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profoundly scientific men have committed the most serious blunders in diagnosis? How often has it not happened that the melancholy prediction that such or such a woman could 'never have a living child,' that another must 'die in labor,' that a third could 'never live through another pregnancy,' has been completely falsified by subsequent events; and shall precious lives be sacrificed on this mere fiat of feeble human judgment, and on a questionable ruling? Suppose the opinion were correct, who constituted man the arbiter of human life? who appointed him to decide between the relative merits and claims of human lives? Certainly not Almighty God; and without His express sanction, he must be a bold man who dares decide the issue, at least, supposing he believes in hell. The fact is, and corporate medical bodies must one day assume this ground, the distinction between 'criminal' and 'justifiable' abortion is nonsense; it is worse than nonsense, it is itself criminal. Every pregnancy must be allowed to progress to its full completion, or in well-determined cases to the period of 'viability,'2 and the issue left in the Hand which holds all our destinies. When this course is adhered to, it is wonderful to witness the extraordinary if not miraculous evolutions of nature to rescue both lives from danger, or if this may not be, the same beneficent nature kindly elects the maternal life and permits the infant to perish the earliest. It is here that science beautifully and legitimately comes to her aid, determines with accuracy the exact moment that the young life has taken its flight, and on the instant proceeds boldly to an operation which, a moment earlier, would have been murder. She has now only to deal with the dead foetus, a 'foreign body,' which it is her duty to remove with the utmost possible dispatch."
