"Remark that Brookes, one of the sailors, dissented to the killing of
the sailor-boy. This may happen in consultation, when one of the
consultants does not admit the right to kill an unborn child. Please
also remember that the sailor-boy lay helpless at the bottom of the
boat when his assailants killed him to save their own lives.

"The child is not an unjust aggressor against the mother. It is placed
in the womb without its consent and is defenceless. It is the mother who
is, as it were, the aggressor from the obstacles caused by a deformed
pelvis, tumors, etc.; and she has not the right to ask or consent to the
killing of the child who does not attack her.

"Therefore, I repeat that the two cases are analogous; and if, as
remarked by Justice Coleridge, murder was committed in the first
instance, so is murder committed in the analogue. So, we see, the
principal points of the opinion enunciated by the learned judge, and the
principles therein laid down, can, with equal force, be applied to the
non-justification of craniotomy, by which the life of a defenceless
child is sacrificed to save the mother.

"Notice also that two of the perpetrators of the deed claimed that they
had families, and that their lives were more valuable than that of the
murdered boy. By craniotomists this reason or excuse is frequently given
with much sentimentality to justify the killing of the child. The child,
they say, has no social value, the mother is the idol of her husband,
the pride of the household, often an ornament to society, the mother of
living or possible children. Therefore, her life is more valuable than
that of the unborn child. But who is to be the judge of the value of
life? Were not Scipio Africanus, Manlius, was not Cæsar, from whom the