Additionally, from priests for life, an interview gives more details:
"…
P: And as a medical doctor and you address for us for a few moments, the on going point of assertion whether explicit or implicit that is brought forward in articles and in legislatures or in media, the assertion that sometimes abortion is necessary to preserve the life and health of the mother. Is that ever true?
G: Actually it’s not. There is no such thing as an abortion to save the life of the mother. As a matter of fact for a while… several years… I was very interested in that question in my formative years and I would ask every obstetrician and gynecologist that I met anywhere. And I said have you ever had a case where you had to do something to kill the baby to save the life of the mother. I have not come across one case, you know. People think of in the movie, the story the Cardinal, where the woman was delivering the child and got into complications and they crushed the baby’s head. And that is just not a part of modern medicine. That is not necessary to be done.
Where the confusion arises is the so-called indirect abortion. Or those cases where both mother and child are dying because of a situation, there are really only three situations like this that I can think of and that’s ectopic pregnancy, cancer of the uterus, and perhaps trauma, or an accidental traumatic injury to the uterus. And if you don’t do anything then both mother and child will die. Now if you treat the mother for whatever needs to be treated, the uterus is bleeding, and you remove the uterus and the baby is still in there, and you do nothing to kill the baby, that is if you had a means an artificial incubator, some day we will have it, I’m sure, you could put that baby in there, so in no way do you directly attack the life of the baby. But you can foresee that that baby will lose its life, but it will lose its life anyhow but without directly attacking. Those are the three instances, very rare, very rare, but those are not abortions. If you look at the five ways that abortions are done, which is the only purpose is to kill the child, none of these techniques are the methods used in these operations. So there is no such thing as an abortion necessary.
And you don’t need a law, you don’t need an exception because for ages that treatment of ectopic pregnancy, once the mother starts bleeding or has life-threatening complications, the treatment of cancer of the uterus, that has been always permissible without …having to legalize abortion. So the answer is simply no. There is no such thing as an abortion to save the life of the mother, sometimes early delivery, sometimes it is so early that the baby has a great risk of dying perhaps, but the baby is delivered, the baby is placed into intensive care, is given all the possible support, and may or may make it, but there is no such thing as an abortion to do that.
P: This is of such an important point because, for example, what you just mentioned, there are cases were a pregnancy may need to be ended early in order to assist the mother in some form of complication. Big difference, isn’t there between killing that baby and making every effort to preserve the life of that baby.
G: Exactly.
P: And this distinction just seems to mean to get lost in so many of the arguments of those who are trying to promote abortion. In the controversy over partial birth abortion particularly, this insistence that we need to leave this open for the cases of the health of the mother has arisen, and there has been quite a response to that hasn’t there been even in the medical profession."
…"
(Father Pavone is interviewing Dr. George Isajiw, MD in 1998.)
priestsforlife.org/media/interviewisajiw.htm
We are so unworthy