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  • When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit.
    • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, women's suffrage movement leader, in a letter to Julia Ward Howe recorded in Howe's diary at Harvard University Library (16 October 1873). This quote is regularly cited but there seems to be no original source for it.
  • The poor expose their children, the rich kill the fruit of their own bodies in the womb, lest their property be divided up, and they destroy their own children in the womb with murderous poisons, and before life has been passed on, it is annihilated.
  • Concerning women who commit fornication, and destroy that which they have conceived, or who are employed in making drugs for abortion, a former decree excluded them until the hour of death, and to this some have assented. Nevertheless, being desirous to use somewhat greater lenity, we have ordained that they fulfill ten years [of penance], according to the prescribed degrees.

  • I saw a gorge in which the discharge and excrement of the tortured ran down and became like a lake. There sat women, and the discharge came up to their throats; and opposite them sat many children, who were born prematurely, weeping. And from them went forth rays of fire and smote the women on the eyes. These were those who produced children outside of marriage, and who procured abortions.

    Those who slew the unborn children will be tortured forever, for God wills it to so.

  • We say that women who induce abortions are murderers, and will have to give account of it to God. For the same person, would not regard the child in the womb as a living being and therefore an object of God's care and then kill it.... But we are altogether consistent in our conduct. We obey reason and do not override it.
    • Athenagoras, Petition to Emperor Marcus Aurelius, circa 150.
  • You shall not kill either the fetus by abortion or the new born.
  • She who has deliberately destroyed a fetus has to pay the penalty of murder...here it is not only the child to be born that is vindicated, but also the woman herself who made an attempt against her own life, because usually the women die in such attempts. Furthermore, added to this is the destruction of the child, another murder... Moreover, those, too, who give drugs causing abortion are deliberate murderers themselves, as well as those receiving the poison which kills the fetus.
  • Let her that procures abortion undergo ten years' penance, whether the embryo were perfectly formed, or not.
  • Our whole life can go on in observation of the laws of nature, if we gain dominion over our desires from the beginning and if we do not kill, by various means of a perverse art, the human offspring, born according to the designs of divine providence; for these women who, if order to hide their immorality, use abortive drugs which expel the child completely dead, abort at the same time their own human feelings.
  • The difference between the way of life and the way of death is great. Therefore, do not murder a child by abortion or kill a newborn infant.
    • The Didache, book of Christian apostolic teachings, circa 80 A.D.
  • The Way of Death is filled with people who are...murderers of children and abortionists of God's creatures.
    • The Didache, book of Christian apostolic teachings, circa 100.
  • Reputed believers began to resort to drugs for producing Sterility and to gird themselves round, so as to expel what was conceived on account of their not wanting 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.
  • They drink potions to ensure sterility and are guilty of murdering a human being not yet conceived. Some, when they learn that they are with child through sin, practice abortion by the use of drugs. Frequently they die themselves and are brought before the rulers of the lower world guilty of three crimes: suicide, adultery against Christ, and murder of an unborn child.
  • Why sow where the ground makes it its care to destroy the fruit? Where there are many efforts at abortion? Where there is murder before the birth? For you do not even let the harlot remain a mere harlot, but make her a murderer also. You see how drunkenness leads to whoredom, whoredom to adultery, adultery to murder; or rather something even worse than murder. For I have no real name to give it, since it does not destroy the thing born but prevents its being born. Why then do you abuse the gift of God and fight with His laws, and follow after what is a curse as if a blessing, and make the place of procreation a chamber for murder, and arm the woman that was given for childbearing unto slaughter?
  • Some women take medicines to destroy the germ of future life in their own bodies. They commit infanticide before they have given birth to the infant.
  • For us [Christians] we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb, while as yet the human being derives blood from other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter when you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to birth. That is a man which is going to be one: you have the fruit already in the seed.
  • They [John and Jesus] were both alive while still in the womb. Elizabeth rejoiced as the infant leaped in her womb; Mary glorifies the Lord because Christ within inspired her. Each mother recognizes her child and is known by her child who is alive, being not merely souls but also spirits.

Copied from Abortion (pre-Reformation)

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  • Exodus 21:22 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. 23 And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life. 24 Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
  • I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion.
  • [T]he line between lawful and unlawful abortion will be marked by the fact of having sensation and being alive.
    • Aristotle, Politics, bk. 7, ch. 6 at 294 (T.A. Sinclair trans. 1962) (325 B.C. or thereabouts).
  • The difference between the way of life and the way of death is great. Therefore, do not murder a child by abortion or kill a newborn infant.
    • The Didache, book of Christian apostolic teachings, circa 80 A.D.
  • The law, moreover enjoins us to bring up all our offspring, and forbids women to cause abortion of what is begotten, or to destroy it afterward; and if any woman appears to have so done, she will be a murderer of her child, by destroying a living creature, and diminishing humankind.
  • The Way of Death is filled with people who are...murderers of children and abortionists of God's creatures.
    • The Didache, book of Christian apostolic teachings, circa 100.
  • You shall not kill either the fetus by abortion or the new born.

  • I saw a gorge in which the discharge and excrement of the tortured ran down and became like a lake. There sat women, and the discharge came up to their throats; and opposite them sat many children, who were born prematurely, weeping. And from them went forth rays of fire and smote the women on the eyes. These were those who produced children outside of marriage, and who procured abortions.

    Those who slew the unborn children will be tortured forever, for God wills it to so.

  • We say that women who induce abortions are murderers, and will have to give account of it to God. For the same person, would not regard the child in the womb as a living being and therefore an object of God's care and then kill it.... But we are altogether consistent in our conduct. We obey reason and do not override it.
    • Athenagoras, Petition to Emperor Marcus Aurelius, circa 150.
  • Our whole life can go on in observation of the laws of nature, if we gain dominion over our desires from the beginning and if we do not kill, by various means of a perverse art, the human offspring, born according to the designs of divine providence; for these women who, if order to hide their immorality, use abortive drugs which expel the child completely dead, abort at the same time their own human feelings.
  • Reputed believers began to resort to drugs for producing Sterility and to gird themselves round, so as to expel what was conceived on account of their not wanting 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.
  • Some women take medicines to destroy the germ of future life in their own bodies. They commit infanticide before they have given birth to the infant.
  • They [John and Jesus] were both alive while still in the womb. Elizabeth rejoiced as the infant leaped in her womb; Mary glorifies the Lord because Christ within inspired her. Each mother recognizes her child and is known by her child who is alive, being not merely souls but also spirits.
  • For us [Christians] we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb, while as yet the human being derives blood from other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter when you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to birth. That is a man which is going to be one: you have the fruit already in the seed.
  • Concerning women who commit fornication, and destroy that which they have conceived, or who are employed in making drugs for abortion, a former decree excluded them until the hour of death, and to this some have assented. Nevertheless, being desirous to use somewhat greater lenity, we have ordained that they fulfill ten years [of penance], according to the prescribed degrees.
  • The poor expose their children, the rich kill the fruit of their own bodies in the womb, lest their property be divided up, and they destroy their own children in the womb with murderous poisons, and before life has been passed on, it is annihilated.
  • She who has deliberately destroyed a fetus has to pay the penalty of murder...here it is not only the child to be born that is vindicated, but also the woman herself who made an attempt against her own life, because usually the women die in such attempts. Furthermore, added to this is the destruction of the child, another murder... Moreover, those, too, who give drugs causing abortion are deliberate murderers themselves, as well as those receiving the poison which kills the fetus.
  • Let her that procures abortion undergo ten years' penance, whether the embryo were perfectly formed, or not.
  • Why sow where the ground makes it its care to destroy the fruit? Where there are many efforts at abortion? Where there is murder before the birth? For you do not even let the harlot remain a mere harlot, but make her a murderer also. You see how drunkenness leads to whoredom, whoredom to adultery, adultery to murder; or rather something even worse than murder. For I have no real name to give it, since it does not destroy the thing born but prevents its being born. Why then do you abuse the gift of God and fight with His laws, and follow after what is a curse as if a blessing, and make the place of procreation a chamber for murder, and arm the woman that was given for childbearing unto slaughter?
  • They drink potions to ensure sterility and are guilty of murdering a human being not yet conceived. Some, when they learn that they are with child through sin, practice abortion by the use of drugs. Frequently they die themselves and are brought before the rulers of the lower world guilty of three crimes: suicide, adultery against Christ, and murder of an unborn child.
  • Those who give drugs for procuring abortion, and those who receive poisons to kill the foetus, are subjected to the penalty of murder.
    • Council of Trullo, canon XCI, 692.
  • 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.
    • St. Peter Damian, letter 96, Letters 91-122, Fathers of the Church: Medieval Continuation, Owen J. Blum, O.F.M., 1998, Catholic University of America Press, pp. 62-63, ISBN 0813208165 ISBN 9780813208169. Editor's note: "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".
  • If one strikes a pregnant woman or gives her poison in order to procure an abortion, if the foetus is already formed or quickened, especially if it is quickened, he commits homicide.
    • Henry Bracton, 2 On The Laws and Customs of England, 341 (S.E. Thorne trans., George E. Woodbine ed. 1968) (1250 A.D. or thereabouts).

Surplus

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Need copy-editing
  • 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.
  • 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

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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

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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

"Abortion and Medicine: A Sociopolitical History"

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Carole Joffe, "1. Abortion and Medicine: A Sociopolitical History", in Management of Unintended and Abnormal Pregnancy, 1st ed. (Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, 2009)

  • “[T]here is every indication that abortion is an absolutely universal phenomenon, and that it is impossible even to construct an imaginary social system in which no woman would ever feel at least compelled to abort.” So concluded an anthropologist after an exhaustive review of materials from 350 ancient and preindustrial societies. Beyond the stark fact of its universality, abortion through-out history exhibits a number of other distinctive features. First is the willingness on the part of women seeking abortion and those aiding them to defy laws and social convention; in every society that has forbidden abortion, a culture of illegal provision has emerged. Second, to a far greater degree than is the case with most other medical procedures, the status of abortion has been inextricably bound up with larger social and political factors, such as changes in women’s political power or in the population objectives of a society. Finally, the mere fact of legality does not necessarily imply universal access to abortion services. Crucial factors in the availability of abortion include the structure of health care services, and especially the willingness of the medical profession to provide abortion.
    • p. 1; quoting G. A. Devereux, typological study of abortion in 350 primitive, ancient and pre-industrial societies. In: H. Rosen, ed. Therapeutic Abortion (New York: Julian Press, 1954), 98.
  • Throughout recorded history, populations have risen and declined in ways that cannot be attributed solely to natural events such as plagues or famines. For example, a marked decline in population occurred in the early Roman Empire, despite prosperity and an apparently ample food supply. Such events suggest that individuals in past societies vigorously sought to regulate their fertility; they did so by use of abortion and contraception, and also by practices of child abandonment and infanticide. To give some sense of the ubiquity of abortion in the pre-modern world, consider the following: Specific information about abortion appears in one of the earliest known medical texts, attributed to the Chinese emperor Shen Nung (2737 to 2696 BC); the Ebers Papyrus of Egypt (1550 to 1500 BC) contains several references to abortion and contraception; during the Roman Empire numerous writers mention abortion, including the satirist Juvenal who wrote about “our skilled abortionists”; and the writings of the 10th-century Persian physician Al-Rasi include instructions for performing an abortion through instrumentation.
    • pp. 1–2
  • In Europe and the USA, the 17th through the 19th centuries were an especially interesting period in abortion history. On one hand, advances in gynecology, such as the discovery (or more correctly, rediscovery) of dilators and curettes, meant that physicians could offer safer and more effective abortions. On the other hand, the conservatism of the medical profession regarding reproductive issues pre-vented widespread discussion and dissemination of abortion techniques. As three longtime scholars of abortion have noted, “The combination of medicine with anything concerning sex appears to have a particularly paralytic effect upon human resourcefulness. This has been especially true in the field of abortion....”
    • p. 2; quoting M. Potts, P. Diggory, J. Peel, Abortion (Cambridge, 1977)
  • This overview of the history of abortion suggests several themes. Besides the omnipresence of the desire for abortion, the record of very early understanding of abortion techniques and actual abortion provision by some sectors of the medical profession are striking. This knowledge, how-ever, was willfully forgotten as abortion became socially controversial and the medical profession avoided the issue for the most part. Consequently, until quite recently in the developed world (and continuing today in many developing nations), two parallel streams of abortion provision emerged: a minimalist one, by physicians, only to selected patients under narrowly specified conditions, and a broader extralegal one, in which a variety of providers with widely ranging skill levels offered abortion services.
    What is less clear to contemporary scholars is the degree of safety and effectiveness of abortion provision before the widespread legalization that started in the latter half of the 20th century. Ample documentation attests to the many in-juries and deaths that occurred before legalization in the USA and elsewhere, and that continues today where abortion remains illegal. However, given the historical record that points to the persistent search for abortions in all cultures and at all times, without death records to match this volume of abortion, some observers suggest that many illegal abortions were relatively safe, although probably painful and unpleasant. What remains indisputable is the greatly improved safety record once abortion is legalized. In the USA, abortion-related mortality declined dramatically after nationwide legalization, eventually reaching 0.6 deaths per 100,000 procedures between 1979 and 1985, “more than 10 times lower than the 9.1 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births between 1979 and 1986.”
    • pp. 2–3
  • The vacuum aspirator, introduced to US physicians in 1968 at a landmark conference on abortion sponsored by the Association for the Study of Abortion, lessened blood loss and lowered the risk of uterine perforation compared to the older method of dilation and sharp curettage. Cervical anesthesia techniques allowed clinicians to manage procedural pain using local injections rather than the more risky general anesthesia. The Karman cannula, invented by a California psychologist who had been involved in illegal abortion provision in the 1960s, was composed of plastic rather than metal. This soft flexible cannula facilitated pro-vision of early abortion using local anesthesia and made perforation less likely. The widespread adoption of the Karman cannula represents a vivid example of a larger phenomenon: the extent to which, as abortion services rapidly expanded after legalization, the medical profession was compelled to seek the advice of a number of illegal abortionists, both lay and physician.
    Taken together, these innovations in abortion methods catalyzed the creation of the freestanding abortion clinic, which was pioneered in the USA. Washington, DC, and New York City had liberalized their abortion laws several years before the Roe v. Wade decision, and clinics in these cities attracted women from all over the country. These clinics were able to offer safe outpatient abortion services at lower cost, and often in a more supportive manner, than hospital-based facilities. The creation of the role of the “abortion counselor”—someone specifically trained to discuss the abortion decision with the patient, explain the procedure, and support her throughout the process—was a distinctive contribution of this early period in legal abortion. These clinics also were instrumental in pioneering a model of ambulatory surgery that became widely adopted by the medical profession.
    • p.3
  • By the early 1950s only a handful of countries had legalized abortion; however, in the last half of the 20th century, an “abortion revolution” of sorts occurred. As a result, nearly three-fourths of the world’s women now live in countries where abortion is legal either in all circumstances (up to a certain point in pregnancy) or when specific medical or social conditions are present. Major forces leading to this liberalization included recognition of the health costs of illegal abortion, with the medical profession often acting as key advocates for legalization; the rising status of women, and especially the entry of women into the paid labor force, which led feminist groups to mobilize on behalf of abortion and improved contraceptive services; and, to a lesser degree, various countries’ explicit interests in limiting population growth.
    • pp.3-4
  • Nearly all the countries of Western Europe that did not already have liberal abortion laws underwent progressive abortion reform in the 1970s and 1980s. Following unification of East and West Germany in the early 1990s, Germany became the one case of a European Community (EC) member that adopted more restrictive laws than had existed previously. In the contemporary EC, Ireland and Poland represent the only countries that do not permit abortion, presenting baffling issues about how to reconcile their strict antiabortion policies with the more liberal policies of the others. Although EC member countries are free to devise their own abortion policies, they theoretically give free access to citizens who wish to travel to other member nations. The conflict between these two principles has emerged periodically, as exemplified by several notorious cases in which the Irish government attempted to prevent women in dire circumstances from traveling to England for an abortion. Ina 2007 case, “Miss D.,” a 17-year-old carrying a fetus with anencephaly, had her passport confiscated in order to prevent such travel. After numerous court hearings (and litigation estimated to cost 1 million euros), she was finally per-mitted to go to England.
    In general, Western Europe has had a quite stable abortion environment. In contrast to the situation in the USA, access to abortion-providing facilities in Western European countries (with a few exceptions) is substantially easier, with most offering subsidized abortions for health indications and many for elective abortions as well. Moreover, abortion provision in these countries is largely free from the extremes of violence and controversy that have characterized abortion care in the USA. Such differences testify to the important role that national health care systems play in assuring access to abortion care. The European and US comparison also reveals that the centrality of abortion in US political culture is almost unique among advanced Western democracies.
    • p.4
  • In 1920, Russia was the first country in the world to legalize abortion (although it reversed its stance in 1936 and then later reestablished legalization). By the 1950s, all the countries of Eastern Europe had legalized abortion. This reform occurred primarily because of the various regimes’ needs for women to enter the paid labor force, rather than as a response to women’s demands for reproductive freedom or concerns about the consequences of illegal abortion. In the absence of adequate contraception in most Eastern bloc countries, abortion became an accepted method of fertility control, and abortion rates were among the highest in the world. After the fall of communism in 1990, a number of Eastern European countries experienced pressures to reevaluate abortion policies. Contributing factors included the renewed power of the Catholic Church in some cases, as well as the association of abortion with the discredited policies of the old Communist regimes and the corresponding “sentimental perceptions of a pre-Communist world where home and family were paramount.” Hungary and Slovakia restricted their abortion policies somewhat, and they continue to have conflicts about this issue. However, the most dramatic reversal took place in Poland, which moved from a policy of abortion on demand to one that permitted abortion only in cases of severe fetal malformation or serious threat to the life or health of the pregnant woman. The new legislation, strongly advocated by the Catholic Church, called for imprisonment of doctors who performed unauthorized abortions. Not surprisingly, as pointed out in a recent publication by a reproductive rights group in Poland tellingly titled Contemporary Women’s Hell: Polish Women’s Stories, women in that country have an extraordinarily difficult time obtaining a legal abortion. The group estimates that only about 150 legal abortions take place in the country each year. “This is mainly because doctors do not want to take responsibility for consenting to a legal abortion. Women are sent from one doctor to another, referred for tests that are not legally required, and misinformed about their health...For doctors...such women represent problems that need to be eliminated as quickly as possible.”
    • p.4
  • The history of the relationship of abortion and the medical profession reveals an inescapable connection between abortion provision and social movement activity on both sides of the issue. This connection will only intensify in the fore-seeable future. Clinicians who support abortion rights, along with their lay allies from the reproductive justice movements, will continue to mobilize in various ways to establish or expand abortion care, while antiabortion activists will at-tempt to thwart them at every turn. More so than in the past, however, the activities of these social movements within medicine are assuming a transnational character.
    • p.7


"Abortion Law, History & Religion"

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"Abortion Law, History & Religion". Childbirth By Choice Trust. Archived from the original on 12 January 2013. Retrieved 23 March 2008.

  • By examining the history of abortion and its evolving legal status around the world, we hope to shed light on how we arrived at our current situation and how the status of abortion in Canada fits into the global picture.
  • Looking at abortion throughout time and around the globe provides an enlightening perspective on this important issue.
  • In 1955, the anthropologist George Devereux demonstrated that abortion has been practised in almost all human communities from the earliest times.1 The patterns of abortion use, in hundreds of societies around the world since before recorded history, have been strikingly similar. Women faced with unwanted pregnancies have turned to abortion, regardless of religious or legal sanction and often at considerable risk. Used to deal with upheavals in personal, family, and community life, abortion has been called “a fundamental aspect of human behaviour”.
    In primitive tribal societies, abortions were induced by using poisonous herbs, sharp sticks, or by sheer pressure on the abdomen until vaginal bleeding occurred. Abortion techniques are described in the oldest known medical texts. The ancient Chinese and Egyptians had their methods and recipes to cause abortion, and Greek and Roman civilizations considered abortion an integral part of maintaining a stable population. Ancient instruments, such as the ones found at Pompeii and Herculaneum, were much like modern surgical instruments. The Greeks and Romans also had various poisons administered in various ways, including through tampons.
    Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were all known to suggest abortion. Even Hippocrates, who spoke against abortion because he feared injury to the woman, recommended it on occasion by prescribing violent exercises. Roman morality placed no social stigma on abortion.
  • During the nineteenth century, legal barriers to abortion were erected throughout the western world. In 1869 the Canadian Parliament enacted a criminal law which prohibited abortion and punished it with a penalty of life imprisonment. This law mirrored the laws of a number of provinces in pre-Confederation Canada; all of these statutes were more or less modelled on the English legislation of Lord Ellenborough.
    Pressure for restrictions was not coming from the general public. Physicians were in the forefront of the crusade to criminalize abortion in England, the U.S. and Canada. They were voicing concern for the health of women and the destruction of fetal life. However, “there is substantial evidence that medical men were concerned not only for the welfare of the potential victims of abortion but also to further the process of establishing and consolidating their status as a profession.” Women were turning to midwives, herbalists, drug dispensers and sometimes quacks to end their pregnancies, and doctors wanted to gain control over the practice of medicine and elevate the status of their profession.18
    Race and class were also factors in the passage of the new wave of anti-abortion laws. Abortion was increasingly being used by white, married, Protestant, middle and upper class women to control their family size.
  • Another interpretation of the trend toward more restrictive abortion legislation focuses on nation states’ demographic concerns. Powerful social pressures for population increase meant that “the concern was perhaps more for the quantity of human beings than for the quality of human life.”
  • Women continued to have abortions in roughly the same proportions as they had prior to its criminalization. After it was criminalized, abortion simply went underground and became a clandestine and therefore much more dangerous operation for women to undergo.
    During the latter part of the nineteenth century, European views on the restriction of abortion were spread by the colonial powers throughout Africa, Asia and beyond. The strict prohibitions of Spain are reflected in many statutes decreed in South America, for example. Toward the end of the 19th century, China and Japan, at the time under the influence of Western powers, also criminalized abortion for the first time.
    American historian James C. Mohr makes the point that from an historical perspective, the nineteenth century’s wave of restrictive abortion laws can be seen as a deviation from the norm, a period of interruption of the historically tolerant attitude towards abortion.
    “From the second half of the 19th century, through World War II, abortion was highly restricted almost everywhere. Liberalization of abortion laws occurred in most of the countries of Eastern and Central Europe in the 1950s and in almost all the remaining developed countries during the 1960s and 1970s. A few developing countries also relaxed their restrictions on abortion during the same period, most notably China and India.”
    A number of factors have been recognized as contributing to this liberalizing trend. Attitudes toward sexuality and procreation were changing, and the reduced influence of religious institutions was a related factor. In some countries, rubella epidemics and thalidomide created awareness of the need for legal abortion. In others, there was concern about population growth. Illegal abortion had long been a serious public health hazard, and eventually women being injured or dying from unnecessarily dangerous abortions became a concern. Arguments were made in favour of the right of poor women to have access to abortion services. More recently, women’s right to control their fertility has been recognized.
    While the pace of abortion law reform has slowed, the overall movement is still in the direction of liberalization. Recently, however, restrictions have increased in a few countries.
  • Whatever the religion, there has existed throughout history a diversity of opinion regarding induced abortion. Today, there is no theological unanimity within the various religions concerning a woman’s right to choose abortion. Distinctions among official, semi-official and non-official religious attitudes toward abortion are universal; some flexibility can be found almost everywhere. Women of every faith (even those with strict teachings against abortion) have defied their religions in their reliance on abortion as a necessary means of ending unwanted pregnancies.
  • Abortion is not a modern aberration, but a practice common to human communities throughout history. Historically, early abortion was tolerated by the Church, and for centuries it was not punished under English common law. Nations which have passed abortion laws have done so for a variety of reasons, such as concern for women’s health, the demands of the medical profession, demographic fears, religious beliefs, etc.
    Restrictive abortion legislation does not lead to a low abortion rate. The data from Romania when it prohibited abortion, from Italy before its liberalized abortion law, and from Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and other developing countries show that the abortion rate is high in countries in which abortion is illegal. Whether legal or not, every year millions of individual women around the world— of all cultural, religious, and economic backgrounds— seek out abortion when they cannot carry a pregnancy to term.197 History has proved that laws do not stop abortion.
  • It has long been recognized that the number of abortions can be effectively reduced by educating people on human sexuality and family planning, and making safe, appropriate and effective contraception available. Empowering women in society, as well as involving men more in reproductive issues, are also important to reducing the rate of unwanted pregnancy and hence abortion.


“Abortion and the Early Church: Christian, Jewish, and Pagan Attitudes” (1982)

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J. Gorman, “Abortion and the Early Church: Christian, Jewish, and Pagan Attitudes”, (InterVarsity Press 1982 ISBN 0-87784-397-X)

  • From the earliest days of ancient Greece and Rome to the time of Augustine, abortion was practiced frequently by pagans and occasionally by Jews and Christians. It seems to have been more common among the wealthy than among the poor: Juvenal wrote of how seldom a “gilded bed” contained a pregnant woman because abortion was so readily available to the rich. But the poor aborted too, as did married and unmarried, chaste and prostitute. Other people besides pregnant women were involved in abortion. A husband or lover might force a woman to abort. Certain doctors performed nontherapeutic as well as therapeutic abortions. Amateur and paid abortionists and dealers in abortifacient drugs were available.
    • pp.14-15
  • Motives for obtaining an abortion were no less varied in antiquity than they are today. By far the most frequent reason was to conceal illicit sexual activity. Rich women did not want to share their wealth with lower-class children fathered illegitimately. Another reason was to preserve “sex appeal,” for many women, especially the rich, did not enjoy the effects of pregnancy on their figures, preferring not to “get big and trouble the womb with bouncing babes.” As Chrysostom said of prostitutes, they had “a view of drawing more money by being agreeable and an object of longing to [their] lovers.” Both Plato and Aristotle recommended family limitation by abortion (if necessary), and the declines in population of the Roman Empire at the time of Augustus and again after Hadrian were probably due in part to such action by both rich and poor. The wealthy did not want to share their estates with many offspring., while the poor felt unable to support large families. Justinian’s Digest mentions a woman who aborted after a divorce in order not to have a child by the man she then hated. Abortion was also a corrective to the many inefficient means of contraception. Finally, abortions for therapeutic reasons were performed.
    • Ch.1 Abortion in the Ancient World, p.15
  • Women who wanted abortions, for whatever reason, had a great variety of means available to them. Most of the techniques can be classified as either chemical or mechanical.
    Chemical or medicinal abortifacients of various compositions were common. Most common of all, according to the gynecologist Soranos of Ephesus, were pessaries, or substances introduced directly into the womb via the birth canal. Some of these destroyed the fetus, whereas others caused its expulsion from the womb. The physician Galen wrote that certain drugs could “destroy the embryo or rupture certain of its membranes” and lead to an abortion, perhaps alone or else by using additional chemical or physical means.
    • Ch.1 Abortion in the Ancient World, pp.15-16
  • Besides using pessaries, women took oral drugs, or “poisons” as they were frequently labeled. Medical experts of the Roman Empire, like Soranos and Dioscorides, wrote of various plant potions used as abortifacients. For example mixtures of wine with various combinations of wallflower seed, myrtle, myrhh, white pepper or cabbage blossoms were believed to be effective in the early stages of pregnancy. Celsus named “four grams of ammoniac salt,” “four grams of Cretan dittany in water” and “hedge mustard in tepid wine… on an empty stomach” as aids to expulsion of a dead fetus or to childbirth. These or similar compounds were certainly used also for later abortions. Also in the first century A.D. the learned Pliny listed certain potions which supposedly were used also for later abortions. Also in the first century A.D. the learned Pliny listed certain potions which supposedly caused abortions, but his ideas must be examined closely; he also knew of abortifacient odors (such as the dragon plant or th smell of lamps being put out) and fumes (“from an ass’s house”) and items whih caused abortion merely on sight (certain plants, animals and parts of reproductive systems). Since some of what this knowledgable author said is pure myth, he shows that abortion with drugs was not a perfected science or skill. In fact, some supposed contraceptives were probably actually abortifacients (and vice versa), and some supposed abortifacients were undoubtedly useless. Neverthelesss, it was the genu of one first-century B.C. poet, Eubius, to put prescriptions for abortive potions into verse. No more usefulthan some potions were the charms sold by magicians and the the predictions made by astrologers about good and bad days for procuring an abortion.
    • Ch.1 Abortion in the Ancient World, p.16
  • Mechanical abortion techniques were often used instead of or as supplements to drugs. The crudest method, used most often by (probably desperate) women themselves, was to bind the body tightly around the womb or to strike it so as to expel the fetus. Another method required the use of abortive instruments. Two of these instruments were described by Tertullian. The first was a “copper needle or spike” such as those possessed by Hippocrates, Asclepiades, Erasistratus, Herophilus and Soranos. The second tool more sophisticated but very dangerous, required a delicate surgical operation:
    Among surgeons’ tools there I 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 [‘’anulocultro’’], 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 ‘’foetus’’ is extracted by a violent delivery.
    This surgical method of abortion is undoubtedly similar to the method of removing a dead fetus in the third trimester described by Celsus in ‘’De medicina’’:
    As operation must be done, which may be counted among the most difficult; for it requires both extreme caution and neatness, and entails very great risk. . . . the surgeon. . . should first insert the index finger of his greased hand, and keep it there until the mouth is opened again, and then he should insert a second finger, and the other fingers on the like opportunity, until the whole hand can be put in. . . . But when the hand has reahed the dead foetus its position is immediately felt. . . . If the head is nearest, a hook must be inserted which is completely smooth, with a short point, and this it is right to fix into an eye or ear or the mouth, even at times into the forehead, then this is pulled upon and extracts the foetus. . . . Now the right hand should pull the hook whilst the left is inserted within and pulls the foetus, and at the same time guides it. . . . but if the foetus is lying crosswise and cannot be turned straight, the hook is to be inserted into an armpit and traction slowly made, during this the neck is usually bent back, and the head turned backwards to the rest of the foetus. The remedy then is to cut through the neck, in order that the two parts may be extracted separately. This is done with a hook which resembles the one mentioned above, but has all its inner edge sharp. Then we must proceed to extract the head first, then the rest, for if the larger portion be extracted first, the head slips back into the cavity of the womb, and cannot be extracted without the greatest risk. . . . There are also other difficulties, which make it necessary to cut up and extract a foetus which does not come out whole.
    • Ch.1 Abortion in the Ancient World, pp.16-18
  • The danger of these methods certainly contributed to the sensitivity of many writers to the practice of abortion. Nevertheless, a woman who wanted or was forced to abort had several options to choose from, and the medical technology of her day would be able, according to Pliny, to provide an abortion from the tenth day after conception to the seventh month of pregnancy, though the abortions in that month were nearly always fatal to the mother.
    • Ch.1 Abortion in the Ancient World, p.18
  • ABORTION MAY NOT HAVE BEEN EASY or safe for a woman in ancient times, but it was nevertheless practiced.
    • Ch. 2 The Pagan World, p.19


“Abortion and the Catholic Church: A Summary History” (1-1-1967)

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John T. Noonan Jr., [https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1125&context=nd_naturallaw_forum “Abortion and the Catholic Church: A Summary History”, (1-1-1967), Natural Law Forum. Paper 126

  • WHAT determines when a being is human? When is it lawful to kill? These questions are linked in any consideration of the morality of abortion. They are questions central to any morality for man.
    • p. 85
  • IN THE Mediterranean world in which Christianity appeared, abortion was a familiar art. The most learned of Greco-Roman gynecologists, Soranos of Ephesus (c. 98-138 A.D.), discussed abortion in terms of two main genres of abortifacients, phthorion, "which destroys what has been conceived," and ekbolion, "which expels what has been conceived." He then listed the following ways of achieving the destruction of the embryo: purging the abdomen with clysters; walking about vigorously; carrying things beyond one's strength; bathing in sweet water which is not too hot; bathing in decoctions of linseed, mallow, and wormwood; applying poultices of the same decoctions; injecting warm and sweet olive oil; being bled and then shaken after softening by suppositories.' He is opposed to the use of sharp instruments which may injure the mother. In addition he lists a number of contraceptives (atokia) which will also operate as abortifacients, in particular drugs composed of plant mixtures. These drugs will apparently operate at an early stage of the pregnancy if they have failed to prevent contraception; the abortifacients proper are intended for later stages of fetal life. As to the effectiveness of the means proposed, Soranos notes that contraception is surer and therefore to be preferred, but it would seem that some if not all of the abortifacient methods he proposes would have achieved the desired effect.
    • pp.85-86
  • The reasons for abortion were as various as the means. Soranos notes three: to conceal the consequences of adultery; to maintain feminine beauty; to avoid danger to the mother when her uterus is too small to accommodate the full embryo. Plato and Aristotle thought of abortion as a way of preventing excess population. St. Ambrose was familiar with propertied families who practiced it in order not to divide their patrimony among too many children.
    • p.86
  • The morality of practicing abortion was debated by physicians, philosophers, and religious teachers. The Hippocratic Oath was well known with its pledge "not to give a deadly drug [pharmakon] to anyone if asked for it, nor to suggest it. Similarly, I will not give to a woman an abortifacient pessary. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art." Influenced by the authority attributed to the oath as the work of Hippocrates, some physicians of the first century A.D. refused to prescribe abortifacients for anyone. They also had in mind that "it is the task of medicine to maintain and save what nature has engendered." Others, like Soranos himself, prescribed abortion only where completion of the pregnancy would endanger the mother. Another writing also ascribed to Hippocrates was cited where he himself told a girl how to accomplish an abortion by jumping. In the ideal common-wealth sketched by Socrates in Plato's Republic abortion is proposed as a solution to prevent endangering the optimum population of the state; it is impossible to say with what seriousness Plato endorses this suggestion.7Aristotle also proposes abortion if a couple has too many children for the good of the state, but he does so with remarkable caution, saying it is to bed one before there is "sensation and life," and "what is right depends on the question of sensation and life," a restriction which in his biology might have permitted only contraception.
    • pp.86-87


“When abortion was a crime: women, medicine, and law in the United States, 1867-1973” (December 31, 1996)

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Leslie J. Reagan, “When abortion was a crime: women, medicine, and law in the United States, 1867-1973”, “Introduction”, (December 31, 1996)

  • Abortion is an example of how private activities and conversations reshaped public policy. The words and needs of women had the power to change medicine, law, and public debate.
    • p.2
  • In the nineteenth century, abortion came under attack at a moment when women were claiming political power; in the twentieth century, it came under attack when they claimed sexual freedom. Abortion, like contraception, means that women can separate sex and procreation-still a controversial notion. Antiabortion campaigns developed when women asserted sexual independence, as during the Progressive era and since the 1970s. When abortion was most firmly linked to the needs of family rather than the freedoms of women, as during the Depression, it was most ignored by those would suppress it. Periods of antiabortion activity mark moments of hostility to female independence.
    • p.14
  • Women’s history of abortion needs to be examined both as a commonly felt need to control reproduction, arising from women’s biological capacity to bear children and social relations that assign childbearing to women, and in terms of differences among women. This book differentiates among women by class, race and ethnic identity, and marital status. Though class did not absolutely determine access to or safety of abortion, class position helped define when a woman felt she needed an abortion and affected the type available to her. In general, urban women had greater access to abortion than rural women, though some rural women located abortionists in their areas or traveled to cities for abortions. Race played a less obvious role in access to abortion, though the grim statistics of the postwar period show the connection between discrimination and death. I have made a specific effort to locate sources related to African Americans in order to learn more about black women’s use of abortion and how race shaped the history of abortion. Evidence concerning women of color is meager, however, until the 1930s, when medical and sociological studies began separating their findings by race. Before then, contemporary observers tended to focus their attention on the differences among many (white) foreign-born ethnic groups.
    • p.16
  • Abortion was a moment in a woman’s reproductive life. It cannot be separated from sexual relations or reproduction as a whole. Women themselves did not separate them, nor should we, whether analyzing abortion in the past or present.
    • p.17
  • Without contraceptives and abortion, most women in heterosexual relationships will become pregnant and bear children, whether they want to or not. When women sought abortions, they often revealed the texture of heterosexual relations and the rest of their lives. Many situations made enduring pregnancy unbearable to women. In using abortion, women rebelled against the law and asserted their sense that the decision to carry a pregnancy to term or to abort was theirs to make. A few expressed in words as well as in action the view that abortion was their right. The experiences of women’s private lives and private practices over the course of one hundred years altered medical thinking and reshaped public policy. Despite the fact that women’s abortion narratives are part of our own contemporary discourse, the stories told here have long been hidden.
    • p.18


“Abortion and the Ways We Value Human Life” (1999)

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Jeffrey H. Reiman, “Abortion and the Ways We Value Human Life”, Rowman & Littlefield, (1999)

  • Not since slavery has a moral issue so divided Americans the way abortion does. About a million and a half American women have their pregnancies aborted each year. For some people, this is a sign of women’s emergence into full citizenship, with full rights over themselves, their bodies, and their sexuality for others it is nothing less than a holocaust, a mass slaughter of innocents carried out with the legal endorsement of the state. Philosophers have done a great deal to clarify the moral questions surrounding abortion and yet they seem to have done very little toward healing this division.
    • Preface and Acknowledgements, p.ix
  • Some five centuries after Hammurabi’s code, the Middle Assyrian laws appear to be the first to penalize voluntary abortion providing gruesome punishment-impalement and no burial-for a woman who “has a miscarriage by her own act.” Interestingly, this was in a society in which fathers had the right to practice infanticide on their unwanted offspring. Clearly, then, this law was not meant to protect fetuses. It appears rather to have been aimed at keeping the decision about which offspring live or die in the hands of their fathers.
    • ”Introduction: The Asymetric value of Human Life”, Ch.1 Abortion, from Hammurabi’s Code to Roe v. Wade, p.16
  • In his ‘Republic’’, Plato (c. 427-347 B.C.E.) recommended aborting offspring of undesirable unions. And Aristotle (384-322 B..E.) thought abortion was a proper means to limit family size. Among ancient Greek schools of thought, only the Pythagoreans were categorically opposed to all abortions holding that the soul entered the body at conception and that abortion was equivalent to murder. The Pythagoreans, rather than Hippocrates himself, are believed to have been responsible for the passage in the Hippocratic Oath that prohibits assisting a woman to bring about an abortion: “I will give no deadly medicine to anyone if asked, not suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give a woman a remedy to produce abortion.” The doubt about whether Hipporates actually wrote the prohibition on abortion in the oath attributed to him is due to the fact that Hippocrates (c. 460-377 B.C.E.) believed that fetuses became animated, not at conception, but on thirtieth day of gestation for male fetuses and the forty-second day for females.
    We see here with Hippocrates an idea that would get its classical formulation a century later in the writings of Aristotle, namely, that the fetus does not develop or receive a human soul until some time after conception.
    • Ch.1 Abortion, from Hammurabi’s Code to Roe v. Wade, p.17
  • The Stoics went much further than Aristotle, holding that a fetus becomes a living human being at birth when it takes its first breath (anima means “breath” as well as “soul”). Due to the influence of Stoicism, the Romans placed no restrictions on abortion. They regarded the fetus as pars viserum matris, “part of the mother’s internal organs.” ”Roman law explicitly held that the ‘child in the belly of its mother’ was not a person, and hence abortion was not murder. . . . [S]uch legal regulation of abortion as existed in the Roman Empire was designed primarily to protect the rights of fathers rather than the rights of embryos.” Infanticide was declared to be homicide after Rome adopted Christianity as its official religion, but legal tolerance of abortion continued even in Christian times.
    During the same period, the Jewish Mishnah proclaimed a moderate view of abortion. The Mishnah is a digest of the oral tradition of the Hebrew laws (the Oral Torah) that was compiled around 200 C.E. The rabbinic commentaries on the Mishnah are known as the Talmud. The Mishnah expressly allows for killing the fetus to save the life of the pregnant woman. However, once most of the offspring’s body has come out of the womb, killing it would be murder, and murdering one human being to save another is forbidden. Thus, while in Jewish teaching abortion at any stage is a serious offense, the rabbis effectively treated only born babies as morally comparable to human children or adults.
    • ”Introduction: The Asymetric value of Human Life”, p.19

When does history start or end?

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Latest comment: 7 months ago3 comments2 people in discussion

I was wondering what time period History of abortion covers. Abortion (1500-1900) and Abortion (pre-Reformation) are not Wikipedia pages and it is unclear if those pages are for quotes from or quotes about those arbitrarily selected periods of time. Should there be a page for Abortion (1900-present)? Wikipedia has a lot of History of X pages, but further dividing those pages seems unnecessary unless we are discussing a country or a religion in the Yth century. CensoredScribe (talk) 16:57, 1 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

I intended this as a general history of the subject. I hadn't noticed that those other pages had already been created, but I agree they should probably be merged. Ficaia (talk) 18:06, 1 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
The articles have been tagged for merger and for having no corresponding Wikipedia page. As far as this being a general history, be careful describing something that is almost exclusively focused on all of Europe, North-East Africa and South-West Asia as being inclusive in its selection of material, I've placed tags for coatrack and idiosyncratic organization. The Wikipedia page for History of abortion has considerable overlap with Christianity and abortion, while it's fine to have overlap between articles, there's not nearly as many references involving the other organized religions, which makes it look POV. Also, Wikipedia's History of abortion page has links to History of abortion in X country, but none of those are actual pages and it's an incomplete list of currently recognized countries, they only link to sections of the pages for Abortion in X modern country. You would expect there to be some older, currently defunct, territorial organizations in a page about history. CensoredScribe (talk) 20:42, 1 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
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