History of Abortion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_abortion History of abortion Article Talk Language Watch Edit 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. A naturally occurring abortion that ends a pregnancy sometimes is described as a "spontaneous" abortion or, with the more frequently used popular euphemism, "miscarriage", to distinguish a difference between an induced abortion and a naturally occurring one, but medically, abortion is the terminology applied to either natural or induced. Indirect advertisements for abortion services, like these in The Sun in 1842, were common during the Victorian era. At the time, abortion was illegal in New York.[1] Abortion laws and their enforcement have fluctuated through various eras. In much of the Western world during the 20th century, abortion-rights movements were successful in having abortion bans repealed. While abortion remains legal in most of the West, this legality is regularly challenged by anti-abortion groups. The Soviet Union under Vladimir Lenin is recognized as the first modern country to legalize induced abortion on demand.[2] China used induced abortion as a state ordered birth control method during an effort to reduce the population in the twentieth century. Premodern era Edit Bas relief at Angkor Wat, c. 1150, depicting a demon performing an abortion upon a woman who has been sent to the underworld The Vedic and smrti laws of India reflected a concern with preserving the male seed of the three upper castes; and the religious courts imposed various penances for the woman or excommunication for a priest who provided an abortion.[3] Part of the epic Ramayana describes abortion performed by barber surgeons.[4] The only evidence of the death penalty being mandated for abortion in the ancient laws is found in Assyrian Law, in the Code of Assura, c. 1075 BCE;[5] and this is imposed only on a woman who procures an abortion against her husband's wishes. The first recorded evidence of induced abortion is from the Egyptian Ebers Papyrus in 1550 BCE.[6] Many of the methods employed in early cultures were non-surgical. Physical activities such as strenuous labor, climbing, paddling, weightlifting, or diving were a common technique. Others included the use of irritant leaves, fasting, bloodletting, pouring hot water onto the abdomen, and lying on a heated coconut shell.[7] In virtually all cultures, abortion techniques developed through observation, adaptation of obstetrical methods, and transculturation.[8] Physical means of inducing abortion, including battery, exercise, and tightening the girdle were still often used as late as the Early Modern Period among English women.[9] Archaeological discoveries indicate early surgical attempts at the extraction of a fetus; however, such methods are not believed to have been common, given the infrequency with which they are mentioned in ancient medical texts.[10] An 8th-century Sanskrit text instructs women wishing to induce an abortion to sit over a pot of steam or stewed onions.[11] The technique of massage abortion, involving the application of pressure to the pregnant abdomen, has been practiced in Southeast Asia for centuries. One of the bas reliefs decorating the temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, dated c. 1150, depicts a demon performing such an abortion upon a woman who has been sent to the underworld.[6] Japanese documents show records of induced abortion from as early as the 12th century. It became much more prevalent during the Edo period, especially among the peasant class, who were hit hardest by the recurrent famines and high taxation of the age.[12] Statues of the Boddhisattva Jizo, erected in memory of an abortion, miscarriage, stillbirth, or young childhood death, began appearing at least as early as 1710 at a temple in Yokohama (see religion and abortion).[13] The native Māori people of New Zealand colonisation terminated pregnancies via miscarriage-inducing drugs, ceremonial methods, and girding of the abdomen with a restrictive belt.[14] Another source claims that the Māori people did not practice abortion, for fear of Makutu, but did attempt abortion through the artificial induction of premature labor.[15] Greco-Roman world Edit Cyrenian coin with an image of silphium, a contraceptive plant, but could also have been an abortifacient Much of what is known about the methods and practice of abortion in Greek and Roman history comes from early classical texts. Abortion, as a gynecological procedure, was primarily the province of women who were either midwives or well-informed laypeople. In his Theaetetus, Plato mentions a midwife's ability to induce abortion in the early stages of pregnancy.[16][17] It is thought unlikely that abortion was punished in Ancient Greece.[18] However, a fragment attributed to the poet Lysias "suggests that abortion was a crime in Athens against the husband, if his wife was pregnant when he died, since his unborn child could have claimed the estate."[19] The ancient Greeks relied upon the herb silphium as an abortifacient and contraceptive. The plant, as the chief export of Cyrene, was driven to extinction, but it is suggested that it might have possessed the same abortive properties as some of its closest extant relatives in the family Apiaceae. Silphium was so central to the Cyrenian economy that most of its coins were embossed with an image of the plant.[20]Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE) cited the refined oil of common rue as a potent abortifacient. Serenus Sammonicus wrote of a concoction which consisted of rue, egg, and dill. Soranus, Dioscorides, Oribasius also detailed this application of the plant. Modern scientific studies have confirmed that rue indeed contains three abortive compounds.[21]Birthwort, a herb used to ease childbirth, was also used to induce abortion. Galen included it in a potion formula in de Antidotis, while Dioscorides said it could be administered by mouth, or in the form of a vaginal pessary also containing pepper and myrrh.[22] The Greek playwright Aristophanes noted the abortifacient property of pennyroyal in 421 BCE, through a humorous reference in his comedy, Peace.[23] Hippocrates (c. 460 – c. 370 BCE), the Greek physician, would advise a prostitute who became pregnant to jump up and down, touching her buttocks with her heels at each leap, so as to induce miscarriage.[24] Other writings attributed to him describe instruments fashioned to dilate the cervix and curette inside of the uterus.[25] Soranus, a 2nd-century Greek physician, prescribed diuretics, emmenagogues, enemas, fasting, and bloodletting as safe abortion methods, although he advised against the use of sharp instruments to induce miscarriage, due to the risk of organ perforation. He also advised women wishing to abort their pregnancies to engage in energetic walking, carrying heavy objects, riding animals, and jumping so that the woman's heels were to touch her buttocks with each jump, which he described as the "Lacedaemonian Leap".[24][26] He also offered a number of recipes for herbal baths, rubs, and pessaries.[24] In De Materia Medica Libri Quinque, the Greek pharmacologist Dioscorides listed the ingredients of a draught called "abortion wine"– hellebore, squirting cucumber, and scammony– but failed to provide the precise manner in which it was to be prepared.[27] Hellebore, in particular, is known to be abortifacient.[28] Tertullian, a 2nd- and 3rd-century Christian theologian, described surgical implements which were used in a procedure similar to the modern dilation and evacuation. One tool had a "nicely adjusted flexible frame" used for dilation, an "annular blade" used to curette, and a "blunted or covered hook" used for extraction. The other was a "copper needle or spike". He attributed ownership of such items to Hippocrates, Asclepiades, Erasistratus, Herophilus, and Soranus.[29] Aulus Cornelius Celsus, a 1st-century Roman encyclopedist, offered an extremely detailed account of a procedure to extract an already-dead fetus in his only surviving work, De Medicina.[30] In Book 9 of Refutation of all Heresies, Hippolytus of Rome, another Christian theologian of the 3rd century, wrote of women tightly binding themselves around the middle so as to "expel what was being conceived".[31] Natural abortifacients Edit Art from a 13th-century illuminated manuscript features a herbalist preparing a concoction containing pennyroyal for a woman. Botanical preparations reputed to be abortifacient were common in classical literature and folk medicine. Such folk remedies, however, varied in effectiveness and were not without the risk of adverse effects. Some of the herbs used at times to terminate pregnancy are poisonous. A list of plants which cause abortion was provided in De viribus herbarum, an 11th-century herbal written in the form of a poem, the authorship of which is incorrectly attributed to Aemilius Macer. Among them were rue, Italian catnip, savory, sage, soapwort, cyperus, white and black hellebore, and pennyroyal.[27] Physicians in the Islamic world during the medieval period documented the use of abortifacients, commenting on their effectiveness and prevalence.[32] Colonial Americans were advised to use careful measurements in a recipe by Benjamin Franklin for an abortifacient. He used the recipe as an example in a book he published to teach mathematics and many useful skills, and calls the recipe a solution to "the misfortune" of an unwanted pregnancy for "unmarry'd women".[33] Franklin was following a tradition that had existed in England and Europe. King's American Dispensatory of 1898 recommended a mixture of brewer's yeast and pennyroyal tea as "a safe and certain abortive".[34] Pennyroyal has been known to cause complications when used as an abortifacient. In 1978 a pregnant woman from Colorado died after consuming 2 tablespoonfuls of pennyroyal essential oil[35][36] which is known to be toxic.[37] In 1994 a pregnant woman, unaware of an ectopic pregnancy that needed immediate medical care, drank a tea containing pennyroyal extract to induce abortion without medical help. She later died as a result of the untreated ectopic pregnancy, mistaking the symptoms for the abortifacient working.[23] For thousands of years, tansy has been taken in early pregnancy to restore menstruation.[38] It was first documented as an emmenagogue in St. Hildegard of Bingen's De simplicis medicinae.[27] A variety of juniper, known as savin, was mentioned frequently in European writings.[6] In one case in England, a rector from Essex was said to have procured it for a woman he had impregnated in 1574; in another, a man advised his pregnant girlfriend to use black hellebore and savin be boiled together and drunk in milk, or else chopped madder boiled in beer. Other substances reputed to have been used by the English include Spanish fly, opium, watercress seed, iron sulphate, and iron chloride. Another mixture, not abortifacient, but rather intended to relieve missed abortion, contained dittany, hyssop, and hot water.[9] The root of worm fern, called "prostitute root" in French, was used in France and Germany; it was also recommended by a Greek physician in the 1st century. In German folk medicine, there was also an abortifacient tea, which included marjoram, thyme, parsley, and lavender. Other preparations of unspecified origin included crushed ants, the saliva of camels, and the tail hairs of black-tailed deer dissolved in the fat of bears.[11] Attitudes towards abortion Edit The Stoics believed the fetus to be plantlike in nature, and not an animal until the moment of birth, when it finally breathed air. They therefore found abortion morally acceptable.[19][39] Aristotle wrote that, "[T]he line between lawful and unlawful abortion will be marked by the fact of having sensation and being alive."[40] Before that point was reached, Aristotle did not regard abortion as the killing of something human.[41][42][43] Aristotle considered the embryo to gain a human soul at 40 days if male and 90 days if female; before that, it had vegetable and animal souls. The Oath, ascribed to Hippocrates, forbade the use of pessaries to induce abortion. Modern scholarship suggests that pessaries were banned because they were reported to cause vaginal ulcers.[44] This specific prohibition has been interpreted by some medical scholars as prohibiting abortion in a broader sense than by pessary.[27] One such interpretation was by Scribonius Largus, a Roman medical writer: "Hippocrates, who founded our profession, laid the foundation for our discipline by an oath in which it was proscribed not to give a pregnant woman a kind of medicine that expels the embryo or fetus."[45] Other medical scholars disagree, believing that Hippocrates sought to discourage physicians from trying dangerous methods to abort a fetus.[46] This may be born out by the fact that the oath originally also prohibited surgery (at the time, it was far more dangerous, and surgeons were a separate profession from physicians).[47] Soranus acknowledges two parties among physicians: those who would not perform abortions, citing the Hippocratic Oath, and the other party, his own. Soranus recommended abortion in cases involving health complications as well as emotional immaturity, and provided detailed suggestions in his work Gynecology.[48][49] Punishment for abortion in the Roman Republic was generally inflicted as a violation of the father's right to dispose of his offspring.[18]: 3  Because of the influence of Stoicism, which did not view the fetus as a person, the Romans did not punish abortion as homicide.[50] Although abortion was commonly accepted in Rome, around 211 CE emperors Septimius Severus and Caracalla banned abortion as infringing on parental rights; temporary exile was the punishment.[19] Attitudes began to change with the spread of Christianity. The 3rd-century legal compilation Pauli sententiae (attributed to Julius Paulus Prudentissimus) wrote: "Those who give an abortifacient or a love potion, and do not do this deceitfully, nevertheless, [because] this sets a bad example, the humiliores [those of a lower status, e.g., freed slaves] will be banned to a mine, and the honestiores [those of higher status, e.g., patricians] will be banned to an island after having forfeited (part of) their property, and if on account of that a woman or man perishes, then they [Pharr: the giver] will receive the death penalty."[51] This seems to refer more to the killing of the woman who takes the abortifacient rather than to the killing of the fetus itself. The Roman jurist Ulpian wrote in the Digest: "An unborn child is considered being born, as far as it concerns his profits." Despite this, abortion continued to be practiced "with little or no sense of shame".[52] Christianity Edit Main article: Christianity and Abortion Exodus 21:22 describes a situation in which two men fight and injure a pregnant woman, causing her unborn child to leave her womb. The Masoretic text uses the Hebrew term "veyatse yeladeha" (וְיָצְאוּ יְלָדֶיהָ)[53] to refer to the child coming out;[54] different English versions translate this term either as a "premature birth" or as a "miscarriage".[55] The Spanish translation published by the Sociedad Biblica Catolica Internacional (SOBICAIN) uses the term "aborto", clearly indicating the demise of the fetus.[56] If no additional harm follows, then the perpetrator must pay a fine. Only if there is additional harm must the perpetrator be punished with equal harm (i.e. eye for an eye).[57] Commentators such as Bruce Waltke have presented this verse as evidence that God does not value a fetus as a human being, and/or evidence that a fetus has no soul.[58][59][60][61][62] C. Everett Koop disagreed with this interpretation.[63] Another Old Testament passage that has been used to argue for divine approval of abortion is Numbers 5:11-31, which describes the test of an unfaithful wife.[64] If a man is suspicious of his wife's fidelity, he would take her to the high priest. The priest would make a substance for the woman to drink made from water and "dust from the tabernacle floor". If she had been unfaithful "her abdomen will swell and her womb will miscarry, and she will become a curse." If she was innocent the drink had no effect.[65] The early Christian work called the Didache (before 100 CE) says: "do not murder a child by abortion or kill a new-born infant."[66] Tertullian, a 2nd- and 3rd-century Christian theologian argued that abortion should be performed only in cases in which abnormal positioning of the fetus in the womb would endanger the life of the pregnant woman. Saint Augustine, in Enchiridion, makes passing mention of surgical procedures being performed to remove fetuses which have died in utero.[67] Saint Augustine believed that abortion of a fetus animatus, a fetus with human limbs and shape, was murder. However, his beliefs on earlier-stage abortion were similar to Aristotle's,[68] though he could neither deny nor affirm whether such partially formed fetuses would be resurrected as full people at the time of the Second Coming.[69] "Now who is there that is not rather disposed to think that unformed abortions perish, like seeds that have never fructified?"[67] "And therefore the following question may be very carefully inquired into and discussed by learned men, though I do not know whether it is in man's power to resolve it: At what time the infant begins to live in the womb: whether life exists in a latent form before it manifests itself in the motions of the living being. To deny that the young who are cut out limb by limb from the womb, lest if they were left there dead the mother should die too, have never been alive, seems too audacious."[70] The Leges Henrici Primi, written c. 1115, treated pre-quickening abortion as a misdemeanor, and post-quickening abortion as carrying a lesser penalty than homicide.[71] "Quickening", a term often used interchangeably with "ensoulment" or "animation", was associated with the first movement of the fetus in utero. This movement is generally felt by women sometime in the third to fifth month of pregnancy. Midwives who performed abortions were accused of committing witchcraft in Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches), published in 1487 as a witch-hunting manual in Germany.[72] Currently, the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches oppose abortion from conception.[73][74] Evangelical Protestant and some mainline Protestant churches oppose abortion in varying degrees, while other mainline Protestant churches favor – also in varying degrees – permitting the practice.[75] In Judaism Edit Main article: Judaism and abortion From a Jewish perspective from biblical times, abortion is considered from a social perspective more than from a theological perspective. The mother's life is considered as a priority.[76][77]