Abstract

The foundational concepts of Part I (IJAP, Vol. 37, no. 2) are here elaborated and applied to unintended and unwanted pregnancies resulting from consensual intercourse, both within and outside of marriage. Following a brief enquiry into Scriptural presuppositions about unwanted pregnancy, different sorts of provisional, constrained or impaired consent to separating the unitive and procreative ends of intercourse are analyzed. Their common reliance on erroneous beliefs and disordered precepts is investigated along the way to evaluating three Thomisticly validated excuses for seeking a defensively unjustified abortion, and the quasi-involuntary origin of intellectual blind spots about such moral errors is explicated in terms of a Thomist account of perceptual apprehensions, sensitive passions, and conceptual intellect. The basic features of both excused and justified defensive abortions are then shown to provide a coherent basis for shaping abortion laws in accordance with the Constitutionally protected rights of self-defense and liberty in procreation, as well as the Thomist principles of just legislation.