The History of Abortion

Abortions have been mentioned throughout recorded history, simply not a prevalent issue. In the times before Christ, typical abortion methods would be to poison the mother (in hope that she lived while the fetus died), or to abuse the mother’s abdomen. Hippocrates and Soranos, who were considered the greatest of all ancient gynecologists, both opposed abortion, though whether it was for the protection of the mother or fetus is not clear. The Hippocratic Oath, formulated around 400B.C., prohibits abortion and was taken verbatim by U.S. physicians (Gilbert 1).

Once abortions became better developed and they started to be considered safe, the Catholic Church felt compelled to condemn the practice. It was considered murder and a horrid mortal sin. The Church struggled to find the appropriate time in the pregnancy cycle to consider abortion murder of the baby’s life. Different beliefs about when the baby was actually alive caused much disagreement. The Church prohibited abortion during many different times, sometimes at conception, other times when the baby first moved, and still other times when the pregnancy was four months along, also known as quickening. However, Judaism, Catholicism, and Protestantism always prohibited abortion of an animate fetus, or one considered alive with a soul. The problem was simply figuring when life began.

During colonial times, medical guides gave recipes to abort the baby, with herbs that could be grown in one’s garden. By the mid-eighteenth century, these herbs were so widely available that they caused the first abortion laws to actually be considered poison control laws. The sale of commercial abortifacients was banned, however the action of the abortion was not. The laws made little difference (History 2). Even today, as Beverly Wildung Harrison, a feminist, says, “The withdrawal of legal abortion will create one more massively profitable underworld economy in which the Mafia and other sections of the quasi-legal capitalism may and will profitably invest” (390).

Until the last third of the nineteenth century, when it was considered a criminal offense, abortion was legal before quickening. Under common law, post-quickening abortion was considered homicide or manslaughter. Statutes usually differed throughout the states, but generally abortion was punished after quickening as manslaughter and prior to quickening as a misdemeanor (Gilbert 1).

In 1857, the American Medical Association appointed a committee on Criminal Abortion. Its purpose was to investigate criminal abortion “with a view to its general suppression”. They concluded that a fetus was a living person at the moment of conception, and this belief was encouraged by an even stronger report from the same committee in 1871.