our time, because opening the abdomen of a pregnant woman and removing the fetus is not regarded as mutilation nowadays. This is what people call a Caesarean delivery.

If someone were to ask: “Suppose that the soul has been breathed into the fetus and it has begun to move, but if it remains, it will endanger its mother and she will die; and if she dies, it too will die. Yet if we remove it, she will live and it will die. Should we deliver it or not?”

We say: Let us give an example. Here is a man who is extremely hungry and has a child full of flesh and fat. He says, “If I do not eat this child, I will die.” What do we say? The answer is that he is not permitted to eat him. Likewise, we say here: it is not permissible to remove the child from its mother’s womb, even though we know that it will die.

If someone says, “If you leave it, both it and its mother will die, and thus two lives will be lost,” we say: If we leave it and it and its mother die, that is not our doing; it is the doing of Allah. But if we ourselves deliver the child and it dies through our action, then we are the ones who have killed it.

Moreover, the mother may die, while we may, for example, have the means to open her abdomen quickly and remove the child, thereby saving it. In the first case, we may think that, if it remains, the mother will die; yet with treatment and medical care, both mother and child may survive. The point is that the mother will not necessarily die in every case. We may judge that if it remains the mother will die, and then she may not die. Doctors’ statements are not infallible revelation; rather, they are like everyone else: they may be right or wrong.

I recall an incident involving someone whom I know with absolute certainty. His wife was pregnant, and the doctors determined that her child was malformed and that it had to be aborted. The mother was distressed and the father was afraid. But Allah willed otherwise: the mother gave birth, and this child proved to be the best of her children. It thus became clear that doctors’ assessments may be mistaken;