History of abortion#Greco-Roman world

File:AngkorWatAbortionAD1150.JPG at Angkor Wat, {{circa|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.{{cite journal |author=Constantin-Iulian Damian |title=Abortion from the Perspective of Eastern Religions: Hinduism and Buddhism |journal=Romanian Journal of Bioethics |volume=8 |issue=1 |date=January–March 2010 |url=http://eng.bioetica.ro/atdoc/RRBv8n1_2010_Damian_EN.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120903233020/http://eng.bioetica.ro/atdoc/RRBv8n1_2010_Damian_EN.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-date=2012-09-03 }} Part of the epic Ramayana describes abortion performed by barber surgeons.{{Cite web |title=Sloka & Translation {{!}} Valmiki Ramayanam |url=https://www.valmiki.iitk.ac.in/sloka?field_kanda_tid=5&language=dv&field_sarga_value=28 |access-date=2023-11-30 |website=www.valmiki.iitk.ac.in}} 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;[http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/1075assyriancode.html Ancient History Sourcebook: The Code of the Assura, c. 1075 BC ] 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.{{Cite book |last=Potts |first=Malcolm |author-link=Malcolm Potts |author2=Martha Campbell |year=2002 |chapter=History of Contraception |title=Gynecology and Obstetrics |volume=6 |url=http://big.berkeley.edu/ifplp.history.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030701162741/http://big.berkeley.edu/ifplp.history.pdf |archive-date=2003-07-01 |access-date=2013-09-12}}{{Cite journal|last=Potts |first=Malcolm |author-link=Malcolm Potts |author2=Martha Campbell |year=2009 |title=History of Contraception |journal= The Global Library of Women's Medicine|doi = 10.3843/GLOWM.10376 | issn = 1756-2228 |url=http://www.glowm.com/?p=glowm.cml/section_view&articleid=375 |access-date=2011-09-07|url-access=subscription }}

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.{{Cite book|last=Devereux |first=G |editor=Harold Rosen |title=Abortion in America: Medical, psychiatric, legal, anthropological, and religious considerations |year=1967 |publisher=Beacon Press |location=Boston, Massachusetts |oclc=187445 |chapter=A typological study of abortion in 350 primitive, ancient, and pre-industrial societies}} In virtually all cultures, abortion techniques developed through observation, adaptation of obstetrical methods, and transculturation.{{cite book|last=Devereux|first=George|title=A Study of Abortion in Primitive Societies|publisher=International Universities Press|year=1976|isbn=978-0823662456|url=https://archive.org/details/studyofabortioni00deve}} 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.{{Cite book|first=Alan |last=Macfarlane |author-link=Alan Macfarlane |year=2002 |chapter=Abortion methods in England |chapter-url=http://www.alanmacfarlane.com/savage/A-ABORT.PDF |title=The Savage Wars of Peace |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |location=Basingstoke |isbn=1-4039-0432-4 |oclc=50714989 |access-date=2008-12-13}}

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.{{cite web|first=Stephanie |last=Doerfler |title=Abortion |url=http://www.unc.edu/courses/rometech/public/content/special/Stephanie_Doerfler/Abortion.html |access-date=2008-12-10 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070629085332/http://www.unc.edu/courses/rometech/public/content/special/Stephanie_Doerfler/Abortion.html |archive-date=June 29, 2007 }}

An 8th-century Sanskrit text instructs women wishing to induce an abortion to sit over a pot of steam or stewed onions. 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 {{circa|1150}}, depicts a demon performing such an abortion upon a woman who has been sent to the underworld.

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.{{Cite journal|author=Obayashi M |title=[Historical background of the acceptance of induced abortion] |language=ja |journal=Josanpu Zasshi |volume=36 |issue=12 |pages=1011–6 |date=December 1982 |pmid=6759734 }} 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).{{Cite journal|first=Anne Page |last=Brookes |date=September–December 1981 |title=Mizuko kuyō and Japanese Buddhism |journal=Japanese Journal of Religious Studies |volume=8 |issue=3–4 |pages=119–47 |url=http://www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publications/jjrs/pdf/135.pdf |access-date=2008-12-13 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040503125604/http://www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publications/jjrs/pdf/135.pdf |archive-date=2004-05-03 }}

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.{{Cite journal|author=Hunton RB |title=Maori abortion practices in pre and early European New Zealand |journal=The New Zealand Medical Journal |volume=86 |issue=602 |pages=567–70 |date=December 1977 |pmid=273782 }} 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.{{Cite journal|author=Gluckman LK |title=Abortion in the nineteenth century Maori: a historical and ethnopsychiatric review |journal=The New Zealand Medical Journal |volume=93 |issue=685 |pages=384–6 |date=June 1981 |pmid=7019788 }}

File:Silphium.jpg 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.{{Cite journal|last=Depierri |first=Kate P. |date=March 1968 |title=One Way of Unearthing the Past |journal=The American Journal of Nursing |volume=68 |issue=3 |pages=521–524 |doi=10.2307/3453443 |pmid=4865614 |publisher=Lippincott Williams &|jstor=3453443 }}Plato (1921) [{{circa|369 BC}}]. [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Plat.+Theaet.+149d "149d"]. Theaetetus. in Harold North Fowler. Plato in Twelve Volumes. 12. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. It is thought unlikely that abortion was punished in Ancient Greece. 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."

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; 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.Pliny, [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Plin.+Nat.+22.49 XXII, Ch. 49]

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.{{cite web|first=W. Jeffrey |last=Hurst |author2=Deborah J. Hurst |url=http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgajpd/medicina%20antiqua/sa_rue.html |title=Rue (Ruta Graveolens) |access-date=2008-12-10 |work=Medicina Antiqua |publisher=The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL}}

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.{{Cite book|last=Riddle |first=John M. |author-link=John M. Riddle |title=Eve's Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West |publisher=Harvard University Press |location=Cambridge |year=1999 |isbn=0-674-27026-6 |oclc=46766844}}{{Page needed|date=September 2010}}

The Greek playwright Aristophanes noted the abortifacient property of pennyroyal in 421 BCE, through a humorous reference in his comedy, Peace. 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.{{Cite book|last=Lefkowitz |first=Mary R. |author-link=Mary Lefkowitz |author2=Maureen R. Fant |title=Women's life in Greece & Rome: A source book in translation |publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press |location=Baltimore |year=1992 |page=341 |isbn=0-8018-4475-4 |chapter=Intercourse, conception and pregnancy |chapter-url=http://www.stoa.org/diotima/anthology/wlgr/wlgr-medicine341.shtml |access-date=2008-09-21}} Other writings attributed to him describe instruments fashioned to dilate the cervix and curette inside of the uterus.{{Cite book|last=Klotz |first=John William |title=A Christian view of abortion |publisher=Concordia Publishing House |location=St. Louis, Missouri |year=1973 |isbn=0-570-06721-9 |oclc=750046 |chapter=A Historical Summary of Abortion from Antiquity through Legalization |chapter-url=http://www.lcms.org/graphics/assets/media/WRHC/187_A%20Historical%20Summary%20of%20Abortion.PDF |access-date=2008-09-21}}

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".Soranus. Gynaecology. 1.59–65. He also offered a number of recipes for herbal baths, rubs, and pessaries. 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. Hellebore, in particular, is known to be abortifacient.{{cite web|first=W. Jeffrey |last=Hurst |author2=Deborah J. Hurst |url=http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgajpd/medicina%20antiqua/sa_hellebore.html |title=Hellebore |access-date=2008-12-10 |work=Medicina Antiqua |publisher=The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL}}

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.Tertullian (1885) [{{circa|lk=no|203}}]. [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf03.iv.xi.xxv.html "Tertullian Refutes, Physiologically, the Notion that the Soul is Introduced After Birth"]. A Treatise on the Soul. in Philip Schaff. Ante-Nicene Fathers. 3. Edinburgh: T&T Clark.

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.{{Cite book|author=Celsus|author-link=Celsus|year=1935 |editor=W. G. Spencer |title=De medicina |chapter=Prooemium |chapter-url=https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Celsus/7*.html |access-date=2008-12-13 |page=457 |publisher=Heinemann |location=London |oclc=186696262}} 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".Hippolytus ({{circa|lk=no|1870}}). [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf05.iii.iii.vii.viii.html "The Personal History of Callistus; His Occupation ..."]. Refutation of all Heresies. in Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson. Ante-Nicene Fathers. 5. Edinburgh: T&T Clark.

File:Medievalpreg.jpg 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. Physicians in the Islamic world during the medieval period documented the use of abortifacients, commenting on their effectiveness and prevalence.{{Cite book |first=Sa'diyya |last=Shaikh |chapter=Family Planning, Contraception, and Abortion in Islam: Undertaking Khilafa |editor=Daniel C. Maguire |title=Sacred Rights: The Case for Contraception and Abortion in World Religions |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford |year=2003 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/sacredrightscase0000magu/page/107 107] |isbn=0-19-516001-0 |oclc=50080419 |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/sacredrightscase0000magu/page/107 }}

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".Farrell, Molly, [https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/05/ben-franklin-american-instructor-textbook-abortion-recipe.html Ben Franklin Put an Abortion Recipe in His Math Textbook: To colonial Americans, termination was as normal as the ABCs and 123s], Slate, May 5, 2022 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".{{Cite book|last=Felter |first=Harvey Wickes |author-link=Harvey Wickes Felter |author2=John Uri Lloyd |author2-link=John Uri Lloyd |title=King's American Dispensatory |access-date=2008-12-11 |chapter=Hedeoma (U. S. P.)—Hedeoma |chapter-url=http://www.henriettesherbal.com/eclectic/kings/hedeoma.html |year=1854|title-link=King's American Dispensatory }} 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[https://archive.today/20120718040231/http://www.annals.org/content/124/8/726.full.pdf+html Pennyroyal poisoning][http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/12.14.95/pennyroyal-9550.html Colorado death] which is known to be toxic.{{cite web|author=MedLinePlus|author-link=Medlineplus|title=American pennyroyal (Hedeoma pulegioides L.), European pennyroyal (Mentha pulegium L.) |url=https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/natural/patient-pennyroyal.html |access-date=2009-05-05}} 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.{{Cite news|first=Gordon |last=Young |title=Lifestyle on Trial |url=http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/12.14.95/pennyroyal-9550.html |work=Metro |date=December 1995 |access-date=2008-06-25}}

For thousands of years, tansy has been taken in early pregnancy to restore menstruation.{{cite journal |journal=The Medical Magazine |title =Fatal Poisoning by Oil of Tansy |author=Charles T. Hildreth, MD |date=November 1834 |volume=3 |number=7 |page=213 |publisher=William D. Ticknor |location=Boston |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-hugAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA213 |quote=From the days of Aristotle to the present time, a certain class of medical writers have recommended this plant as safe, and more or less efficacious, in cases involving a suppression of the catamenia.}} (Catamenia is blood or other material discharged from the uterus during menstruation.) It was first documented as an emmenagogue in St. Hildegard of Bingen's De simplicis medicinae.

A variety of juniper, known as savin, was mentioned frequently in European writings. 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.

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.{{cite web|first=Kathleen |last=London |url=http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1982/6/82.06.03.x.html |year=1982 |title=The History of Birth Control |work=The Changing American Family: Historical and Comparative Perspectives |access-date=2008-12-10 |publisher=Yale University}}

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.{{cite encyclopedia | last = Long | first = George | author-link = George Long (scholar) | title = Abortio | editor = William Smith | editor-link = William Smith (lexicographer) | encyclopedia = Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities | volume = 1 | pages = 2 | publisher = Little, Brown and Company | location = Boston | year = 1870 | url = http://www.ancientlibrary.com/smith-dgra/0009.html | url-status = usurped | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20100213213407/http://www.ancientlibrary.com/smith-dgra/0009.html | archive-date = 2010-02-13 }}

Aristotle wrote that, "[T]he line between lawful and unlawful abortion will be marked by the fact of having sensation and being alive."{{Cite book|author=Aristotle|author-link=Aristotle|chapter=Politics |editor=H. Rackham |title=Aristotle in 23 Volumes |volume=21 |publisher=Harvard University Press |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts |year=1944 |orig-year=c. 325 BC |page=[https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0058:book%3D7:section%3D1335b 7.1335b] |isbn=0-674-99291-1 |oclc=29752140 }} Before that point was reached, Aristotle did not regard abortion as the killing of something human.[https://books.google.com/books?id=6HZ2aOV2BSQC&dq=thomas+aquinas+abortion&pg=PA5 A companion to bioethics] By Helga Kuhse, Peter Singer[http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_hist.htm ReligiousTolerance.org][https://archive.org/details/privatemoralityi0000boer/page/273 W. den Boer, Private Morality in Greece and Rome (Brill 1979] {{ISBN|978-90-04-05976-4}}), p. 272 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.{{Cite journal|last=Riddle |first=John M. |author-link=John M. Riddle |title=Oral contraceptives and early-term abortifacients during classical antiquity and the Middle Ages |journal=Past & Present |issue=132 |pages=3–32 |date=August 1991 |pmid=11656135 |doi=10.1093/past/132.1.3 |jstor=650819 }} "Contrary to popular opinion, the ancient Hippocratic Oath did not prohibit abortions; the oath prohibited 'vaginal suppositories' presumably because of the ulcerations they were said to cause." Riddle is citing Soranus, p.13. This specific prohibition has been interpreted by some medical scholars as prohibiting abortion in a broader sense than by pessary.{{Cite book|last=Riddle |first=John M. |author-link=John M. Riddle |title=Contraception and abortion from the ancient world to the Renaissance |publisher=Harvard University Press |location=Cambridge |year=1992 |isbn=0-674-16875-5 |oclc=24428750}}{{Page needed|date=September 2010}}

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."Scribonius, Compositiones Praef. 5. 20–23 (Translated and cited in Riddle's history of contraception and abortion) Other medical scholars disagree, believing that Hippocrates sought to discourage physicians from trying dangerous methods to abort a fetus.{{cite book|isbn=978-1-4443-1293-5|page=[https://archive.org/details/managementuninte00paul/page/n21 2]|publisher=John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.|year=2009|location=Oxford, United Kingdom|title=Management of Unintended and Abnormal Pregnancy|url=https://archive.org/details/managementuninte00paul|url-access=limited|edition=1st|editor=M Paul|editor2=ES Lichtenberg|editor3=L Borgatta|editor4=DA Grimes|editor5=PG Stubblefield|editor6=MD Creinin|first=Carole|last=Joffe}} 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).{{cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/hippocratic-oath-today.html|title = The Hippocratic Oath Today|website = PBS| date=27 March 2001 }}

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.[http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/aconite/largus.html "Scribonius Largus"]{{cite book|author=Soranus, Owsei Temkin|title=Soranus' Gynecology|date=1956|publisher=JHU Press|location=I.19.60|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YsKWfh31gxwC&q=soranus%20gynecology%20digital&pg=PR1|access-date=6 October 2015|isbn=9780801843204}}

In the Roman Republic and Principate, abortion was punished only when it violated the father's right to make decisions about rearing his offspring.[https://books.google.com/books?id=fVZXBeNCffwC Johannes M. Röskamp, Christian Perspectives On Abortion-Legislation In Past And Present (GRIN Verlag 2005] {{ISBN|978-3-640-56931-1}}{{rp|3}} The Stoics did not view the fetus as a person, and the Romans did not punish abortion as homicide.[https://books.google.com/books?id=gcRwR2skwr4C&dq=christianity+stoicism+abortion&pg=PA19 Jeffrey H. Reiman, Abortion and the Ways We Value Life (Rowman and Littlefield 1998] {{ISBN|978-0-8476-9208-8}}), p, 19 Following a divorce, a pregnant woman could choose to have an abortion based on the view that "the embryo formed part of the mother's own organs."Mireille Corbier, "Divorce and Adoption as Familial Strategies," Marriage, Divorce, and Children in Ancient Rome (Oxford University Press, 1991, 1996 pb), edited by Beryl Rawson, p. 65. Although abortion was commonly accepted in the Roman Empire, around 211 AD the emperors Septimius Severus and Caracalla banned abortion as infringing on parental rights; temporary exile was the punishment.{{Citation | last = Sallares| first = J. Robert| contribution =abortion | page =1 | editor-last1 = Hornblower | editor-first1 = Simon | editor-last2 = Spawforth | editor-first2 = Anthony | title = The Oxford Classical Dictionary | publisher = OxfordUP | place = Oxford | date = 2003 | edition=3rd | isbn=978-0-19-860641-3 }}

The 3rd-century legal compilation Pauli sententiae (attributed to Julius Paulus) 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 will be banned to a mine, and the honestiores 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."Pauli sententiae, PS 5.23.14 (BA PS 5.25.8). Paulus distinguishes between punishments for the upper and lower classes (honestiores and humiliores) but 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," meaning that in Roman inheritance law a posthumous child was entitled to the same share of its predeceased father's estate as children born before his death.{{cn|date=May 2024}} Abortion continued to be practiced "with little or no sense of shame".{{Cite journal|last=Hopkins |first=Keith |date=October 1965 |title=Contraception in the Roman Empire |journal=Comparative Studies in Society and History |volume=8 |issue=1 |pages=124–151 |doi=10.1017/S0010417500003935 |jstor=177539|s2cid=146352490 }} "We know that Romans practiced abortion with little or no sense of shame." Hopkins cites R. Hähnel's Der künstliche Abortus in Altertum, p. 127.

{{Main|History of Christian thought on 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 "veyats'u yeladeha" (וְיָצְאוּ יְלָדֶיהָ){{cite web|url=https://mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0221.htm|title = Exodus 2021, Masoretic Text (1917 Jewish Publication Society Translation) published online by Mechon Mamre on 14 November 2017}} to refer to the child coming out;{{cite web|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26424831|title = Makujina, John, The Semantics of יצא in Exodus 21:22: Reassessing the Variables That Determine Meaning, Bulletin for Biblical Research Vol. 23, No. 3 (Penn State University Press, 2013), pp. 305–321| jstor=26424831 }} different English versions translate this term either as a "premature birth" or as a "miscarriage".{{cite web|url=https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Exodus%2021%3A22|title = Exodus 21:22, Various Translations – - Bible Gateway}} The Spanish translation published by the Sociedad Biblica Catolica Internacional (SOBICAIN) uses the term "aborto", clearly indicating the demise of the fetus.{{cite book|title=La Biblia|publisher=Sociedad Biblica Catolica Internacional (SOBICAIN)|location=Madrid|year=1995}} The passage reads: "Si unos hombres, en el curso de una pelea, dan un golpe a una mujer embarazada provocandole un aborto, sin que muera la mujer, seran multados conforme a lo que imponga el marido ante los jueces. Pero si la mujer muere, pagaran vida por vida, ojo por ojo, [...]" (translation courtesy of translate.com: "If men, in the course of a fight, hit a pregnant woman causing an abortion, without the woman dying, they will be fined according to what the husband imposes before the judges. But if the woman dies, they will pay life for life, an eye for an eye, [...]") 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).{{cite web|url=https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus%2021:22-24|title = Exodus 21:22–24 – - Bible Gateway}} 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.{{cite web|url=http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/30/my-take-when-evangelicals-were-pro-choice/comment-page-30/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121104022621/http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/30/my-take-when-evangelicals-were-pro-choice/comment-page-30/|url-status=dead|archive-date=November 4, 2012|title=My Take: When evangelicals were pro-choice}}Bruce Waltke, "The Old Testament and Birth Control", Christianity Today 13 no. 3 (1968) 3–6https://web.archive.org/web/20140331150652/http://blog.chron.com/goplifer/2014/03/when-evangelicals-were-pro-choice/ {{Bare URL inline|date=August 2024}}{{cite web|url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/abortion.html|title=Abortion in Judaism}}{{cite web|url=https://www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/37/37-2/JETS_37-2_169-184_Fuller.pdf|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101230215132/http://www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/37/37-2/JETS_37-2_169-184_Fuller.pdf|url-status=dead|archive-date=December 30, 2010|title=Fuller, Russell, Exodus 21:22–23: The Miscarriage Interpretation and the Personhood of the Fetus (June 1994) Journal of Evangelical Theological Society, pp. 169–184.}} C. Everett Koop disagreed with this interpretation.{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4PIV2TymFC8C&pg=PA154 |page=154 |title=Godly Seed: American Evangelicals Confront Birth Control, 1873–1973 |last=Carlson |first=Allan C. |publisher=Transaction |date=December 31, 2011 |isbn=9781412846516}}

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.{{cite web|url=https://ffrf.org/component/k2/item/25602-abortion-rights,|title=What Does the Bible Really Say About Abortion? – Freedom From Religion Foundation|first=Lauryn|last=Seering|website=ffrf.org|access-date=2022-06-25|archive-date=2021-05-20|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210520134008/https://ffrf.org/component/k2/item/25602-abortion-rights,|url-status=dead}} 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.{{cite web|url=https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers+5%3A11-31|title = Numbers 5:11–31 – - Bible Gateway}}

{{Abortion in the Catholic Church}}

The early Christian work called the Didache (before 100 AD) says: "do not murder a child by abortion or kill a new-born infant."{{Cite book|editor=Cyril Charles Richardson |title=Early Christian Fathers |orig-year=c. 150 |access-date=2008-12-12 |year=1953 |publisher=Westminster Press |location=Philadelphia |oclc=832987 |chapter=Didache |chapter-url=http://www.ccel.org/ccel/richardson/fathers.viii.i.iii.html}} 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.Augustine (1885) [{{circa|lk=no|420}}]. [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf103.iv.ii.lxxxvii.html "The Case of Abortive Conceptions"]. Enchiridion. in Philip Schaff. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers. 3. Edinburgh: T&T Clark.

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,{{cite web|url=http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_hist.htm |title=Roman Catholicism and abortion access: Pagan & Christian beliefs 400 BC −1980 AD |first=B. A. |last=Robinson |publisher=Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance |date=2000-05-28 |access-date=2008-12-09}} 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.Augustine (1885) [{{circa|lk=no|420}}]. [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf103.iv.ii.lxxx.html "What Sins are Trivial and What Heinous is a Matter for God's Judgment"]. Enchiridion. in Philip Schaff. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers. 3. Edinburgh: T&T Clark.

• "Now who is there that is not rather disposed to think that unformed abortions perish, like seeds that have never fructified?"
• "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."Augustine (1885) [{{circa|lk=no|420}}]. [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf103.iv.ii.lxxxviii.html "If They Have Ever Lived, They Must of Course Have Died, and Therefore, Shall Have a Share in the Resurrection of the Dead"]. Enchiridion. in Philip Schaff. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers. 3. Edinburgh: T&T Clark.

The Leges Henrici Primi, written c. 1115, prescribes compensation for a woman or her relatives if another person causes her to miscarry, and prescribes penance (3 years if the abortion occurs before quickening, 7 years after quickening) if the pregnant woman aborts her pregnancy; the latter punishment applied only to women whose abortion resulted from a desire to conceal illicit sex.{{cite journal|last=Spivack|first=Carla|title=To "Bring Down the Flowers": The Cultural Context of Abortion Law in Early Modern England |journal=William and Mary Journal of Women and the Law|volume=14|year=2007|pages=107–151| url=https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmjowl/vol14/iss1/4}}{{rp|130–131}} "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.{{Cite book|first=Heinrich |last=Institoris |author-link=Heinrich Kramer |author2=Jakob Sprenger |author2-link=Jakob Sprenger |editor=Montague Summers |editor-link=Montague Summers |title=The Malleus maleficarum of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger |publisher=Dover Publications |location=New York City |year=1971 |page=[https://archive.org/details/malleusmaleficar00inst/page/66 [https://books.google.com/books?id=j0S4Q5mjS7gC&printsec=frontcover&cad=0#PPA66,M1 66]] |isbn=0-486-22802-9 |oclc=246623 |orig-year=1487 |url=https://archive.org/details/malleusmaleficar00inst/page/66 }}

In 1591, Pope Gregory XIV published new regulations in the apostolic constitution Sedes Apostolica{{Efn|The relevant part of this constitution is reproduced in {{Cite book|title=Codicis Iuris Canonici Fontes|publisher=Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis|others=(ref. given for the constitution: Bull. Rom., tom. 5, I, p. 275, 276)|year=1926|editor-last=Gasparri|editor-first=Pietro|editor-link=Pietro Gasparri|volume=I:1–364|location=Rome|pages=330–331|chapter=173. Gregorius XIV, const. Sedes Apostolica, 31 maii 1591.|access-date=2020-06-05|chapter-url=https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k9737552z/f335.image.texteImage}}|name=sedes|group=}} (published on 31 May 1591), limiting the punishments to abortion of a "formed" fetus:[https://books.google.com/books?id=gV6W8z4ojSoC&dq=%22sixtus+v%22+%22gregory+XIV%22+murder&pg=PA91 Nicholas Terpstra, Lost Girls: Sex and Death in Renaissance Florence (Johns Hopkins University Press 2010] {{ISBN|978-0-8018-9499-2}}), p. 91{{Cite book|last=Sobiech|first=Frank|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NwaPDAAAQBAJ&q=CONSTITUTIO+APOSTOLICA+Sedes+apostolica+gregorio+XIV&pg=PA112|title=Ethos, Bioethics, and Sexual Ethics in Work and Reception of the Anatomist Niels Stensen (1638–1686): Circulation of Love|date=2016-06-25|publisher=Springer|isbn=978-3-319-32912-3|pages=112|language=en|chapter=2.3 Between Medicine and theology [2.3.1.5 Simultaneous Ensoulment Versus Successive Ensoulment of the Embryo]}} "When abortion was neither 'an issue of homicide or of an animate fetus,' Gregory thought it 'more useful' to return to the less-harsh penalties [for early abortion] of the holy canons and profane laws: those who abort an inanimatus [soulless] will not be guilty of true homicide because they have not killed a human being in actuality; clerics involved in abortions will have committed mortal sin but will not incur irregularity".{{Cite journal|last=Christopoulos|first=John|date=2012|title=Abortion and the Confessional in Counter-Reformation Italy|journal=Renaissance Quarterly|volume=65|issue=2|pages=443–484 (p. 474)|doi=10.1086/667257|jstor=10.1086/667257|s2cid=142588594|issn=0034-4338}} After 1591, Gregory's Sedes apostolica "remained in effect for almost three centuries, being revised only in 1869 by Pius IX".{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XvqRAAAAIAAJ&q=catholic+history+of+abortion |isbn=9780829402575 |date=1977 |publisher=Loyola University Press |title=Abortion, the development of the Roman Catholic perspective |first1=John R |last1=Connery}}{{rp|148}}

With his 1869 bull Apostolicae Sedis moderationi, Pope Pius IX rescinded Gregory XIV's not-yet-animated fetus exception with regard to the spiritual penalty of excommunication."Excommunicationi latae sententiae Episcopis sive Ordinariis reservatae subiacere declaramus: ... 2. Procurantes abortum, effectu sequuto" ([https://www.vatican.va//archive/ass/documents/ASS-05-1869-70-ocr.pdf] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150206111318/https://www.vatican.va/|date=February 6, 2015}}, p. 317) From then on this penalty was incurred automatically through abortion at any stage of pregnancy.{{Cite journal |journal=Irish Theological Quarterly |first=Brian V. |last=Johnstone |date=March 2005 |title=Early Abortion: Venial or Mortal Sin? |volume=70 |issue=1 |page=60 |doi=10.1177/002114000507000104|s2cid=170797954 }} An excerpt can be found [http://catholicsensibility.wordpress.com/2008/08/27/moral-theology-and-early-abortion/ here].

Currently, the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches oppose abortion from conception.{{cite web|url=https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P7Z.HTM|title = Catechism of the Catholic Church, s. 2270, citing Jeremiah 1:5, Job 10:8–12, Psalms 22:10–11, 139:15.|access-date=June 27, 2022}}{{cite web|url=http://orthodoxinfo.com/praxis/abortion.aspx|title=An Orthodox View of Abortion: The Amicus Curiae Submitted to the Supreme Court in Webster et al. v. Reproductive Health Services et. al.|access-date=June 27, 2022}}

{{Globalize|section|date=April 2017}}

File:JapaneseAbortionWoodblock.jpg woodblock print.]]

19th-century medicine saw tremendous advances in the fields of surgery, anaesthesia, and sanitation. Social attitudes towards abortion shifted in the context of a backlash against the women's rights movement. Abortion had previously been widely practiced and legal under common law in early pregnancy (until quickening), and it was not until the 19th century that the English-speaking world passed laws against abortion at all stages of pregnancy.{{cite book | last=Reagan | first=Leslie J. | title=When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867–1973 | url=https://archive.org/details/whenabortionwasc00reag_0 | url-access=registration |page=[https://archive.org/details/whenabortionwasc00reag_0/page/8 8]| publisher=University of California Press | year=1997| isbn=9780520216570 }}

There were a number of factors that contributed to this shift in opinion about abortion in the early 19th century. In the United States, where physicians were the leading advocates of abortion criminalization laws, some of them argued that advances in medical knowledge showed that quickening was neither more nor less crucial in the process of gestation than any other step, and thus if one opposes abortion after quickening, one should oppose it before quickening as well.{{cite book|title=Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy|url=https://archive.org/details/abortioninameric00jame|url-access=registration|author=James C. Mohr|year=1978|pages=[https://archive.org/details/abortioninameric00jame/page/35 35–36]|publisher=Oxford University Press/|isbn=978-0-19-502249-0}}

Practical reasons also influenced the medical field to impose anti-abortion laws. For one, abortion providers tended to be untrained and not members of medical societies. In an age where the leading doctors in the nation were attempting to standardize the medical profession, these "irregulars" were considered a nuisance to public health.{{cite book|title=Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy|url=https://archive.org/details/abortioninameric00jame|url-access=registration|author=James C. Mohr|year=1978|page=[https://archive.org/details/abortioninameric00jame/page/34 34]|publisher=Oxford University Press/|isbn=978-0-19-502249-0}} The "irregulars" were also disliked by the more formalized medical profession because they were competition, and often cheap competition. Though the physicians' campaign against abortion began in the early 1800s, little change was made in the United States until after the Civil War.{{cite book|title=Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy|url=https://archive.org/details/abortioninameric00jame|url-access=registration|author=James C. Mohr|year=1978|page=[https://archive.org/details/abortioninameric00jame/page/147 147]|publisher=Oxford University Press/|isbn=978-0-19-502249-0}}

The English law on abortion was first codified in legislation under sections 1 and 2 of Malicious Shooting or Stabbing Act 1803. The Bill was proposed by the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, Edward Law, 1st Baron Ellenborough to clarify the law relating to abortion and was the first law to explicitly outlaw it. The Act provided that it was an offence for any person to perform or cause an abortion. The punishment for performing or attempting to perform a post quickening abortion was the death penalty (section 1) and otherwise was transportation for fourteen years (section 2). In the 19th-century United States, there was little regulation of abortion, in the tradition of English common law, pre quickening abortions were considered at most a misdemeanor. These cases proved difficult to prosecute as the testimony of the mother was usually the only means to determine when quickening had occurred.{{cite book|title=Opposition and Intimidation:The abortion wars and strategies of political harassment|url=https://archive.org/details/oppositionintimi00doan|url-access=limited|first=Alesha E. |last=Doan|year=2007|page=[https://archive.org/details/oppositionintimi00doan/page/n57 46]|publisher=University of Michigan|isbn=9780472099757}}

The law was amended in 1828 and 1837 – the latter removed the distinction between women who were quick with child (late pregnancy) and those who were not. It also eliminated the death penalty as a possible punishment. The latter half of the 19th century saw abortion become increasingly punished. One writer justified this by claiming that the number of abortions among married women had increased markedly since 1840.[https://books.google.com/books?id=dfICAAAAYAAJ&dq=%22therapeutic%20abortion%22&pg=PA374 Transactions of the Washington Obstetrical and Gynecological Society] The Offences against the Person Act 1861 created a new preparatory offence of procuring poison or instruments with intent to procure abortion. During the 1860s however abortion services were available in New York, New Orleans, Cincinnati, Louisville, Cleveland, Chicago and Indianapolis; with estimates of one abortion for every 4 live births.{{sfn|Doan|2007|p=47}}

Anti-abortion statutes began to appear in the United States from the 1820s. A Connecticut law in 1821 targeted apothecaries who sold poisons to women for purposes of abortion, and New York made post-quickening abortions a felony and pre-quickening abortions a misdemeanor in 1829.{{cite journal |first1=Suzanne M. |last1=Alford |url=http://www.law.duke.edu/shell/cite.pl?52+Duke+L.+J.+1011 |title=Is Self-Abortion a Fundamental Right? |volume=52 |journal=Duke Law Journal |pages=1011–29 |issue=5 |year=2003 |jstor=1373127 |pmid=12964572 |access-date=2014-07-14 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190122060327/https://law.duke.edu/shell/cite.pl?52+Duke+L.+J.+1011 |archive-date=2019-01-22 |url-status=dead }} Criminalization accelerated from the late 1860s, through the efforts of concerned legislators, doctors, and the American Medical Association.{{cite web |url=http://womenshistory.about.com/od/abortionuslegal/a/abortion.htm |title=Abortion History: A History of Abortion in the United States |access-date=2006-07-07 |last=Lewis |first=Jone Johnson |work=Women's History section of About.com |publisher=About.com |archive-date=2017-03-03 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170303021904/http://womenshistory.about.com/od/abortionuslegal/a/abortion.htm |url-status=dead }} In 1873, the Comstock Law prohibited any methods of production or publication of information pertaining to the procurement of abortion, the prevention of conception, and the prevention of venereal disease, even to students of medicine.DeRobigne Mortimer Bennett. (1878). [https://archive.org/stream/anthonycomstockh00bennuoft#page/1017/mode/1up Anthony Comstock: His Career of Cruelty and Crime. A Chapter from "Champions of the Church"]. Retrieved 26 July 2022 – via Internet Archive. By 1909, the penalty for violating these laws became a $5000 fine and up to five years imprisonment. By 1910, nearly every state had anti-abortion laws;{{sfn|Doan|2007|p=51}} these were unevenly enforced at best.{{cite book | last=Reagan | first=Leslie J. | title=When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867–1973 | url=https://archive.org/details/whenabortionwasc00reag_0 | url-access=registration | publisher=University of California Press | year=1997| isbn=9780520216570 }}{{rp|80–112}}

Abortion restrictions are not new, but have increased and spread to places where they were not before.{{Cite journal|last1=Mucciaroni |first1=Gary |last2=Ferrailo |first2=Kathleen |last3=Rubado |first3=Meghan |year=2019 |title= Framing Morality Policy Issues: State Legislative Debates on Abortion Restrictions |journal= Policy Sciences |volume=52 |issue=2 |pages=171–189 |doi=10.1007/S11077-018-9336-2 }} Today, there has been an increase in the amount of laws that restrict abortion care in a greater amount of ways that previously seen, and there has been a trend toward abortion restrictive laws and legislature.{{Cite journal|last1=Beckman |first1=Linda J. |year=2016|title=Abortion in the United States: The Continuing Controversy |journal=Feminism & Psychology |volume=27 |issue=1 |pages=101–113 |doi=10.1177/0959353516685345 }} Negative framing around abortion has contributed to today's trend toward anti-abortion legislature. The abortion battle in the United States can be seen as largely a battle of competing ideologies. Anti-abortion advocates believe life begins at conception, so legalized abortion is a threat to social, moral, and religious values. However, pro-abortion advocates view legalized abortion as a woman's control over her body and the access to safe reproductive care.

In the United States today, after Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, many states have banned abortion and target providers of abortions. In these states where abortion is banned, OBGYNs have been barred from offering abortions or just do not offer the services, except in very limited and certain circumstances, and do not even provide their patients with referrals to other clinicians or online resources involving abortion.{{Cite conference|last1=Federiksen |first1=Brittni |last2=Ranji |first2=Ranji |last3=Gomez |first3=Ivette |last4=Salganicoff |first4=Alina |title=A National Survey of OBGYNs' Experiences After Dobbs |publisher=KFF |location=San Francisco, CA |year=2023 }} The reasoning for not offering the services stems from many of the institutions that employ these OBGYNs having policies against performing abortions or terminating a pregnancy, which imposes too many legal regulations involving abortion care. OBGYNs have stated that their practices have been impacted and that their relationships with their patients have become worse since the decision on Dobbs was made.

In contrast, in France social perceptions of abortion started to change. In the first half of the 19th century, abortion was viewed as the last resort for pregnant but unwed women. As writers began to write about abortion in terms of family planning for married women, the practice of abortion was reconceptualized as a logical solution to unwanted pregnancies resulting from ineffectual contraceptives.{{Cite journal|last=McLaren |first=Angus |date=Spring 1978 |title=Abortion in France: Women and the Regulation of Family Size 1800–1914 |journal=French Historical Studies |volume=10 |issue=3 |pages=461–484 [469] |quote=Increasingly, writers in the latter half of the nineteenth century no longer referred to abortion as a last resort for the single, seduced girl but as a family planning measure employed by the married woman. As a result the very nature of the idea and practice of abortion was transformed. |doi=10.2307/286340 |pmid=11614490 |publisher=Duke University Press |jstor=286340}} The formulation of abortion as a form of family planning for married women was made "thinkable" because both medical and non-medical practitioners agreed on the relative safety of the procedure.

{{further|Illegal operation (euphemism)}}

File:FrenchPeriodicalPills-January61845,BostonDailyTimes.jpg

In New York, surgical abortion in 1800s carried a death rate of 30% regardless of hospital setting, and the American Medical Association launched an anti-abortion campaign that resulted in abortion becoming the exclusive domain of doctors.{{sfn|Doan|2007|p=47}} A paper published in 1870 on the abortion services to be found in Syracuse, New York, concluded that the method most often practiced there during this time was to flush inside of the uterus with injected water. The article's author, Ely Van de Warkle, claimed this procedure was affordable even to a maid, as a man in town offered it for $10 on an installment plan.{{Cite book|first=Ely |last=Van de Warker |year=1870 |title=The detection of criminal abortion and a study of fœticidal drugs |url=https://archive.org/details/detectionofcrimi00vanduoft |publisher=James Campbell |location=Boston |access-date=2008-12-14}} Other prices which 19th-century abortion providers are reported to have charged were much more steep. In Britain, it could cost from 10 to 50 guineas, or 5% of the yearly income of a lower middle class household.

From 1870 there was a steady decline in fertility in England, linked by some commentators not to a rise in the use of artificial contraception but to more traditional methods such as withdrawal and abstinence. This was linked to changes in the perception of the relative costs of childrearing. Of course, women did find themselves with unwanted pregnancies. Abortifacients were discreetly advertised and there was a considerable body of folklore about methods of inducing miscarriages. Amongst working-class women violent purgatives were popular, pennyroyal, aloes and turpentine were all used. Other methods to induce miscarriage were very hot baths and gin, extreme exertion, a controlled fall down a flight of stairs, or veterinary medicines. So-called 'backstreet' abortionists were fairly common, although their bloody efforts could be fatal. Estimates of the number of illegal abortions performed in England varied widely: by one estimate, 100,000 women made efforts to procure a miscarriage in 1914, usually by drugs.{{Citation needed|date=July 2015}}

A rash of unexplained miscarriages in Sheffield, England were attributed to lead poisoning caused by the metal pipes which fed the city's water supply. Soon, women began using diachylon, a substance with a high concentration of lead, as an abortifacient. In 1898, a woman confessed to having used diachylon to induce a miscarriage. The use of diachylon became prevalent in the English Midlands up until World War I. Criminal investigation of an abortionist in Calgary, Alberta in 1894 revealed through chemical analysis that the concoction he had supplied to a man seeking an abortifacient contained Spanish fly.{{Cite journal|last=Beahen |first=William |year=1986 |title=Abortion and Infanticide in Western Canada 1874 to 1916: A Criminal Case Study |journal=Historical Studies |volume=53 |pages=53–70 |publisher=The Canadian Catholic Historical Association |url=http://www.umanitoba.ca/colleges/st_pauls/ccha/Back%20Issues/CCHA1986/Beahan.htm |access-date=2008-12-10}}

Dr. Evelyn Fisher wrote of how women living in a mining town in Wales during the 1920s used candles intended for Roman Catholic ceremonies to dilate the cervix in an effort to self-induce abortion. Similarly, the use of candles and other objects, such as glass rods, penholders, curling irons, spoons, sticks, knives, and catheters was reported during the 19th century in the United States.{{Cite journal|author=King CR |title=Abortion in nineteenth century America: a conflict between women and their physicians |journal=Women's Health Issues |volume=2 |issue=1 |pages=32–9 |year=1992 |pmid=1628000 |doi=10.1016/S1049-3867(05)80135-5 |url=http://www.popline.org/docs/076577 |access-date=2008-12-10 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090202135921/http://www.popline.org/docs/076577 |archive-date=February 2, 2009 |url-access=subscription }} Women of Jewish descent in Lower East Side, Manhattan are said to have carried the ancient Indian practice of sitting over a pot of steam into the early 20th century. Some commentators maintained that abortion remained a dangerous procedure into the early 20th century, more dangerous than childbirth until about 1930.Abortion was more dangerous than childbirth throughout the 19th century. By 1930, medical procedures had improved for both childbirth and abortion but not equally, and induced abortion in the first trimester had become safer than childbirth. In 1973, Roe vs. Wade acknowledged that abortion in the first trimester was safer than childbirth.
{{•}}{{cite book |title=Time communication 1940–1989: retrospective |publisher=Time Inc. |year=1989 |chapter=The 1970s |quote=Blackmun was also swayed by the fact that most abortion prohibitions were enacted in the 19th century when the procedure was more dangerous than now.}}
{{•}}{{cite book |last=Will |first=George |title=Suddenly: the American idea abroad and at home, 1986–1990 |publisher=Free Press |year=1990 |page=[https://archive.org/details/suddenlyamericangwill00will/page/312 312] |isbn=0-02-934435-2 |url=https://archive.org/details/suddenlyamericangwill00will/page/312 }}
{{•}}{{cite web |url=http://www.policyalmanac.org/culture/archive/crs_abortion_overview.shtml |title=Abortion Law Development: A Brief Overview |last1=Lewis |first1=J. |last2=Shimabukuro |first2=Jon O. |publisher=Congressional Research Service |date=January 28, 2001 |access-date=May 1, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110514133610/http://www.policyalmanac.org/culture/archive/crs_abortion_overview.shtml |archive-date=May 14, 2011 |url-status=dead }}
{{•}}{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EHj_0R2rbxAC&pg=PA1 |page=1 |title=Encyclopedia of American law |last=Schultz |first=David Andrew |publisher=Infobase Publishing |year=2002 |isbn=0-8160-4329-9 }}
{{•}}{{cite journal |title=Pregnancy termination |journal=Population Reports |author=Population Information Program, George Washington University |author2=Dept. of Medical and Public Affairs, Johns Hopkins University |publisher=Population Information Program, The Johns Hopkins University |year=1980 |number=7}}
{{•}}{{cite web |title=Birthing a Nation: Fertility Control Access and the 19th Century Demographic Transition |last=Lahey |first=Joanna N. |publisher=Pomona College |date=September 24, 2009 |url=http://economics.pomona.edu/colloquium/ |work=Colloquium |access-date=August 4, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110815111454/http://economics.pomona.edu/colloquium/ |archive-date=August 15, 2011 |url-status=dead }} But others have said that in the 19th century early abortions under the hygienic conditions in which midwives usually worked were relatively safe.{{cite book | last = Gordon | first = Linda | title = The Moral Property of Women | publisher = University of Illinois Press | year = 2002 | isbn = 0252027647 }}{{rp|25|}}{{citation | last = Solinger | first = Rickie | contribution = Introduction | editor-last = Solinger | editor-first = Rickie | title = Abortion Wars: A Half Century of Struggle, 1950-2000 | pages = [https://archive.org/details/abortionwarshalf0000soli/page/1 1–9] | publisher = University of California Press | year = 1998 | isbn = 978-0520209527 | url = https://archive.org/details/abortionwarshalf0000soli/page/1 }}{{rp|4}}{{cite book | last1 = Bates | first1 = Jerome E. | last2 = Zawadzki | first2 = Edward S. | title = Criminal Abortion: A Study in Medical Sociology | publisher = Charles C. Thomas | year = 1964 | isbn = 9780398001094 }}{{rp|59}}

{{cite book | last = Taussig | first = Frederick J. | title = Abortion Spontaneous and Induced: Medical and Social Aspects | publisher = C. V. Mosby | year = 1936 }}{{rp|223}}{{citation | last=Lee | first=Charles A. | title=Report of a trial for murder | journal=American Journal of the Medical Sciences |year=1838|volume=XXII|pages=351–353}}{{citation | last=Bailey | first=Benjamin | title=Induction of abortion and premature labor | journal=North American Journal of Homeopathy | year=1896|volume=XI|issue=3|pages=144–150}}{{citation | last=Simpson | first=Keith | title=Forensic Medicine | publisher=Edward Arnold Publishers | year=1947 | pages=173–174}} In addition, some authors have written that, despite improved medical procedures, the period from the 1930s until legalization also saw more zealous enforcement of anti-abortion laws, and concomitantly an increasing control of abortion providers by organized crime.{{cite book | last=Evans | first=Max | title=Madam Millie: Bordellos from Silver City to Ketchikan | publisher=University of New Mexico Press | year=2002 | pages=209–218, 230, 267–286, 305}}{{cite book | last=Donner | first=James | title=Women in Trouble: The Truth about Abortion in America | publisher=Monarch Books | year=1959}}{{cite book | last=Oakley | first=Ann | title=The Captured Womb | publisher=Basil Blackwell | year=1984 | page=91}}{{cite book | last=Solinger | first=Rickie | title=The Abortionist: A Woman Against the Law | publisher=The Free Press | year=1994 | pages=xi, 5, 16–17, 157–175}}

File:Beecham's pills advert.jpg as an abortifacient. The text at the bottom notes that the pills "assist nature in her wondrous functions".]]

Despite bans enacted on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, access to abortion continued, as the disguised advertisement of abortion services, abortion-inducing devices, and abortifacient medicines in the Victorian era would seem to suggest.{{cite web|url=http://users.telerama.com/~jdehullu/abortion/abhist.htm |title=Histories of Abortion |first=James |last=DeHullu |access-date=2008-12-11| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20081118194538/http://users.telerama.com/~jdehullu/abortion/abhist.htm| archive-date=November 18, 2008}} Apparent print ads of this nature were found in the United States,{{cite web|url=http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awhhtml/awser2/advertisement.html |title=Product Advertisements |work=American Women |year=2001 |publisher=Library of Congress |access-date=2008-12-11}} the United Kingdom, and Canada.{{Cite journal|last=McLaren |first=Angus |title=Birth control and abortion in Canada, 1870–1920 |journal=Canadian Historical Review |volume=59 |issue=3 |pages=319–40 |year=1978 |pmid=11614314 |doi=10.3138/CHR-059-03-02 |s2cid=26629671 }} A British Medical Journal writer who replied to newspaper ads peddling relief to women who were "temporarily indisposed" in 1868 found that over half of them were in fact promoting abortion.

A few examples of surreptitiously marketed abortifacients include "Farrer's Catholic Pills", "Hardy's Woman's Friend", "Dr. Peter's French Renovating Pills", "Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound",{{Cite news|first=Barbara |last=Black |title=Women win back reproductive rights |url=http://www.nsnews.com/issues00/w112700/opinion/editorial/black.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040819235658/http://www.nsnews.com/issues00/w112700/opinion/editorial/black.html |archive-date=2004-08-19 |work=North Shore News |publisher=Lower Mainland Publishing Group |location=North Vancouver, British Columbia |date=2000-11-27 |access-date=2008-12-11}} and "Madame Drunette's Lunar Pills". Patent medicines which claimed to treat "female complaints" often contained such ingredients as pennyroyal, tansy, and savin. Abortifacient products were sold under the promise of "restor[ing] female regularity" and "removing from the system every impurity". In the vernacular of such advertising, "irregularity", "obstruction", "menstrual suppression", and "delayed period" were understood to be euphemistic references to the state of pregnancy. As such, some abortifacients were marketed as menstrual regulatives.

Beecham's Pills were marketed primarily as a laxative from 1842. They were invented by Thomas Beecham from St Helens, Lancashire, England. The pills were a combination of aloe, ginger, and soap, with some other more minor ingredients. The popularity of the pills produced a wide range of testimonials that were used in advertising. The poet William Topaz McGonagall wrote a poem advertising the pills, giving his recommendation in verse.[http://www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk/poems/opgbeechams.htm McGonagall Online – Beecham's Pills] Beecham's expenditure on advertising went from £22,000 to £95,000 in the 1880s.{{cite book|author1=T. C. Barker |author2=R Harris |title=A Merseyside Town in the Industrial Revolution 1750–1900|publisher=Liverpool University Press|year=1954|pages=378–9}} An 1897 advertisement in the Christian Herald edition for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee said: "Worth a guinea a box. Beecham's Pills for all bilious and nervous disorders such as Sick Headache, Constipation, Weak Stomach, Impaired Digestion, Disordered Liver and Female Ailments. The sale is now 6 million boxes per annum." The text was printed alongside a picture of a young woman at a beach and was captioned "What are the wild waves saying? Try Beecham's Pills."{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-EOmAAAACAAJ|title=Interception of Pregnancy: Post-Conceptive Fertility Control, Emmenology Revisited|author=Geoffrey Davis|year=1974|publisher=HarperCollins Publishers Australia|isbn=9780207955631}}

File:National Police Gazette Restell.jpg is portrayed as a villainess in an 1847 copy of the National Police Gazette.]]

"Old Dr. Gordon's Pearls of Health", produced by a drug company in Montreal, "cure[d] all suppressions and irregularities" if "used monthly".{{Cite book |first=Angus |last=MacLaren |author2=Arlene Tigar MacLaren |title=The bedroom and the state: the changing practices and politics of contraception and abortion in Canada, 1880–1980 |publisher=McClelland & Stewart |location=Toronto |year=1986 |isbn=0-7710-5532-3 |oclc=256809754 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/bedroomstatechan0000mcla_v4w5 }}{{Page needed|date=September 2010}} However, a few ads explicitly warned against the use of their product by women who were expecting, or listed miscarriage as its inevitable side effect. The copy for "Dr. Peter's French Renovating Pills" advised, "... pregnant females should not use them, as they invariably produce a miscarriage ...", and both "Dr. Monroe's French Periodical Pills" and "Dr. Melveau's Portuguese Female Pills" were "sure to produce a miscarriage". F.E. Karn, a man from Toronto, in 1901 cautioned women who thought themselves pregnant not to use the pills he advertised as "Friar's French Female Regulator" because they would "speedily restore menstrual secretions." Historian Ann Hibner Koblitz comments that "Nineteenth-century customers would have understood this 'warning' exactly as the sellers intended: as an advertisement for an abortifacient preparation."{{cite book|last=Koblitz|first=Ann Hibner|title=Sex and Herbs and Birth Control: Women and Fertility Regulation Through the Ages|publisher=Kovalevskaia Fund|year=2014}}{{rp|44}}

In the mid 1930s abortifacients drugs were marketed in the United States to women by various companies under various names such as Molex Pills and Cote Pills. Since birth control devices and abortifacients were illegal to market and sell at the time, they were offered to women who were "delayed". The recommended dosage constituted seven grains of ergotin a day. These pills generally contained ingredients such as ergotin, aloes, Black Hellebore. The efficacy and safety of these pills are unknown. In 1940 the FTC{{cite journal |author=Federal Trade Commission |title=In the matter of Western Refining company, Inc., trading as the Motex company and Cote products company |journal=Federal Trade Commission Decisions |url=https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/commission_decision_volumes/volume-30/vol30.pdf |volume=30 |pages=833–838 |date=December 1939 – May 1940}} deemed them unsafe and ineffective and demanded that these companies cease and desist selling these products.

A well-known example of a Victorian-era abortionist was Madame Restell, or Ann Lohman, who over a forty-year period illicitly provided both surgical abortion and abortifacient pills in the northern United States. She began her business in New York during the 1830s, and, by the 1840s, had expanded to include franchises in Boston and Philadelphia. It is estimated that by 1870 her annual expenditure on advertising alone was $60,000. Because of her reputation, Restellism became a synonym for abortion.{{cite news|last1=Dannenfelser|first1=Marjorie|title=The Suffragettes Would Not Agree With Feminists Today on Abortion|url=https://time.com/4093214/suffragettes-abortion/|access-date=4 November 2015|magazine=TIME|date=4 November 2015}}

File:1858AbortionAdReprint.jpg

One ad for Restell's medical services, printed in the New York Sun, promised that she could offer the "strictest confidence on complaints incidental to the female frame" and that her "experience and knowledge in the treatment of cases of female irregularity, [was] such as to require but a few days to effect a perfect cure".{{Cite book|last=Olasky |first=Marvin N. |author-link=Marvin Olasky |chapter=Crusading on Social and Political Issues: Personalization and {{sic|Pe|sistence|nolink=y}} |chapter-url=http://www.worldmag.com/world/olasky/Prodigal/c11.html |title=Prodigal press: the anti-Christian bias of the American news media |publisher=Crossway Books |location=Wheaton, Illinois |year=1988 |isbn=0-89107-476-7 |oclc=17865217 |url=https://archive.org/details/prodigalpressant00olas |access-date=2008-12-11 }} Another, addressed to married women, asked the question, "Is it desirable, then, for parents to increase their families, regardless of consequences to themselves, or the well-being of their offspring, when a simple, easy, healthy, and certain remedy is within our control?"{{Cite journal|last=Richardson |first=Cynthia Watkins |year=2002 |title=In the Eye of Power: The Notorious Madam Restell |journal=Khronikos |publisher=University of Maine |url=http://www.umaine.edu/khronikos/docs/papers/archive/richardson.pdf |access-date=2008-12-11 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081217025152/http://www.umaine.edu/khronikos/docs/papers/archive/richardson.pdf |archive-date=2008-12-17 }} Advertisements for the "Female Monthly Regulating Pills" she also sold vowed to resolve "all cases of suppression, irregularity, or stoppage of the menses, however obdurate". Madame Restell was an object of criticism in both the respectable and penny presses. She was first arrested in 1841, but, it was her final arrest by Anthony Comstock which led to her suicide on the day of her trial April 1, 1878.

Such advertising aroused criticisms of quackery and immorality. The safety of many nostrums was suspect and the efficacy of others non-existent. Horace Greeley, in a New York Herald editorial written in 1871, denounced abortion and its promotion as the "infamous and unfortunately common crime– so common that it affords a lucrative support to a regular guild of professional murderers, so safe that its perpetrators advertise their calling in the newspapers". Although the paper in which Greeley wrote accepted such advertisements, others, such as the New York Tribune, refused to print them. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to obtain a Doctor of Medicine in the United States, also lamented how such ads led to the contemporary synonymity of "female physician" with "abortionist".

File:Stella Browne.gif was a major figure in the campaign for the liberalization of abortion law.]]

Abortifacient advertising was highly effective in the United States, though apparently less so across the Atlantic. Contemporary estimates of mid-19th century abortion rates in the United States suggest between 20% and 25% of all pregnancies in the United States during that era ended in abortion.{{cite book|title=Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy|url=https://archive.org/details/abortioninameric00jame|url-access=registration|author=James C. Mohr|year=1978|pages=[https://archive.org/details/abortioninameric00jame/page/76 76–82]|publisher=Oxford University Press/|isbn=978-0-19-502249-0}} This era also saw a marked shift in those who were obtaining abortions. Before the start of the 19th century, most abortions were sought by unmarried women who had become pregnant out of wedlock. But, out of 54 abortion cases published in American medical journals between 1839 and 1880, over half were sought by married women, and of the married women well over 60 percent already had at least one child.{{cite book|title=Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy|url=https://archive.org/details/abortioninameric00jame|url-access=registration|author=James C. Mohr|year=1978|pages=[https://archive.org/details/abortioninameric00jame/page/100 100–101]|publisher=Oxford University Press/|isbn=978-0-19-502249-0}} In the post-Civil War era, much of the blame was placed on the burgeoning women's rights movement.{{citation needed|date=May 2017}}

Many feminists of the era were opposed to abortion.Gordon, Sarah Barringer. [https://books.google.com/books?id=Kg4PAtekGoAC&pg=PA67 "Law and Everyday Death: Infanticide and the Backlash against Woman's Rights after the Civil War"]. Lives of the Law. Austin Sarat, Lawrence Douglas, and Martha Umphrey, Editors. (University of Michigan Press 2006) p.67Schiff, Stacy. [https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/13/opinion/13schiff.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print "Desperately Seeking Susan"]. October 13, 2006 The New York Times, Retrieved February 5, 2009. In The Revolution, operated by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, an anonymous contributor signing "A" wrote in 1869 about the subject, arguing that instead of merely attempting to pass a law against abortion, the root cause must also be addressed. Simply passing an anti-abortion law would, the writer stated, "be only mowing off the top of the noxious weed, while the root remains. [...] No matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; But oh! thrice guilty is he who drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the crime."{{cite web | title=Marriage and Maternity | url=http://www.prolifequakers.org/susanb.htm | work=The Revolution | publisher=Susan B. Anthony | date=July 8, 1869 | access-date=2009-04-21 | archive-date=2019-03-19 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190319124548/http://www.prolifequakers.org/susanb.htm | url-status=dead }}Susan B. Anthony, [http://honors.syr.edu/Courses/03-04/wsp200/july81869.html "Marriage and Maternity"], {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111005033006/http://honors.syr.edu/Courses/03-04/wsp200/july81869.html |date=2011-10-05 }} The Revolution (1869-07-08), via University Honors Program, Syracuse University.Federer, William. [https://books.google.com/books?id=8GebI40OvYAC&dq=%22woman+is+awfully+guilty+who+commits+the+deed%22&pg=PA81 American Minute], page 81 (Amerisearch 2003). To many feminists of this era, abortion was regarded as an undesirable necessity forced upon women by thoughtless men.{{cite book|title=Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy|url=https://archive.org/details/abortioninameric00jame|url-access=registration|author=James C. Mohr|year=1978|page=[https://archive.org/details/abortioninameric00jame/page/110 110]|publisher=Oxford University Press/|isbn=978-0-19-502249-0}} Even the "free love" wing of the feminist movement refused to advocate abortion and treated the practice as an example of the hideous extremes to which modern marriage was driving women.{{cite book|title=Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy|url=https://archive.org/details/abortioninameric00jame|url-access=registration|author=James C. Mohr|year=1978|page=[https://archive.org/details/abortioninameric00jame/page/112 112]|publisher=Oxford University Press/|isbn=978-0-19-502249-0}} Marital rape and the seduction of unmarried women were societal ills which feminists believed caused the need to abort, as men did not respect women's right to abstinence.

Socialist feminists tended to be more sympathetic to the need for abortion options for the poor, and indeed socialist feminist doctors, such as Marie Equi, Madeleine Pelletier, and William J. Robinson, themselves performed low-cost or free abortions for poor women.{{cite book|last=Allen|first=Ann Taylor|title=Feminism and Motherhood in Western Europe, 1890–1970|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|year=2005|pages=98, 173, 218}}{{citation|last=Krieger|first=Nancy|title=Queen of the Bolsheviks: The Hidden History of Dr. Marie Equi|journal=Radical America|volume=17|issue=5|year=1983|pages=54–73|pmid=11618009}}{{cite book|last=Robinson|first=William J.|title=Doctor Robinson and Saint Peter: How Dr. Robinson Entered the Heavenly Gates and Became St. Peter's Assistant|publisher=Eugenics Publishing|year=1931|page=25}}

The movement to liberalize abortion laws emerged in the 1920s and '30s as part of rising feminist activism that had already resulted in victories in the area of birth control. Campaigners including Marie Stopes in England and Margaret Sanger in the US had succeeded in bringing the issue into the open, and birth control clinics were established which offered family planning advice and contraceptive methods to women in need.

In 1929, the Infant Life Preservation Act was passed in Britain, which amended the law (Offences against the Person Act 1861) so that an abortion carried out in good faith, for the sole purpose of preserving the life of the mother, would not be an offence.HL Deb. Vol 72. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220216120020/https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1928/nov/22/preservation-of-infant-life-bill-hl |Col 269].

Stella Browne was a leading birth control campaigner, who increasingly began to venture into the more contentious issue of abortion in the 1930s. Browne's beliefs were heavily influenced by the work of Havelock Ellis, Edward Carpenter and other sexologists.{{cite book|last=Hall|first=Lesley|title=The Life and Times of Stella Browne: Feminist and Free Spirit|year=2011|pages=27–178}} She came to strongly believe that working women should have the choice to become pregnant and to terminate their pregnancy while they worked in the horrible circumstances surrounding a pregnant woman who was still required to do hard labour during her pregnancy.Jones, Greta. "Women and eugenics in Britain: The case of Mary Scharlieb, Elizabeth Sloan Chesser, and Stella Browne." Annals of Science 52 no. 5 (1995):481–502 In this case she argued that doctors should give free information about birth control to women who wanted to know about it. This would give women agency over their own circumstances and allow them to decide whether they wanted to be mothers or not.{{cite book|last=Rowbotham|first=Sheila|title=A New World for Women: Stella Browne, social feminist|year=1977|pages=66–67}}

In the late 1920s Browne began a speaking tour around England, providing information about her beliefs on the need for accessibility of information about birth control for women, women's health problems, problems related to puberty and sex education and high maternal morbidity rates among other topics. These talks urged women to take matters of their sexuality and their health into their own hands. She became increasingly interested in her view of the woman's right to terminate their pregnancies, and in 1929 she brought forward her lecture "The Right to Abortion" in front of the World Sexual Reform Congress in London. In 1931 Browne began to develop her argument for women's right to decide to have an abortion. She again began touring, giving lectures on abortion and the negative consequences that followed if women were unable to terminate pregnancies of their own choosing such as: suicide, injury, permanent invalidism, madness and blood-poisoning.

File:Aleck bourne trial.jpg was acquitted for performing an abortion on a rape victim in 1938, a landmark case in the movement for abortion rights.]]

Another prominent feminist to influence abortion law was Emily Stowe. In the 19th century she was one of the first doctors to be tried for attempting an abortion procedure in Canada.{{Cite journal|journal=Canadian Bulletin of Medical History|doi=10.3138/cbmh.8.2.159|title=The Celebrated Abortion Trial of Dr. Emily Stowe, Toronto, 1879|year=1991|last1=Backhouse|first1=Constance B.|volume=8|issue=2|pages=159–187|pmid=11612611|doi-access=free}}

Other prominent feminists, including Frida Laski, Dora Russell, Joan Malleson and Janet Chance began to champion this cause – the cause broke dramatically into the mainstream in July 1932 when the British Medical Association council formed a committee to discuss making changes to the laws on abortion. On 17 February 1936, Janet Chance, Alice Jenkins and Joan Malleson established the Abortion Law Reform Association as the first advocacy organisation for abortion liberalization. The association promoted access to abortion in the United Kingdom and campaigned for the elimination of legal obstacles.{{cite journal|last=Hindell|first=Keith|author2=Madeline Simms|title=How the Abortion Lobby Worked|year=1968|journal=The Political Quarterly|pages=271–272}} In its first year ALRA recruited 35 members, and by 1939 had almost 400 members.

The ALRA was very active between 1936 and 1939 sending speakers around the country to talk about Labour and Equal Citizenship and attempted, though most often unsuccessfully, to have letters and articles published in newspapers. They became the most popular when a member of the ALRA's Medico-Legal Committee received the case of a fourteen-year-old girl who had been raped, and received a termination of this pregnancy from Dr. Joan Malleson, a progenitor of the ALRA. This case gained a lot of publicity. However, once the war began, the case was tucked away and the cause again lost its importance to the public.

In 1938, Joan Malleson precipitated one of the most influential cases in British abortion law when she referred a pregnant fourteen-year-old rape victim to gynaecologist Aleck Bourne. He performed an abortion, then illegal, and was put on trial on charges of procuring abortion. Bourne was eventually acquitted in Rex v Bourne as his actions were "an example of disinterested conduct in consonance with the highest traditions of the profession".R v Bourne [1939] 1 KB 687, [1938] 3 All ER 615, CCA This court case set a precedent that doctors could not be prosecuted for performing an abortion in cases where pregnancy would probably cause "mental and physical wreck".

Finally, the Birkett Committee, established in 1937 by the British government "to inquire into the prevalence of abortion, and the law relating thereto", recommended a change to abortion laws two years later. The intervention of World War II meant that all plans were shelved.{{cite book|last=Hyde|first=H. Montgomery|title=Norman Birkett: The Life of Lord Birkett of Ulverston|publisher=Hamish Hamilton|year=1965|asin=B000O8CESO|oclc=255057963|page=462}}

Another prominent figure in the reform of abortion laws was Dr. Morgentaler. Although born in Poland he made a name for himself in Canada, opening multiple illegal abortion clinics in Toronto, Ontario.{{cite web|title=Henry Morgentaler {{!}} The Canadian Encyclopedia|url=https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/henry-morgentaler|access-date=2021-03-05|website=www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca}}

{{See also|Timeline of reproductive rights legislation|Abortion law|History of Abortion Law Debate}}

Prior to 1969, abortion was considered a crime for which the maximum punishment was life imprisonment for the doctor performing the abortion and two years imprisonment for the woman receiving the abortion. Abortion remained illegal until 1988, when the Supreme Court of Canada overruled the criminal punishments for abortion.{{cite web|title=Abortion in Canada {{!}} The Canadian Encyclopedia|url=https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/abortion|access-date=2021-02-26|website=www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca}} Abortion remains a hotly debated topic. As of 2008 in Canada only 1–2% of abortions were pharmaceutically induced.{{Cite journal |last1=Erdman |first1=Joanna N. |last2=Grenon |first2=Amy |last3=Harrison-Wilson |first3=Leigh |date=October 2008 |title=Medication Abortion in Canada: A Right-to-Health Perspective |journal=American Journal of Public Health |language=en |volume=98 |issue=10 |pages=1764–1769 |doi=10.2105/AJPH.2008.134684 |issn=0090-0036 |pmc=2636450 |pmid=18703434}} After much controversy, starting in 2017 abortion pills could be used legally in Canada.{{Cite journal |last=Campbell |first=Patricia |date=2018-05-04 |title=Making sense of the abortion pill: a sociotechnical analysis of RU486 in Canada |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14461242.2018.1426996 |journal=Health Sociology Review |language=en |volume=27 |issue=2 |pages=121–135 |doi=10.1080/14461242.2018.1426996 |issn=1446-1242 |s2cid=149328597|url-access=subscription }}

File:RussianAbortionPoster.jpg first legalized abortion in 1920. The poster {{circa|lk=no|1925}} warns against unsafe abortion. Title translation: "Abortions performed by either self-taught midwives or obstetricians not only maim the woman, they also often lead to death."]]

The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic was the first government to legalize abortion and make it available on request, often for no cost.Heer, David, "Abortion, Contraception, and Population Policy in the Soviet Union" Demography 2 (1965): 531–39.Alexandre Avdeev, Alain Blum, and Irina Troitskaya. "The History of Abortion Statistics in Russia and the USSR from 1900 to 1991". Population (English Edition) 7, (1995), 42. The Soviet government hoped to provide access to abortion in a safe environment performed by a trained doctor instead of babki.I.S. Kon, The Sexual Revolution in Russia: From the Age of the Czars to Today (New York: The Free Press, 1995), 61. While this campaign was extremely effective in the urban areas (as much as 75% of abortions in Moscow were performed in hospitals by 1925), it had much less effect on rural regions where there was neither access to doctors, transportation, or both and where women relied on traditional medicine.Michaels, Paula, "Motherhood, Patriotism, and Ethnicity: Soviet Kazakhstan and the 1936 Abortion Ban". Feminist Studies 27 (2001): 309–11. In the countryside in particular, women continued to see babki, midwives, hairdressers, nurses, and others for the procedure after abortion was legalized in the Soviet Union.Barbara Evans Clements, Barbara Alpern Engel, and Christine Worobec. Russia's Women: Accommodation, Resistance, Transformation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 260.

From 1936 until 1955 the Soviet Union made abortion illegal (except for medically recommended cases) again, stemming largely from Joseph Stalin's worries about population growth. Stalin wanted to encourage population growth, as well as place a stronger emphasis on the importance of the family unit to communism.Randall, Amy, {{"'}}Abortion Will Deprive You of Happiness!': Soviet Reproductive Politics in the Post-Stalin Era". Journal of Women's History 23 (2011): 13–38.

During the Spanish Civil War, on 25 December 1936, in Catalonia, free abortion was legalized during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy with a decree signed by Josep Tarradellas, First Minister of the Government of Catalonia, and published on 9 January 1937 (Diari Oficial de la Generalitat de Catalunya, núm.9).[https://web.archive.org/web/20140222062133/http://www.publico.es/especiales/memoriapublica/502228/la-segunda-republica-despenalizo-el-aborto-con-la-ley-mas-avanzada-de-europa La Segunda República despenalizó el aborto con la ley más avanzada de Europa], Público (España), Patricia Campello, 15/2/2014[http://elpais.com/diario/1983/02/13/espana/413938815_850215.html Cataluña tuvo durante la República la ley del aborto más progresista de Europa], El País, 13/2/1983Véase el texto del decreto [http://www.cgtburgos.org/accion-sindical-social/social/nosotras-decidimos/699-1937-la-ley-del-aborto-mas-progresista-de-europa.html Decreto de Regulación de la Interrupción Artificial del Embarazo] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190328191808/https://www.cgtburgos.org/accion-sindical-social/social/nosotras-decidimos/699-1937-la-ley-del-aborto-mas-progresista-de-europa.html|date=2019-03-28}}, en cgtburgos; también el reportaje de José María Garat, publicó en Mundo Gráfico el 12 de mayo de 1937, descargable desde la Biblioteca Nacional de España -[http://hemerotecadigital.bne.es/pdf.raw?query=parent%3A0002440164+type%3Apress%2Fpage&name=Mundo+gr%C3%A1fico.+12-5-1937 En Cataluña existe ya el aborto legal]

In Britain, the Abortion Law Reform Association continued its campaigning after the War, and this, combined with broad social changes brought the issue of abortion back into the political arena in the 1960s. President of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists John Peel chaired the committee advising the British Government on what became the 1967 Abortion Act. On the grounds of reducing the amount of disease and death associated with illegal abortion, the Abortion Act allowed for legal abortion on a number of grounds, including to prevent grave permanent injury to the woman's physical or mental health, to avoid injury to the physical or mental health of the woman or her existing child(ren) if the pregnancy was still under 28 weeks, or if the child was likely to be severely physically or mentally handicapped. The free provision of abortions was provided through the National Health Service.House of Commons, Science and Technology Committee. "Scientific Developments Relating to the Abortion Act 1967". 1 (2006–2007). Print.

{{See also|History of abortion in the United States}}

In America an abortion reform movement emerged in the 1960s. In 1963, the Society for Humane Abortion was formed, providing women with information on how to obtain and perform abortions.{{cite book|author1=Alesha Doan|title=Opposition and Intimidation: The Abortion Wars and Strategies of Political Harassment|url=https://archive.org/details/oppositionintimi00doan|url-access=limited|date=2007|publisher=University of Michigan Press|isbn=9780472069750|page=[https://archive.org/details/oppositionintimi00doan/page/n69 58]}} In 1964 Gerri Santoro of Connecticut died trying to obtain an illegal abortion and her photo became the symbol of the abortion rights movement. Some women's rights activist groups developed their own skills to provide abortions to women who could not obtain them elsewhere. As an example, in Chicago, a group known as "Jane" operated a floating abortion clinic throughout much of the 1960s. Women seeking the procedure would call a designated number and be given instructions on how to find "Jane".{{cite web|url=http://www.cwluherstory.org/something-real-jane-and-me-memories-and-exhortations-of-a-feminist-ex-abortionist.html|title=Something Real: Jane and Me. Memories and Exhortations of a Feminist Ex-Abortionist|last=Johnson|first=Linnea|publisher=CWLU Herstory Project|access-date=2010-05-23|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110725214230/http://www.cwluherstory.org/something-real-jane-and-me-memories-and-exhortations-of-a-feminist-ex-abortionist.html|archive-date=2011-07-25}}

In the late 1960s, a number of organizations were formed to mobilize opinion both against and for the legalization of abortion. The forerunner of the NARAL Pro-Choice America was formed in 1969 to oppose restrictions on abortion and expand access to abortion.{{Cite web |url=http://www.nwhn.org/content/index.php?pid=106 |title=National Women's Health Network {{!}} A Voice For Women, A Network For Change |access-date=2014-07-14 |archive-date=2006-10-28 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061028193312/http://www.nwhn.org/content/index.php?pid=106 |url-status=dead }} In late 1973 NARAL became the National Abortion Rights Action League. The American Medical Association, the American Bar Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the California Medical Association, the California Bar Association, and numerous other groups announced support behind new laws that would protect doctors from criminal prosecution if they performed abortions under rigid hospital controls. In 1967, Colorado became the first state to decriminalize a doctor performing an abortion in cases of rape, incest, or in which pregnancy would lead to permanent physical disability of the woman.

A bipartisan majority in the California legislature supported a new law introduced by Democratic state senator Anthony Beilenson, the "Therapeutic Abortion Act". Catholic clergy were strongly opposed but Catholic lay people were divided and non-Catholics strongly supported the proposal. Governor Ronald Reagan consulted with his father-in-law, a prominent surgeon who supported the law. He also consulted with James Cardinal McIntyre, the Catholic archbishop of Los Angeles. The archbishop strongly opposed any legalization of abortion and he convinced Reagan to announce he would veto the proposed law since the draft allowed abortions in the case of birth defects. The legislature dropped that provision and Reagan signed the law, which decriminalized abortions when done to protect the health of the mother.Kristen Luker, Abortion and the politics of motherhood (U. of California Press, 1984) pp 88–89.Lou Cannon, Ronald Reagan: The Presidential Portfolio: History as Told through the Collection of the Ronald Reagan Library and Museum (2001) p. 51.Matthew W. Dallek, The right moment: Ronald Reagan's first victory and the decisive turning point in American politics (2000) p. 198. The expectation was that abortions would not become more numerous but would become much safer under hospital conditions. In 1968 the first full year under the new law there were 5,018 abortions in California. The numbers grew exponentially and stabilized at about 100,000 annually by the 1970s. 99.2% of California women who applied for an abortion were granted one. One out of every three pregnancies was ended by illegal abortion. The key factor was the sudden emergence of a woman's movement that introduced a very new idea—women had a basic right to control their bodies and could choose to have an abortion or not. Reagan by 1980 found his support among anti-abortion religious groups and said he was too new as governor to make a wise decision.Luker, Abortion and the politics of motherhood pp. 94, 118–122, 133.

In 1970, Hawaii became the first state to legalize abortions on the request of the woman,{{cite news| title=Medicine: Abortion on Request | date=March 9, 1970 | magazine=Time | url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,878789,00.html | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101201211449/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,878789,00.html | url-status=dead | archive-date=December 1, 2010 | access-date=2012-10-15}} {{subscription required}} and New York repealed its 1830 law and allowed abortions up to the 24th week of pregnancy. Similar laws were soon passed in Alaska and Washington. A law in Washington, D.C., which allowed abortion to protect the life or health of the woman, was challenged in the Supreme Court in 1971 in United States v. Vuitch. The court upheld the law, deeming that "health" meant "psychological and physical well-being", essentially allowing abortion in Washington, DC. By the end of 1972, 13 states had a law similar to that of Colorado, while Mississippi allowed abortion in cases of rape or incest only and Alabama and Massachusetts allowed abortions only in cases where the woman's physical health was endangered.

Image:USSC justice group photo-1973 current.jpg membership in 1973 at the time of Roe v. Wade]]

The landmark judicial ruling of the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade ruled that a Texas statute forbidding abortion except when necessary to save the life of the mother was unconstitutional. The immediate result was that all state laws to the contrary were null. The Court arrived at its decision by concluding that the issue of abortion and abortion rights falls under the right to privacy. The Court held that a right to privacy existed and included the right to have an abortion. The court found that a mother had a right to abortion until viability, a point to be determined by the abortion doctor. After viability a woman can obtain an abortion for health reasons, which the Court defined broadly to include psychological well-being.

From the 1970s, and the spread of second-wave feminism, abortion and reproductive rights became unifying issues among various women's rights groups in Canada, the United States, the Netherlands, Britain, Norway, France, Germany, and Italy.LeGates, Marlene. In Their Time: A History of Feminism in Western Society Routledge, 2001 {{ISBN|0-415-93098-7}} p. 363-364

On June 24, 2022, Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court in a 6–3 decision. The ruling was part of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, a decision of the Supreme Court that also overturned Planned Parenthood v. Casey, another case of the Supreme Court regarding abortion.{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/24/us/roe-wade-overturned-supreme-court.html |title=In 6-to-3 Ruling, Supreme Court Ends Nearly 50 Years of Abortion Rights |date=June 24, 2022 |last=Liptak |first=Adam |work=The New York Times |access-date=June 25, 2022}}

Although prototypes of the modern curette are referred to in ancient texts, the instrument which is used today was initially designed in France in 1723, but was not applied specifically to a gynecological purpose until 1842.{{Cite book |first=C |last=Joffe |chapter=Abortion in Historical Perspective |chapter-url=http://www.prochoice.org/education/resources/surg_history_overview.html |access-date=2008-12-10 |editor=Maureen Paul |editor2=E. Steven Lichtenberg |editor3=Lynn Borgatta |editor4=David A. Grimes |editor5=Phillip G. Stubblefield |title=A clinician's guide to medical and surgical abortion |publisher=Churchill Livingstone |location=Philadelphia |year=1999 |isbn=0-443-07529-8 |oclc=40120288 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060922152349/http://www.prochoice.org/education/resources/surg_history_overview.html |archive-date=2006-09-22 }} Dilation and curettage has been practiced since the late 19th century.

The 20th century saw improvements in abortion technology, increasing its safety, and reducing its side-effects. Vacuum devices, first described by the Scottish obstetrician James Young Simpson in the 19th century, allowed for the development of suction-aspiration abortion. The process was improved by the Russian doctor S. G. Bykov in 1927, where the method was used during its period of liberal abortion laws from 1920 to 1936. The technology was also used in China and Japan before being introduced to Britain and the United States in the 1960s. The invention of the Karman cannula, a flexible plastic cannula which replaced earlier metal models in the 1970s, reduced the occurrence of perforation and made suction-aspiration methods possible under local anesthesia.

In 1971, Lorraine Rothman and Carol Downer, founding members of the feminist self-help movement, invented the Del-Em, a safe, cheap suction device that made it possible for people with minimal training to perform early abortions called menstrual extraction.

Swedish researchers began testing potential abortifacients in 1965. In 1968, the Swedish physician Lars Engström published a paper on a clinical trial, conducted at the women's clinic of Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm, of the compound F6103 on pregnant Swedish women with the aim of inducing abortion. It was the first clinical trial of an abortion pill to be conducted in Sweden.{{Cite book | vauthors = Ramsey M |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=J_9CzgEACAAJ |title=The Swedish Abortion Pill: Co-Producing Medical Abortion and Values, Ca. 1965-1992 |date=2021 |publisher=Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis |isbn=978-91-513-1121-0 }} The paper, originally titled The Swedish Abortion Pill, was renamed to The Swedish Postconception Pill, due to the small number of induced abortions that occurred in the trial population. After these efforts were largely unsuccessful with F6103, the same researchers attempted to find an abortion pill with prostaglandins, capitalizing on the number of well-established prostaglandin scientists working in Sweden at the time; they were eventually awarded the 1982 Nobel Prize in Physiology for their work.{{cite journal | vauthors = Raju TN | title = The Nobel chronicles. 1982: Sune Karl Bergström (b 1916); Bengt Ingemar Samuelsson (b 1934); John Robert Vane (b 1927) | journal = Lancet | volume = 354 | issue = 9193 | pages = 1914 | date = November 1999 | pmid = 10584758 | doi = 10.1016/s0140-6736(05)76884-7 | s2cid = 54236400 }}

Abortions brought about by taking medications, known as medication abortions, became an alternative to surgical aboritons when prostaglandin analogs were introduced in the 1970s. One such analog is carboprost, which was successfully trialed in the United States in 1979."Carboprost" - Drug fact sheet, Mayo Clinic. Last updated: July 01, 2024

https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements/carboprost-intramuscular-route/proper-use/drg-20067975{{Cite journal |pmid=11436877 |date=2001 |last1=Vukelić |first1=J. |title=Second trimester pregnancy termination in primigravidas by double application of dinoprostone gel and intramuscular administration of carboprost tromethamine |journal=Medicinski Pregled |volume=54 |issue=1–2 |pages=11–16 }}{{cite journal | url=https://doi.org/10.1016/S0968-8080(08)31385-8 | doi=10.1016/S0968-8080(08)31385-8 | title=An Historical Overview of Second Trimester Abortion Methods | date=2008 | last1=Bygdeman | first1=Marc | last2=Gemzell-Danielsson | first2=Kristina | journal=Reproductive Health Matters | volume=16 | pages=196–204 }}{{Cite journal |pmid=392084 |date=1979 |last1=Schwallie |first1=P. C. |last2=Lamborn |first2=K. R. |title=Induction of abortion by intramuscular administration of (15S)-15-methyl PGF2 alpha. An overview of 815 cases |journal=The Journal of Reproductive Medicine |volume=23 |issue=6 |pages=289–293 }}{{Cite journal |pmid=527343 |date=1979 |last1=Bhaskar |first1=A. |last2=Dimov |first2=V. |last3=Baliga |first3=S. |last4=Kinra |first4=G. |last5=Hingorani |first5=V. |last6=Laumas |first6=K. R. |title=Plasma levels of 15 (S) 15-methyl-PGF 2 alpha-methyl ester following vaginal administration for induction of abortion in women |journal=Contraception |volume=20 |issue=5 |pages=519–531 |doi=10.1016/0010-7824(79)90057-x }}

In 1981, French pharmaceutical company Roussel-Uclaf developed the antiprogestogen mifepristone (also known as RU-486), which successfully induces abortions. It is typically taken in combination with misoprostol.{{cite journal| vauthors = Rowan A |date=2015|title=Prosecuting Women for Self-Inducing Abortion: Counterproductive and Lacking Compassion|url=http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/gpr/18/3/gpr1807015.html|journal=Guttmacher Policy Review|volume=18|issue=3|pages=70–76|access-date=October 12, 2015}}{{cite book|title=Management of unintended and abnormal pregnancy : comprehensive abortion care|url=https://archive.org/details/managementuninte00paul|url-access=limited| vauthors = Kapp N, von Hertzen H |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell|year=2009|isbn=978-1-4051-7696-5| veditors = Paul M, Lichtenberg ES, Borgatta L, Grimes DA, Stubblefield PG, Creinin MD |location=Oxford|pages=[https://archive.org/details/managementuninte00paul/page/n197 178]–192 |chapter=Medical methods to induce abortion in the second trimester}}{{cite journal | vauthors = Zhang J, Zhou K, Shan D, Luo X | title = Medical methods for first trimester abortion | journal = The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews | volume = 2022 | issue = 5 | pages = CD002855 | date = May 2022 | pmid = 35608608 | pmc = 9128719 | doi = 10.1002/14651858.CD002855.pub5 }}

Intact dilation and extraction was developed by Dr. James McMahon in 1983. It resembles a procedure used in the 19th century to save a woman's life in cases of obstructed labor, in which the fetal skull was first punctured with a perforator, then crushed and extracted with a forceps-like instrument, known as a cranioclast.{{Cite magazine|first=Atul |last=Gawande |author-link=Atul Gawande |date=2006-10-09 |title=The Score: How Childbirth Went Industrial |magazine=The New Yorker |url=http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/10/09/061009fa_fact |access-date=2008-12-14}}{{cite web|url=http://www.fcgapultoscollection.com/dobfor.html |title=Destructive OB Forceps |first=F. C. |last=Gapultos |work=Accoucheur's Antique |access-date=2008-12-14}}

Medication abortions became common when mifepristone was approved for use in China and France in 1988. Later it was approved in Great Britain in 1991, in Sweden in 1992, in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Israel, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Russia, Spain, and Switzerland in 1999, in Norway, Taiwan, Tunisia, and the United States in 2000, and in 70 additional countries from 2001 to 2023.{{cite web |author=Gynuity Health Projects |date=March 14, 2023 |title=Map of Mifepristone Approvals |location=New York |publisher=Gynuity Health Projects |url=https://gynuity.org/assets/resources/mapmifelist_en.pdf |access-date=April 16, 2023 |archive-date=May 29, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230529053718/https://gynuity.org/assets/resources/mapmifelist_en.pdf |url-status=dead }} Map and list of mifepristone approvals by year in 93 countries from 1988 to 2023.

During the mid-1990s in the United States the medical community showed renewed interest in manual vacuum aspiration as a method of early surgical abortion. This resurgence is due to technological advances that permit early pregnancy detection (as soon as a week after conception) and a growing popular demand for safe, effective early abortion options, both surgical and medical. An innovator in the development of early surgical abortion services is Jerry Edwards, a physician, who developed a protocol in which women are offered an abortion using a handheld vacuum syringe as soon as a positive pregnancy test is received. This protocol also allows the early detection of an ectopic pregnancy.

As of 2022, medication abortions are more common than surgical abortions in most places around the world.{{ cite web | url=https://www.guttmacher.org/article/2022/02/medication-abortion-now-accounts-more-half-all-us-abortions |title=Medication Abortion Now Accounts for More Than Half of All US Abortions | vauthors = Jones RK | publisher=Guttmacher Institute | date=December 1, 2022 |access-date=April 16, 2023}}

At various times abortion has been banned or restricted in countries around the world. Multiple scholars have noticed that in many cases, this has caused women to seek dangerous, illegal abortions underground or inspired trips abroad for "reproductive tourism".Whittaker, Andrew. "Abortion in Asia: An Overview". In Whittaker, Andrea, ed. Abortion in Asia: Local Dilemmas, Global Politics New York, NY: Berghahn Books, 2010: 11–38.Kligman, Gail. The Politics of Duplicity: Controlling Reproduction in Ceausescu's Romania. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998.Chandrasekhar, S. India's Abortion Experience Denton, TX: University of North Texas Press, 1994. Half of the world's current deaths due to unsafe abortions occur in Asia.

Other authors have written that illegality has not always meant that abortions were unsafe. In the U.S. during the 19th century, early abortions under the hygienic conditions in which midwives usually worked were relatively safe.{{rp|25|}}{{rp|4}}{{rp|59}}{{rp|223}}{{citation | last=Simpson | first=Keith | title=Forensic Medicine | publisher=Edward Arnold Publishers | year=1969 | pages=173–174}}

{{See also|Abortion in China}}

In the early 1950s, the Chinese government made abortion illegal, with punishments for those who received or performed illegal abortions written into the law.Jing-Bao, Nie. Behind the Silence: Chinese Voices on Abortion Lanham, ML: Rowman & Litterfield Publishers, 2005. These restrictions were seen as the government's way of emphasizing the importance of population growth.

As the decade went on, the laws were relaxed with the intent of reducing the number of deaths and lifelong injuries women sustained due to illegal abortions, as well as serving as a form of population control when used in conjunction with birth control. In the early 1980s, the state implemented a form of family planning which used abortion as a "back-up method"; and in 2005, there has been legislation trying to curb sex-selective abortion. As of 2009, although China had the highest number of abortions in the world, Russia had the highest rate in the world.{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jul/30/china-abortion-statistics|title = 13 million abortions carried out every year in China, newspaper reveals|website = TheGuardian.com|date = 30 July 2009}}

{{See also|Abortion in India}}

India enforced the Indian Penal Code from 1860 to 1971, criminalizing abortion and punishing both the practitioners and the women who sought out the procedure. As a result, women died in an attempt to obtain illegal abortions from unqualified midwives and "doctors". Abortion was made legal under specific circumstances in 1971, but as scholar S. Chandrasekhar notes, lower class women still find themselves at a greater risk of injury or death as a result of a botched abortion.

In 2023, the state reported 500,000 abortions performed in the year against 1.5 million births.{{Cite web |title=با چه امیدی بچه به دنیا بیاوریم؟ {{!}} مردم از تشویق‌های مهم قانون جوانی جمعیت بی‌خبرند {{!}} آمار سقط جنین به تولدها تنه می‌زند – همشهری آنلاین |url=https://www.hamshahrionline.ir/news/762038/با-چه-امیدی-بچه-به-دنیا-بیاوریم-مردم-از-تشویق-های-مهم-قانون/ |access-date=2023-05-25 |website=www.hamshahrionline.ir}}{{Cite web |title=یک مسئول: سالانه ۵۰۰ هزار جنین در کشور سقط می‌شوند/ ۹۳ درصد آن در بستر خانواده و با رضایت اتفاق می‌افتد |url=https://vista.ir/n/aataneo |access-date=2023-05-25 |website=ویستا |language=fa-IR}}

{{See also|Abortion in Japan}}

Japan is known today worldwide for its acceptance of abortion.Norgren, Tiana. Abortion before Birth Control: The Politics of Reproduction in Postwar Japan Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. Since induced abortion was legalized in 1948, The numbers of annual abortions increased to 1.17 million in 1955, making the induced abortion rate per 1000 women aged 15-49 50.2. The number dropped in 2005 to total number 289,000, making the abortion rate per 1000 women 10.2. Social factor and medical advance including contractive are giving effect to the number.{{cite web| url=https://www.ipss.go.jp/publication/e/WP/IPSS_WPE22.pdf |title= Induced Abortion in Japan--A Demographic Analysis of its Trends |website= National institute of population and social security research |accessdate=2025-01-10}}

The Eugenics Protection Law of 1948 made elective abortion care legal up to twenty-two weeks' gestation so long as the woman's health was endangered; in 1949, this law was extended to consider the risk the child's birth would place on a woman's economic welfare. Originally, each case would have to be approved by a local eugenics council, but this was removed from the law in 1952, making the decision a private one between a woman and her physician and woman's partner.{{Cite web|url= https://www.japaneselawtranslation.go.jp/ja/laws/view/2603 |title= Maternal Health Act |website= Japanese Law Translation |accessdate=2025-01-10}}

。In 1996, the law was partly revised, and the name was changed to Maternal Health Act. The law still requires partner's agreement for abortion, in some cases leaving women who need abortion without.{{Cite news|url=https://www.yomiuri.co.jp/national/20210920-OYT1T50257/|title= 「男性の同意」ないと中絶できない…相手からの連絡途絶えた未婚女性、公園のトイレで出産し遺棄 |website= Yomiuri Shimbun |accessdate=2025-01-10}}。

In 1964, the creation of the conservative right-wing nationalist political lobbying group called Seicho-no-Ie brought about a strong opposition to the abortion laws. This campaign reached its peak strength in the early 1980s, but ultimately failed in 1983.

{{See also|Abortion in Romania}}

In 1957, Romania legalized abortion, but in 1966, after a decline in the national birthrate, Nicolae Ceauşescu approved Decree 770, which criminalized abortion and encouraged childbirth. As a result of this decree, women in want of abortion turned to illegal procedures that caused the deaths of over 9,000 women and left unwanted children abandoned in orphanages. Abortion remained illegal until 1989, when the decree was overturned.Kligman, Gail. "Political Demography: The Banning of Abortion in Ceausescu's Romania". In Ginsburg, Faye D.; Rapp, Rayna, eds. Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics of Reproduction. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995 :234–255. Unique Identifier : AIDSLINE KIE/49442.

There was intense public debate throughout the 1980s and 1990s over legal abortion reform. These debates portrayed abortion as un-Buddhist and anti-religious; abortion opponents ultimately labeled it as a form of Western corruption that was inherently anti-Thai and threatened the integrity of the nation. Despite this, in 2006, abortions became legal in cases of rape or foetal impairment. Mental health also became a factor in determining the legality of an abortion procedure. The strict regulations involved in qualifying for a legal abortion, however, cause approximately 300,000 women a year to seek illegal avenues according to scholar Andrea Whittaker, with the poorest undergoing the most dangerous of procedures.

• Susan B. Anthony abortion dispute
• George Lotrell Timanus
• Aleck Bourne
• Henry Katz
• Emily Stowe
• Henry Morgentaler

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{{Reflist|30em}}

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• {{cite book|last=Hartmann|first=Betsy|title=Reproductive Rights and Wrongs: The Global Politics of Population Control|publisher=South End Press|year=1995|isbn=978-0896084919}}
• {{Cite book|first=N. E. H. |last=Hull |author2=Peter Charles Hoffer |author2-link=Peter Charles Hoffer |title=Roe v. Wade: the abortion rights controversy in American history |publisher=University Press of Kansas |location=Lawrence, Kansas |year=2001 |isbn=0-7006-1142-8 |oclc=231958828 |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780700611430 }}
• Lewis, Margaret Brannan. Infanticide and abortion in early modern Germany (Routledge, 2016).
• {{Cite book|first=James C. |last=Mohr |title=Abortion in America: the origins and evolution of national policy, 1800–1900 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford |year=1978 |isbn=0-19-502249-1 |oclc=3016879 |url=https://archive.org/details/abortioninameric00jame }}
• {{Cite book|first=Marvin |last=Olasky |author-link=Marvin Olasky |title=Abortion Rites: A Social History of Abortion in America |publisher=Crossway Books |location=Wheaton, Illinois |year=1992 |isbn=0-89107-687-5}}
• {{Cite book|first=Suzanne |last=Staggenborg |title=The pro-choice movement: organization and activism in the abortion conflict |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford |year=1991 |isbn=0-19-506596-4 |oclc=22809649 |url=https://archive.org/details/prochoicemovemen0000stag }}
• {{Cite book|first=Eva R. |last=Rubin |title=The Abortion controversy: a documentary history |publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group |location=Westport, Connecticut |year=1994 |isbn=0-313-28476-8 |oclc=28213877 |url=https://archive.org/details/abortioncontrove00rubi }}
• {{cite book|last1=Wiesner-Hanks|first1=Merry E.|title=Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World Regulating Desire, Reforming Practice.|date=1999|publisher=Routledge|location=Hoboken|isbn=9780203979419}}
• {{Cite conference|last1=Federiksen |first1=Brittni |last2=Ranji |first2=Usha |last3=Gomez |first3=Ivette |last4=Salganicoff |first4=Alina |title=A National Survey of OBGYNs' Experiences After Dobbs |publisher=KFF |location=San Francisco, CA |year=2023 }}
• {{Cite journal|last1=Mucciaroni |first1=Gary |last2=Ferrailo |first2=Kathleen |last3=Rubado |first3=Meghan |year=2019 |title= Framing Morality Policy Issues: State Legislative Debates on Abortion Restrictions |journal= Policy Sciences |volume=52 |issue=2 |pages=171–189 |doi=10.1007/S11077-018-9336-2 }}
• {{Cite journal|last1=Beckman |first1=Linda J. |year=2016|title=Abortion in the United States: The Continuing Controversy |journal=Feminism & Psychology |volume=27 |issue=1 |pages=101–113 |doi=10.1177/0959353516685345 }}

{{Commons category}}

• [http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=410&invol=113 Text of the Roe v Wade decision from Findlaw]

{{Abortion}}

{{World topic|History of abortion in|title=History of abortion by country|noredlinks=yes}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:History Of Abortion}}

Category:Human reproduction

Abortion