On the question of what "abortion" is

The Church teaches that all innocent human beings have a right not to be directly killed or killed unjustly even where the killing is not direct.  Put negatively, this is a teaching that all direct or otherwise unjust killing of the innocent is gravely morally wrong.  (In the encyclical letter Evangelium Vitae, Pope John Paul II not only strongly reasserts this teaching, but confirms that it is infallibly proposed by the ordinary universal magisterium of the Church pursuant to the criteria set forth in Lumen Gentium 25 of the Second Vatican Council,)

The prohibited action is labeled an "abortion" (in the sense falling within the condemnation and prohibition of abortion) when the individual who is killed is in the embryonic or fetal stage of development.  It is labeled "infanticide" when the individual is in the infant stage.  I point this out to make clear that the condemnation and moral prohibition of abortion is a particular instance of a general condemnation and prohibition of direct killing of the innocent and all unjust homicide.  In other contexts, the term "abortion" is used differently.  And so we sometimes refer to miscarriages as "spontaneous abortions."  Also, we sometimes say (but only at the risk of misleading people who are not familiar with the technical philosophical and theological discussions of the rights and wrongs of abortion) that "indirect abortions" that are not unjust---that is, acts that cause the death of a child in the womb where death is a foreseen and accepted but unintended side-effect of an otherwise morally permissible act---are morally permissible.  (A standard case is the removal of a cancerous gravid uterus.)

In reading the post by Professor Kaveny that Michael P. called to our attention, I wasn't entirely sure whether she was reserving the term "abortion" (as condemned by the Church) for cases of direct abortion, or also meant to include (as I would) indirect abortions that are unjust.  I think she did mean to include the latter, especially in light of her endorsement of Germain Grisez's theory of human action as applied to the analysis of abortion and killing generally (a theory I, too, endorse), and some other things she said.  Where I disagree with Professor Kaveny (and where she disagrees with Grisez) is on what she and one of her fellow dotCommonweal bloggers refer to tendentiously (and, in my view, unfairly) as Grisez's "disclaimer."  Grisez said:

"If the analysis [of abortion] proposed here should lead in practice to a judgment in conflict with the Church’s teaching, I would follow and urge others to follow the Church’s teaching. If the teaching is open to refinements in respect to its application, these must be completed by the magisterium."

I would say exactly the same thing.  I understand that Professor Kaveny and others who share her views about authority in the Church disagree, and it is an argument I'm happy to have.  I'm quite sure that Grisez's view is not to be accounted for, as Professor Kaveny proposes to account for it, as an expression of "nominalism."  It is, of course, possible that it is wrong for other reasons, though, as I say, I myself think it's right.