100 percent.”28 The mother had refused an abortion earlier in pregnancy, when doctors gave her a 50% chance of survival, but consented once they determined “there was no longer any chance that the life of this child could be saved.”
Despite the hospital’s conviction that it had acted within the standards set forth by the “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services,” and an independent moral analysis that corroborated their decision, the Catholic bishop in Phoenix stripped the hospital of its Catholic status on the assertion that a direct abortion had been performed. Whether or not that decision was justified, it illustrates at the very least how difficult it is to gain consensus on this issue. But if you start with a doctor who is firmly opposed to abortion, you should be able to have confidence that the only time they might bring up abortion is if it’s a true medical emergency.
This page was last updated on August 14, 2026. To cite this page in a research paper, visit: "Citing Abort73 as a Source."
- C. Everett Koop, “Why Defend Partial-Birth Abortion?” The New York Times, Sep 26, 1996.
- C. Everett Koop, “Abortion: Deception-on-Demand,” Moody Monthly, May 1980, 24.
- Alan F. Guttmacher, “Abortion–Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,”The Case for Legalized Abortion Now (Berkeley, Calif.: Diablo Press, 1967).
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Maternal Mortality Rates in the United States, 2024,” March 2026. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/hestat113.htm
- Darah Dilmaghani, et al. “Increasing Maternal Mortality in the U.S.: Looking Beneath and Beyond the Numbers,” Mayo Clinic, June 2024. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11153863/
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Maternal Mortality Rates in the United States, 2024,” March 2026. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/hestat113.htm
- Cleveland Clinic, “Ectopic Pregnancy,” January 2023. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/9687-ectopic-pregnancy
- WebMD, “Ectopic Pregnancy: What to Know,” February 2026. https://www.webmd.com/baby/pregnancy-ectopic-pregnancy
- Mullany K, Minneci M, Monjazeb R, C Coiado O. “Overview of ectopic pregnancy diagnosis, management, and innovation.” Womens Health (Lond). March 2023. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10071153/#bibr32-17455057231160349
- Lisa M Hollier, et al. “Pregnancy-Related Deaths Due to Hemorrhage: Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System, 2012-2019.” Obstet Gynecol. August 2024. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38815264/
- American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians & Gynecologists, “Ectopic Pregnancy” AAPLOG Practice Guideline, March 2020. https://aaplog.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/PG-9-Ectopic-Pregnancy.pdf
- BBC News, “Doctors hail ‘miracle’ baby” Sep 10, 1999. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/443373.stm
- BBC News, “Bowel baby born safely” March 9, 2000. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/671390.stm
- BBC News, “Rare Baby Survives Outside Womb,” Aug 12, 2003. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/beds/bucks/herts/4197194.stm
- BBC News, “Ovary baby survives against odds,” May 31, 2008. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7427907.stm
- U.S. News & World Report, “‘The Best Gift Ever’: Baby Is Born After the Rarest of Pregnancies, Defying All Odds,” Dec 24, 2025. https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2025-12-24/the-best-gift-ever-baby-is-born-after-the-rarest-of-pregnancies-defying-all-odds
- BBC News, “Bowel baby born safely” March 9, 2000. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/671390.stm
- CBC News, “Rare baby survives outside womb” Aug 12, 2003.https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/rare-baby-survives-outside-womb-montreal-doctor-1.371565
- American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), “Ectopic Pregnancy: Diagnosis and Management,” May 2020. https://www.aafp.org/afp/2020/0515/p599
- American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), “Ectopic Pregnancy,” Feb 2000. https://www.aafp.org/afp/2000/0215/p1080
- Ibid.
- American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), “Ectopic Pregnancy: Diagnosis and Management,” May 2020. https://www.aafp.org/afp/2020/0515/p599
- Guttmacher, “Pregnancy Trends in the United States,” Mar 2025. https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/pregnancy-trends-united-states
- Hesham Afify, et al. “Pulmonary Hypertension in Pregnancy: Challenges and Solutions,” Integr Blood Press Control. April 2022. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8985908/
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- M. Therese Lysaught. “Moral Analysis of Procedure at Phoenix Hospital,” Loyola University Chicago, Jan 2011. https://ecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1025&context=ips_facpubs
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