Address to Midwives on the Nature of Their Profession

When one thinks of this admirable collaboration of the parents, of nature and of God, from which is born a new human being in the image and likeness of God, how can the precious contribution which you give to such a work be not appreciated? The heroic mother of the Machabees admonished her children: "I know not how you were formed in my womb, for I neither gave you breath, nor soul, nor life, neither did I frame the limbs of every one of you. But the Creator of the world that formed the nativity of men . . .."

Therefore, he who approaches this cradle of life's origin and exercises his action in one way or another must know the order which the Creator wishes maintained and the laws which govern it. For here it is not a case of purely physical or biological laws which blind forces and irrational agents obey, but of laws whose execution and effects are entrusted to the voluntary and free cooperation of man.

This order, fixed by the supreme intelligence, is directed to the purpose willed by the Creator. It embraces the exterior work of man and the internal assent of his free will; it implies action and dutiful omission. Nature places at man's disposal the concatenation of the causes from which will rise a new human life, it is for man to release its loving force, for nature to develop its course and lead it to its completion. When man has completed his part and placed in action the marvelous evolution of life, his duty is to respect its progress in a religious manner, a duty which forbids him to arrest nature's work or halt its natural development.

In such a way nature's part and man's part are distinctly determined. Your professional formation and experience place you in a position to know the action of nature and that of man, no less than the rules and the laws to which both are subject; your conscience, illuminated by reason and faith, under the guidance of the Authority established by God, teaches you how far lawful action extends, and when, instead, there is strictly imposed the obligation of omission.