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abortion

Abortion in today's society has become very political. You are either pro-choice or pro-life, and there doesn't seem to be a happy medium. As we look at abortion and research its history, should it remain legal in the United States, or should it be outlawed to reduce the ever growing rate of abortion. A choice should continue to exist but the emphasis needs to be placed on education of the parties involved. Morally, the question of whether or not the fetus was "alive" had been the subject of philosophical and religious debate among honest people for 5,000 years. Single pregnant woman used abortion as a way to avoid shame. The practice of aborting unwanted pregnancies was, if not common, almost certainly not rare in the United States. Knowledge of various drugs, potions and techniques was available from home medical guides, from health books for woman, for mid-wives and irregular practitioners, and trained physicians. Substantial evidence suggest that many American women sought abortions, tried the standard techniques of the day, and no doubt succeeded some proportions of the time in terminating unwanted pregnancies. Moreover, this practice was neither morally nor legally wrong in the vast majority of Amer

icans, provided it was accomplished before quickening. The important early court cases all involved single woman trying to terminate illegitimate pregnancies. As late as 1834 it was axiomatic to a medical student at the University of Maryland, who wrote his dissertation on spontaneous abortion, that woman who feigned dysmenorrheal in order to obtain abortions from physicians were woman who had been involved in illicit intercourse. Cases reported in the medical journals prior to 1840 concern the same percentages (16, 17). Samuel Jennings quoted Dr. Denman, one of the leading obstetrical writers of the day to reassure his readers, "In abortions, dreadful and alarming as they are sometimes it is great comfort to know that they are almost universally void of danger either from hemorrhage, or any other account." Again, the context was spontaneous by the then induced abortion, but in a book with such explicit suggestions for relieving the common cold, woman could easily conclude that the health risks involved in bringing on an abortion were relatively low, or at least not much worse than childbirth itself in 1808, when Jennings wrote in his book (18). Mohr continues with the first dealings with the legal statues on abortion in the United States. The earliest laws that dealt specifically with the legal status of abortion in the U.S. were inserted into Americans criminal code books between 1821 and 1841. Ten states and one federal territory during that period enacted legislation that for the first time made certain kinds of abortions explicit statute offenses rather than leaving the common law to deal with them. The legislation 13, 14 and 15 read. Every person who shall, willfully and maliciously, administer to, or cause to be administered to, or taken by, any person or persons, any deadly poisons, or other noxious and destructive substance, within an intention him/her/them, thereby to murder, or thereby to cause or procure the miscarriage of any woman, then being quick with child, and shall be thereof duly convicted, shall suffer imprisonment, in the newgate prison, during his natural life, or for such other terms as the court having cognizance of the offense shall determine (21). Consequently, it is not surprising that the period was not one of vigorous anti-abortion activity in state legislation. One of the exceptions was Ohio. In 1834 legislators there made attempted abortion a misdemeanor without specifying any stage of gestation, and they made the death of either the woman or the fetus after quickening a felony (39,40), Alabama enacted a major code revision during the 1840/1841 session of its legislature that made the abortion of "any pregnant woman" a statuate crime for the first time in that state, but pregnant meant quickened (40). A code revision in Maine in 1984 made attempted abortion of any woman "pregnant with child" an offense, whether such child be quick or not." Regardless of what method was used (41). The first wave of abortion legislation in American history emerged from the struggles of both legislatures and physicians to control medical practice rather than from public pressures to deal with abortion per se. Every one of the laws passed between 1821 and 1841 punished only the "person" who administered the abortifacients or performed the operation; none punished the woman herself in any way. The laws were aimed, in other words, at regulating the activities of apothecaries and physicians, not at dissuading woman from seeking abortions (43). The major increase in abortion in the U.S. start in the early 1840's three key changes began to take place in the patterns of abortion in the United States. These changes profoundly effected the evolution of abortion policy for the next 40 years. First, abortion came out into the public view; by the mid-1840's the fact that Americans practiced abortion was an obvious social reality, constantly visible for the population as a whole. The second overwhelming incident of abortion, ac