History of abortion

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The practice of induced abortion—the deliberate termination of a pregnancy—has been known since ancient times. Various methods have been used to perform or attempt abortion, including the administration of abortifacient herbs, the use of sharpened implements, the application of abdominal pressure, and other techniques. The term abortion, or more precisely spontaneous abortion, is sometimes used to refer to a naturally occurring condition that ends a pregnancy, that is, to what is popularly called a miscarriage.

Primary sources[edit]

Ancient Near East[edit]

  • If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine.
    And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life,
    Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,
    Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
    • Exodus 21:22–25 (KJV)
    • Variant translation: "If people are fighting and hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman's husband demands and the court allows. / But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, / Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, / Burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise." (NIV)


Ancient Greece[edit]

  • But when, I take it, the men and the women have passed the age of lawful procreation, we shall leave the men free to form such relations with whomsoever they please, except daughter and mother and their direct descendants and ascendants, and likewise the women, save with son and father, and so on, first admonishing them preferably not even to bring to light anything whatever thus conceived, but if they are unable to prevent a birth to dispose of it on the understanding that we cannot rear such an offspring.
    • Plato, Republic, V, 461b–c (tr. Paul Shorey)


  • And pregnant women also must take care of their bodies, not avoiding exercise nor adopting a low diet; this it is easy for the lawgiver to secure by ordering them to make a Journey daily for the due worship of the deities whose office is the control of childbirth. As regards the mind, however, on the contrary it suits them to pass the time more indolently than as regards their bodies; for children before birth are evidently affected by the mother just as growing plants are by the earth. As to exposing or rearing of the children born, let there be a law that no deformed child shall be reared; but on the ground of number of children, if the regular customs hinder any of those born being exposed, there must be a limit fixed to the procreation of offspring, and if any people have a child as a result of intercourse in contravention of these regulations, abortion must be practised on it before it has developed sensation and life; for the line between lawful and unlawful abortion will be marked by the fact of having sensation and being alive. And since the beginning of the fit age for a man and for a woman, at which they are to begin their union, has been defined, let it also be decided for how long a time it is suitable for them to serve the state in the matter of producing children. For the offspring of too elderly parents, as those of too young ones, are born imperfect both in body and mind, and the children of those that have arrived at old age are weaklings. Therefore the period must be limited to correspond with the mental prime; and this in the case of most men is the age stated by some of the poets, who measure men’s age by periods of seven years,—it is about the age of fifty. Therefore persons exceeding this age by four or five years must be discharged from the duty of producing children for the community, and for the rest of their lives if they have intercourse it must be manifestly for the sake of health or for some other similar reason.
    • Aristotle, Politics, VII, xiv, 8–12 (tr. H. Rackham)
    • For "the poets, who measure men’s age by periods of seven years", see Solon, Fragment 27/15 (quoted in Philo, On the Creation of the World 104)


  • I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrong-doing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion. But I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art.


  • I told her to spring up and down so as to kick her heels against her buttocks, and when she had sprung for the seventh time, the seed ran out on to the ground with a noise, and the girl on seeing it gazed at it and was amazed. [...] It was as if someone had removed the external shell of a raw egg, and the fluid part inside was visible through the internal membrane. [...] It was red and roundish; broad, white strands were seen to be present inside the membrane, pressed together with thick, red serum, and around the membrane on the outside there was bloody material. Through the middle of the membrane something narrow came out, which appeared to me to be an umbilical cord, and through this the movement of breath in and out first took place. From this the membrane spread out and completely enclosed the seed. This is how I saw the seed to be on the sixth day.


  • Concerning pregnancies that do not proceed in the normal way, but which are cut to pieces inside (sc. the uterus), the matter is as follows. First place a cloth over the woman, girding it above each breast, and also you must cover her head with a cloth, so that she will not see what you are doing and become frightened. Now, if the fetus falls sideways and one arm comes out, take hold of the arm and, drawing it as far out as possible, excoriate the upper arm and strip its bone bare; bind a fish-skin around two fingers of the hand so that the flesh will not slip away, and after that make an incision all around the shoulder and separate it at the joint. Next replace the fetus’s head in its natural position, and then draw the fetus downward; with your finger cave the fetus’s body in, by using a blade through the ribs or the collar bone, so that the body will expel air and collapse, which makes its passage to the outside easier. If you are able to bring out the head in the natural way, fine; if not, crush it to pieces, and in this way draw the fetus down and out. Then pour copious warm water over the woman and anoint her with olive oil; command her to lie down and cross her legs; after that have her drink sweet white wine hardly diluted with water; and grind resin into honey, mix this with wine, and give it to her to drink.


Ancient Rome[edit]

  • Memoria teneo Milesiam quandam mulierem, cum essem in Asia, quod ab heredibus secundis accepta pecunia partum sibi ipsa medicamentis abegisset, rei capitalis esse damnatam; nec iniuria quae spem parentis, memoriam nominis, subsidium generis, heredem familiae, designatum rei publicae civem sustulisset. quanto est Oppianicus in eadem iniuria maiore supplicio dignus! si quidem illa, cum suo corpori vim attulisset, se ipsa cruciavit, hic autem idem illud effecit per alieni corporis mortem atque cruciatum. ceteri non videntur in singulis hominibus multa parricidia suscipere posse, Oppianicus inventus est qui in uno corpore pluris necaret.
    • I remember a case which occurred when I was in Asia: how a certain woman of Miletus, who had accepted a bribe from the alternative heirs and procured her own abortion by drugs, was condemned to death: and rightly, for she had cheated the father of his hopes, his name of continuity, his family of its support, his house of an heir, and the Republic of a citizen-to-be. How much more severely did the same crime deserve to be punished in Oppianicus; for she in doing violence to her body brought pain upon herself, but he produced the same result as she by the painful death of another. Most men seem unequal to the task of murdering a succession of victims one at a time: Oppianicus came as a discovery—the murderer, in a single victim, of more than one person.


  • Partus antequam edatur, mulieris portio vel viscerum est.
    • The child is a part of the woman, or of her entrails, before it is born.


  • The Divine Severus and Antoninus stated in a Rescript that a woman who purposely produces an abortion on herself should be sentenced to temporary exile by the Governor; for it may be considered dishonorable for a woman to deprive her husband of children with impunity.


  • If it should be proved that a woman has employed force upon her abdomen for the purpose of producing abortion, the Governor of the province shall send her into exile.


  • Those who administer a beverage for the purpose of producing abortion, or of causing affection, although they may not do so with malicious intent, still, because the act offers a bad example, shall, if of humble rank, be sent to the mines; or, if higher in degree, shall be relegated to an island, with the loss of a portion of their property. If a man or a woman should lose his or her life through such an act, the guilty party shall undergo the extreme penalty.


  • Cicero, in his oration for Cluentius Avitus, said that when he was in Asia, a certain Milesian woman, having received money from certain substituted heirs, produced an abortion on herself, by means of drugs, and was sentenced to death. If, however, any woman, after a divorce, should commit a violent act upon her viscera, for the reason that she was pregnant and did not wish to bear a son to her husband, whom she hated, she ought to be punished by temporary exile; as was stated by our most excellent Emperors in a Rescript.


  • Dum labefactat onus gravidi temeraria ventris,
      In dubio vitae lassa Corinna iacet.
    • Corinna, rashly seeking to rid her heavy bosom of its load, lies languishing in peril of life.
      • Ovid, Amores, II, xiii, 1–2 (tr. Grant Showerman)


  • Si tamen in tanto fas est monuisse timore,
      Hac tibi sit pugna dimicuisse satis!
    • And you—if it be right amid such fear still to utter warning—see that this battle be the end of such strife for you!
      • Ovid, Amores, II, xiii, 27–28 (tr. Grant Showerman)


  • Quid iuvat inmunes belli cessare puellas,
      Nec fera peltatas agmina velle sequi,
    Si sine Marzte suis patiuntur vulnera telis,
      Et caecas armant in sua fata manus?
    Quae prima instituit teneros convellere fetus,
      Militia fuerat digna perire sua.
    • Of what avail to fair woman to rest free from the burdens of war, nor choose with shield in arm to march in the fierce array, if, free from peril of battle, she suffer wounds from weapons of her own, and arm her unforeseeing hands to her own undoing? She who first plucked forth the tender life deserved to die in the warfare she began.
      • Ovid, Amores, II, xiv, 1–6 (tr. Grant Showerman)
      • Compare: Euripides, Medea, 250–251: [...] ὡς τρὶς ἂν παρ᾿ ἀσπίδα / στῆναι θέλοιμ᾿ ἂν μᾶλλον ἢ τεκεῖν ἅπαξ—"Sooner would I stand / Three times to face their battles, shield in hand, / Than bear one child." (tr. Gilbert Murray)


  • Si Venus Aenean gravida temerasset in alvo,
      Caesaribus tellus orba futura fuit.
    Tu quoque, cum posses nasci formosa, perisses,
      Temptasset, quod tu, si tua mater opus;
    Ipse ego, cum fuerim melius periturus amando,
      Idissem nullos matre necante dies.
    • Had Venus laid rash hand to Aeneas in her heavy womb, the world to come would have been orphaned of its Caesars. You, too, though you were to be born fair, would have perished had your mother tried what you have tried; and I myself, though a death through love was to be my better fate, would never have seen the day had my mother slain me.
      • Ovid, Amores, II, xiv, 17–20 (tr. Grant Showerman)


  • Di faciles, peccasse semel concedite tuto,
      Et satis est; poenam culpa secunda ferat!
    • Ye gods of mercy, grant she has sinned this once in safety, 'tis all I ask; for a second fault, let her bear her punishment!
      • Ovid, Amores, II, xiv, 43–44 (tr. Grant Showerman)


Early Christian writers[edit]

  • But sometimes by a cruel necessity, whilst yet in the womb, an infant is put to death, when lying awry in the orifice of the womb he impedes parturition, and kills his mother, if he is not to die himself. Accordingly, among surgeons’ tools there is a certain instrument, which is formed with a nicely-adjusted flexible frame for opening the uterus first of all, and keeping it open; it is further furnished with an annular blade,1676 by means of which the limbs within the womb are dissected with anxious but unfaltering care; its last appendage being a blunted or covered hook, wherewith the entire fœtus is extracted by a violent delivery. There is also (another instrument in the shape of) a copper needle or spike, by which the actual death is managed in this furtive robbery of life: they give it, from its infanticide function, the name of ἐμβρυοσφάκτης, the slayer of the infant, which was of course alive.


  • And the hearers of Callistus being delighted with his tenets, continue with him, thus mocking both themselves as well as many others, and crowds of these dupes stream together into his school. Wherefore also his pupils are multiplied, and they plume themselves upon the crowds (attending the school) for the sake of pleasures which Christ did not permit. But in contempt of Him, they place restraint on the commission of no sin, alleging that they pardon those who acquiesce (in Callistus’ opinions). For even also he permitted females, if they were unwedded, and burned with passion at an age at all events unbecoming, or if they were not disposed to overturn their own dignity through a legal marriage, that they might have whomsoever they would choose as a bedfellow, whether a slave or free, and that a woman, though not legally married, might consider such a companion as a husband. Whence women, reputed believers, began to resort to drugs for producing sterility, and to gird themselves round, so to expel what was being conceived on account of their not wishing to have a child either by a slave or by any paltry fellow, for the sake of their family and excessive wealth. Behold, into how great impiety that lawless one has proceeded, by inculcating adultery and murder at the same time! And withal, after such audacious acts, they, lost to all shame, attempt to call themselves a Catholic Church!


Middle Ages[edit]

  • Observe, O man, and see whether the dog goes after the bitch after she has conceived. Look at the cow or certainly at the mare, and notice whether the bulls or stallions bother them after they are with young. Obviously, they forego the pleasure of intercourse when they sense that they are unable to produce offspring. Therefore, since bulls and dogs and other kinds of animal show such regard for their young, it is men alone, whose teacher was born of the Virgin, who have no fear of destroying and killing their little ones, made in the image of God, just so that they can satisfy their lust. This is the reason why many women practice abortion before their term is complete, or certainly why they discover means of mutilating or damaging the tiny and still fragile limbs of these little ones. And thus, as they are impelled by their incentives to lust, they are first murderers before they become parents.
    • Peter Damian, Letter 96 (tr. Owen J. Blum)
    • Owen J. Blum, ed. Fathers of the Church: Medieval Continuation, Vol. 5: The Letters of Peter Damian, 91–120 (Catholic University of America Press, 1998), pp. 62–63: “Here we have one of the few references, perhaps the only explicit one, in Damian's letters, to the practices of abortion. And to the horror of post-modern feminists he puts the blame on ‘the many women who practice abortion,’ charging them ‘with being murderers before they became parents.’ This discussion and its context are important evidence from the Central Middle Ages, reflecting the constant opposition of the Church to abortion from the Council of Elvira (ca. 302) to the present.”


Secondary sources[edit]

Ancient Near East[edit]

  • The specific technique of massage abortion appears to date back more than 2000 years and the Borobudur and Angkor bas-reliefs are the oldest representations of the technique known. Oddly, although often a relatively effective technique, massage abortion is not widespread outside the confines of the Hindu and Buddhist worlds.
    Abortion by a variety of means is known in all societies and all phases of history, and it is commonly condemned by law and or religious teaching. Abortion is mentioned in the Sumerian Code (2000 BC), the Assyrian Law (1800 BC) and the Code of Hammurabi (1300 BC). Abortion resulting from trauma is mentioned in the Old Testament, where if men who are fighting injure a pregnant woman and she miscarries then they shall pay a fine. If, however, the woman dies, then they must give “a life for a life”. Interestingly, this is the only explicit reference to abortion in the Old or New Testament, and it is notable that abortion itself is not considered murder. The Angkor carvings underscore the universality of abortion. For hundreds of millions of women, the torments it has imagined women might suffer in hell for terminating a pregnancy are a reality on earth.


Ancient Greece[edit]

  • In ancient times, the "delayed ensoulment" belief of Aristotle (384-322 BCE) was widely accepted in Pagan Greece and Rome. He taught that a fetus originally has a vegetable soul. This evolves into an animal soul later in gestation. Finally the fetus is "animated" with a human soul. This latter event, called "ensoulment," was believed to occur at 40 days after conception for male fetuses, and 90 days after conception for female fetuses. The difference was of little consequence, because in those days, there were no tests to detect the start of pregnancy or to determine the gender of an embryo. Ultrasound devices and pregnancy test strips were millennia in the future. Thus abortions were not condemned if performed early in gestation when the embryo had a vegetable or animal soul. It was only condemned if the abortion was done later in pregnancy that a human soul was destroyed. By coincidence, this 90 day limit happens to be approximately equal to the end of the first trimester, the point at which the US Supreme Court decided that states could begin to restrict a woman's access to abortion. The 40 and 90 day limits also bear a striking resemblance to the 40 and 80 day periods when a woman was considered ritually impure after birth in Judaism (Leviticus 12:2–6). Both concepts denigrated females at the time.


Prejudices: A Philosophical Dictionary[edit]

Robert Nisbet, Prejudices: A Philosophical Dictionary (Harvard University Press, 1982)

  • Both Plato and Aristotle approved of abortion, the former in the interests of wise population policy, the latter chiefly on the ground that it was an element of the family’s proper freedom in the state. Hippocrates’ words on the subject are, in the original Greek, somewhat less blunt and categorical than modern takers of the Hippocratic Oath have sometimes suggested. All Hippocrates says is: “I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion.” There were other means of abortion known to the Greeks, none of which Hippocrates abjures. In sum, while the ancient world doubtless had its categorical opponents of abortion, one is hard to put to find much against the act among the Greek and Roman philosophers.
    • p. 2
  • Laws against abortion have been strictest and harshest in the despotisms of history, presumably because of the desire for military recruits, though desire also to weaken the hold of the family over its own should not be discounted. Czarist Russia had very severe laws against abortion. With the Bolshevik Revolution there was a temporary abrogation of the laws, but as the real militarism of the Soviet Union became ever more manifest and the Stalinist dictatorship more oppressive, abortions were once again discouraged and made difficult of attainment, though not actually prohibited by law. Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy both had laws designed to increase population and naturally to discourage contraception and abortion. The surest sign of despotism in history is the state’s supersession off the family’s authority over its own. Often such supersession is justified in the name of conscience or individual welfare.
    • pp. 2–3
  • The contemporary preoccupation with abortion has its roots in the late nineteenth century, a period of many moral preoccupations and of causes to advance them. Although abortion had been a sin in the Christian church from early on, it had taken its place with a large number of other sins. Now, however, abortion became the centerpiece of a moralistic crusade. So did a good many other matters, including alcohol, tobacco, premarital sex, masturbation, meat eating, narcotics, Sunday saloon openings, and Sunday baseball. Contraception, pro and con, was also the subject of moral crusading. Never have so many laws been passed first by the states than the federal government, prohibiting so many actions which for thousands of years had generally been held to fall under family authority. It can be fairly argued that the present infirm state of the family in Western society is the consequence as much of moralistic laws assertedly designed to protect individual members of the family from one evil or another as it is of anything else. Current efforts to prohibit abortion categorically and absolutely might be viewed in this light. It is not so much the woman’s right to choose” that is being assaulted as it is the ethic of the family and its legitimate domain.
    The nineteenth century also generated the romance and sentimentalism of children, especially small ones. Before that century, children had been seen pretty much as immature or incipient adults, scarcely as treasures in and for themselves. From their romanticization it was only a short step to romanticizing pregnancy and there with the fetus. Certain religions, notably but by no means exclusively Roman Catholicism, commenced crusades among their respective memberships against contraception and also forced miscarriage. More and more states and communities passed laws making it illegal to induce miscarriage in a pregnant woman, and abortion mills acquired the ill fame they continue to carry. But all such attention by law and religion has to be seen in the context of the considerable number of actions along the same line-against alcohol, tobacco, prostitution, sex for pleasure, profanity, and others, all novel utilizations of the law and religion which would have been deemed egregious by earlier generations. The Victorian age on both sides of the Atlantic was, from one point of view, a gigantic crusade by the middle class against the mores and folkways of the other classes, upper included. The use of the sovereign powers of the states to achieve success in this crusade was manifest in the epidemic off so-called Blue Laws in America.
    • pp. 3–4
  • Abortion is indeed regrettable in most circumstances, but by no means in all. It takes inquisitorial cruelty to reach the decision that the fertilized egg must be protected even when it is the result of rape or of a father’s systematic sexual abuse of his teenage daughter. No spirit in any way related to the divinity can justify programing the minds of boys and girls to repeat: “I love my mother, but if the choice is between preservation of her life and that of the embryo, I want my mother to die so the innocent baby can live.”
    • p. 5


Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance[edit]

Reported in: John M. Riddle, Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance (Harvard University Press, 1992)
See also: John M. Riddle, Eve's Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West (Harvard University Press, 1997)
  • From numerous medical and legal documents we know that people long ago employed contraceptives and early-term abortifacients in order to have control over reproduction. Historians and demographers have assumed that these drugs (for that is what they were) did not work. Before modern times birth control drugs could, at best, be regarded as magical delusions along with exorcism, the evil eye, and other examples of acceptable magic and condemned witchcraft.
    • p. 12
  • Eventually, Hebrew, Greek, and Roman thought came nearly together on the point that prior to the fetus forming, feticide was not homicide. There was never absolute uniform opinion, however, in Hellenic, Hellenistic, or Roman thought, in pagan philosophy, Judaism, or Christianity. The question about the soul of the fetus was posed initially by the Greeks, argued by Stoics, and later answered affirmatively by Jews and Christians. Aristotle suggested in one place that the conceptus had a “soul” after forty days from conception if a male, ninety if female (for similar differentiation, see Lev. 12:1-5); elsewhere, however, he stated that the fetus develops “little by little” and that one cannot make fine judgments.
    The Stoics believed that soul came when the fetus was exposed to cool air, although the potential was present at conception. The idea of cooling air at birth giving rise to the soul was ridiculed by Plutarch, the Greek, and by Tertullian, the Christian. The latter asked what happened to souls in hot climates or warm bedrooms, or whether, since if the air is too cool, the infant dies, anybody could be born north of the Scythians and the Germans.
    • p. 21
  • From all indications, the ancient peoples of West Asia and Egypt believed that life began at birth. There is not even a hint that the ancients regarded a fetus as a human person. Quite the contrary. In fact, the property rights of a fetus were recognized and ascribed to the father of the family. A Sumerian law (ca. 1800 B.C.E.) reads:
    If (a man accidentally) buffeted a woman of free-citizen class and caused her to have a miscarriage, he must pay ten shekels of silver. If (a man deliberately) struck a woman of free-citizen class and caused her to have a miscarriage, he must pay one-third mina of silver.
    One-third mina is twice the value of ten shekels, thus a deliverate act is a doubt egregious offense Hammurabi’s laws (1729-1686 B.C.E.) permitted the same recovery (ten shekels) for one causing a miscarriage, and five shekels for a commoner’s daughter. If a slave’s owner caused a slave to lose a fetus through a miscarriage, he was fined two shekels.
    According to Middle Assyrian law, a citizen who caused a wife of another citizen to miscarry would be required to give up a fetus (thereby indicating incidentally, that a miscarriage can be deliberately induced). If the blow was fatal to the woman (and not to the fetus), the penalty was death to the perpetrator. When the husband of the woman who loses a fetus because of a blow has no son, then the deliverer of the blow will forfeit his life regardless of the gender of the fetus. This provision clearly indicates that what is being protected is not the fetus or the woman but the male’s right to have a child.
    • p. 70
  • A later Assyrian law prescribed a penalty of impalement to a woman for procuring her own abortion. Unstated is who would bring claim, but, from our understanding of later laws and practices, it is clear that what the law protected was the asserted right of the husband to receive a child he sired.
    Sumerian, Lipit-istar, and Middle Assyrian laws maintain the same principles as those in the Hammurabic code (except that the penalty in the Middle Assyrian law is death for taking the life of a fetus by delivering a blow to the mother). The latter is the only law that could be said to protect the fetus itself, but that interpretation would be inconsistent with the practice of exposure or infanticide. A deformed, abnormal, or even unwanted child could be killed without legal sanction. The law’s purpose may have been to protect a community from being robbed of a healthy child. More likely, the laws protected a male’s right to have a child he sired.
    A Hittite law made another distinction one that will underlie later law: the fine for causing a miscarriage after the fifth month of pregnancy is five shekels of silver, but if the fetus is lost during the tenth month and the fine is twenty shekels. The Hittite principle acknowledges two principles that will last for thousands of years: (1) there are progressive stages of fetal development, with more value placed on the about-to-be-born than the long-to-be-born; (2) no crime or infraction is committed if a pregnancy is terminated earlier than five months. One can easily imagine (because the court records themselves do not exist to confirm) the contentions in the law courts over which stage of pregnancy had been reached. Not only was the monetary fine based on its determination, but also there was the need to determine whether a crime was committed in the first place.
    • p. 71
  • Hebrew religious laws have guiding principles similar to those of other cultures in western Asia. Hebrew religion categorically rejected prostitution, temple or otherwise, and it offered little protection to the fetus itself, and then not for its own sake. Exodus 21:22 says that “If two men fight, and they hurt a woman with child and her child comes out and yet no harm (‘āsôn) ensues, he [the one causing the blow] will be seized by the woman’s husband and [brought before the judges] forced to pay a fine as the judges determine.”
    • p. 71
  • The very fact that none of the ancient codes mention a deliberate abortion performed by a woman on herself argues that the act was not illegal. A fetus who is threatening the life of a mother during childbirth may be dismembered until which time as its head emerges so said the Talmud. The implication is clear: the fetus is not a person until birth. Because the evidence is certain that abortifacient drugs were known to the ancients, and because in some circumstances a third party was held responsible for administering them, one would have to be naïve in the extreme to believe that women did not take these drugs to end a pregnancy (as defined by our age).
    • p. 73

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