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It is not true that Catholic natural law always forbids abortion. There are some cases in which it is indirectly achieved and justified.

For example, if a pregnant woman has a sickness that requires medicine that may kill her child, the Catholic view does not forbid her to take the medicine. Or, if her child is conceived within a Fallopian tube rather than in the uterus, the tube may be removed although the child will die.

The number of such cases is small, however; and does not include any broad exceptions for rape, incest, financial well being, the happiness of mother or child, and so on.

There are Catholic thinkers who take more liberal positions on the morality of abortion, although their view is not officially sanctioned. Father Joseph Donceel, S.J., for example, has argued that the embryo is "not a human person during the early stages of pregnancy, and that, consequently, it is not immoral to terminate pregnancy during this time, provided there are serious reasons for such an intervention."

(In Donceel's view, the Roman Church was misled by mistaken scientific ideas in the 17th century. Some scientists of that period believed that there was a tiny, but fully formed, human being in the womb from the time of conception.)