Abortion

“ A complete abortion, as the term suggests, is one in which all the products of conception are expelled. The treatment and care are exactly the same as are given after a normal delivery. This point cannot be stressed too strongly, for it is because so many women fail to appreciate the necessity for adequate post-partum care, that abortions are so often followed by ill health and invalidism. ”

“ THERAPEUTIC ABORTION.—If a woman is suffering from tuberculosis or some organic affection, pregnancy may add a serious strain upon the already crippled machinery of her body. Occasionally gestation itself may cause changes which threaten life. In either event the duty of the physician is plain. The law is acquainted with such emergencies, and explicitly permits the termination of pregnancy when undertaken to relieve or cure such conditions. When performed to restore health the operation is called therapeutic abortion. ”

“ The results of abortion from natural causes, as obstetric disease, separate or in common, of mother, fœtus, or membranes, or from a morbid habit consequent on its repetition, are much worse than those following the average of labors at the full period. If the abortion be from accident, from external violence, mental shock, great constitutional disturbance from disease or poison, or even necessarily induced by the skilful physician in early pregnancy, the risks are worse. ”

“ An opinion is very prevalent that if abortion be produced before the movements of the foetus are felt, there is no crime committed. It should be remembered that life begins with conception, and, at whatever period of pregnancy abortion is committed, life is destroyed. Whoever disobeys the Divine injunction cannot escape his own consciousness of the deed, and the anguish and bitter remorse which ever after disturb the soul.
Treatment. In threatened abortion, there is pain in the back or lower part of the abdomen, and later some flow of blood. ”

“ Whatever ideas on the subject of abortion the human mind may have forced itself to entertain, let the slightest proof concerning the existence of fœtal life be alleged, and maternal instinct at once makes itself known: the parent, as after its birth, would often even perish to preserve her child. ”

“ Other forms of abortion, performed for the purpose of preventing the progress of the gestation, and designed for the destruction of the embryo or fetus, are known as "criminal abortion," and are punishable by several legal penalties.
Abortions are frequently followed by severe illness, invalidism, or even death for the woman. Many women have had their entire lives ruined by this evil practice. ”

“ It is undoubtedly a common experience, as has certainly been that of the writer, for a physician to be assured by his patients, often no doubt falsely, but frequently with sincerity, that their abortions have been induced in utter ignorance of the commission of wrong; in belief that the contents of the womb, so long as manifesting no perceptible sign of life, were but lifeless and inert matter; in other words, that being, previously to quickening, a mere ovarian excretion, they might be thrown off and expelled from the system as coolly and as guiltlessly as those from the bladder and rectum. ”

“ What are the causes of Abortion? A gratuitous assumption on the part of some writers respecting the viability of the fœtus, has led them to adopt a division into abortion and premature labour, according as the exclusion from the uterus takes place before, or after, the sixth month of conception; and the distinction is now generally adopted. Natural abortion may be considered as arising either from accidental or constitutional causes; we shall hereafter consider the different modes by which the premature ejectment of a fœtus may be occasioned by art. ”

“ Resolved, That while physicians have long been united in condemning the procuring of abortion, at every period of gestation, except as necessary for preserving the life of either mother or child, it has become the duty of this Association, in view of the prevalence and increasing frequency of the crime, publicly to enter an earnest and solemn protest against such unwarrantable destruction of human life. ”

“ First.—That if abortion be ever a crime, it is, of necessity, even in isolated cases, one of no small interest to moralist, jurist, and physician; and that when general and common, this interest is extended to the whole community and fearfully enhanced. ”

“ The name of obstetrical abortion is given by physicians to such as is performed to save the life of the mother. Whether this practice is ever morally lawful we shall consider below. Of late years the leaders of the medical profession have employed commendable industry in lessening the frequency of its performance. Aside from moral considerations, they count it a gross blunder against the science of obstetrics to sacrifice the life of the child unless it be the only means to save the mother's life. ”

“ How terribly ironic it is that, at one hospital or clinic, an unborn child may be carefully treated as a patient, while at another facility—perhaps just a few blocks away—another innocent child may become a victim of abortion. ”

“ Abortion is a unique act, in which a woman's exercise of control over her own body ends, depending on one's view, human life or potential human life. Nothing in our Federal Constitution deprives the people of this country of the right to determine whether the consequences of abortion to the fetus and to society outweigh the burden of an unwanted pregnancy on the mother. ”

“ Could the test of confession be always applied, as is, however, manifestly impossible, so many women die during or in consequence of an abortion, without the attendance of a physician and without making any sign, it would be found that many of the cases now reported upon our bills of mortality as deaths from hemorrhage, from menorrhagia, from dysentery, from peritonitis, from inflammation of the bowels or of the womb, from obscure tumor, or from uterine cancer, would be found in reality to be deaths from intentional abortion. ”

“ Of course, when brought about with criminal intent, abortion is nothing less than murder in the first degree; and if the law of the land does not discover and punish the criminal, the higher law of the God of Nature and of Nature's inexorable reprisals for interference with, or destruction of her beneficent designs, will sooner or later most certainly do so. When abortion is due to pathological causes it is usually preceded by the death of the fœtus; so that the causes of abortion are really the causes producing the death of the fœtus. ”

“ The universal medical doctrine is to induce abortion in cases where abortion will save the mother's life and the foetus is "too young to amount to anything." This is looked upon as legitimate abortion by the very best men that do not recognise the authority of the Holy Office: they deem the position of the Catholic physician in these cases as altogether erroneous, or even criminal. ”

“ Therapeutic abortions are resorted to when the patient’s condition is so grave that it is apparently necessary to empty the uterus in order to save her life. Such a condition may exist, for example, when pregnancy is complicated by pulmonary tuberculosis, heart disease, toxemia, hemorrhage or some condition which is inherent to pregnancy. An abortion induced under these circumstances is countenanced by law, as it is performed to prevent the loss of life from disease; but an abortion is not legal if brought on to save the woman from suicide, because of her unwillingness to become a mother. ”

“ The death of the foetus may be occasioned by a diseased condition of the embryo, amnion, or placenta, and also by convulsions or peritoneal inflammation.
Criminal Abortion is secretly practiced by women who desire to rid themselves of the evidence of immorality, and by those in wedlock who wish to avoid the care and responsibility of rearing offspring. Statistics show that it is very prevalent, undermining the health of women and corrupting the morals of society. ”

“ By abortion is generally understood the expulsion of the contents of the gravid uterus, at a period of gestation so early as to render it impossible for the fœtus to live. It is an accident or disease which is very frequent in its occurrence, which is always attended with disagreeable circumstances, and which, although it seldom prove immediately fatal, may yet be productive of much mischief at a future 2time. ”

“ It is needless to say that abortion should be permitted whenever pregnancy seriously endangers the life or health of the mother, or when a grave disease in the mother condemns the child to become an invalid. ”

“ The AMA has recognized that this procedure is "ethically different from other destructive abortion techniques because the fetus, normally twenty weeks or longer in gestation, is killed outside the womb. The 'partial birth' gives the fetus an autonomy which separates it from the right of the woman to choose treatments for her own body." ”

“ Sometimes this is not the case, and the dead fetus is retained for several weeks, or months or even years; to such a phenomenon we apply the term missed abortion. Some women suffer from what might be called the abortion habit; they can hardly ever carry a child to full term, but lose it in the same month or even in the same week of gestation during each pregnancy; we call this habitual abortion. And this habitual abortion may [119] be independent of disease, such, for instance, as syphilis. The terms threatened, imminent and inevitable abortion require no further explanation. ”

“ We begin with the common law, under which abortion was a crime at least after "quickening"—i.e., the first felt movement of the fetus in the womb, which usually occurs between the 16th and 18th week of pregnancy. ”

“ No partial birth abortion shall be performed in this state, unless such procedure is necessary to save the life of the mother whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself. ”

“ In the majority of instances of forced abortion, the act is committed prior to the usual period of quickening. There are other women, who have confessed to me that they have destroyed their children long after they have felt them leap within their womb. There are others still, whom I have known to wilfully suffocate them during birth, or to prevent the air from reaching them under the bedclothes; and there are others, who have wilfully killed their wholly separated and breathing offspring, by strangling them or drowning them, or throwing them into a noisome vault. ”

“ When abortion is threatened, we come to consider whether and by what means it can be stopped. I have already stated my opinion, that when the action of gestation ceases, it cannot be renewed, and that general contraction of the uterine fibres is a criterion of this cessation. ”

“ Whenever an abortion is induced by a physician, even if accidentally, it is liable to be thought intentional by the patient and her friends, and consequently by the community, so far as it becomes aware of the fact. ”

“ Naturally, therefore, the physical effects of abortion will depend in direct ratio on the causation thereof, and the comparative malignity or benignity of such causation. In any case, abortion is fraught with serious consequences, direct and indirect; and is a sad miscarriage of nature's plan, greatly to be deplored, and earnestly, strenuously, and conscientiously to be avoided. ”

“ It is impossible, thoroughly and accurately, to comprehend the mode in which abortion takes place, without being previously acquainted with the origin, formation, progress, and metamorphoses of the fœtus, and its connection with the mother. ”

“ If we have proved the existence of fœtal life before quickening has taken place or can take place, and by all analogy and a close and conclusive process of induction, its commencement at the very beginning, at conception itself, we are compelled to believe unjustifiable abortion always a crime. ”

“ The direct and reliable means of inducing abortion, in the physician’s possession, are only instrumental. Draughts of all kinds, whether purgative, emmenagogue, or so-called specific,—aloes, ergot, or savin,—or energetic poisons, expelling the fœtus through a sudden and profound disturbance of the whole maternal system, as arsenic or cantharides, are too unreliable, unscientific, or dangerous either to mother or child. The justifiable methods are confined to those acting directly on the uterus and its contents, by dilating the os or detaching the membranes. ”

“ In the next place, I mention that one abortion paves the way for another, because, setting other circumstances aside, it gives the uterus a tendency to stop its action of gestation at an early period after conception, and therefore it is difficult to make a woman go to the full time, after she has miscarried frequently. ”

“ When nature, from what cause soever, produces the abortion, some women die, and most have troubles of greater or less gravity left over; when abortion results from criminal interference, a large proportion of women dies, and all are more or less maimed for life. ”

“ The crime of abortion should be considered to include, as it does in the absolute fact of moral guilt, all cases of attempted or intentionally effected destruction and miscarriage of the product of impregnation ”

“ The case of threatened abortion, in which we most frequently succeed, is that arising from slipping of the foot, or similar causes, producing a slight separation, because here the hemorrhage immediately gives alarm, and we are called before the action of gestation be much affected. ”

“ Every well-informed physician will at once recognize the truth of all that has been affirmed. It is a bad state of the system which allows of abortion. One abortion ordinarily is far more trying and worse upon the constitution, than two labors at full term.
Means of Prevention.—In speaking of the evils of abortion, the means of preventing such an occurrence have necessarily been hinted at. ”