Abortionist

“ Before I proceed further I wish to say that it is the terrible prevalence of the abortion evil, with its concomitant evils of infection, ill health, chronic invalidism and death, that more than any other single factor urges us in our birth control propaganda. And those who want to forbid the dissemination of any information about the prevention of conception are playing directly into the hands of the professional abortionists. ”

“ Parties have written to us and others have made personal application under circumstances when it might have been right for their family physician to have induced abortion. We wish to have it distinctly understood that we will not under any circumstances prescribe medicines or perform any operation to relieve women of pregnancy.
Mechanical means are resorted to by abortionists, and many women produce abortion upon themselves. It always terminates in lasting injury and sometimes in speedy death. Certain medicines will sometimes produce abortion but they are very unsafe. ”

“ I know children whose mothers were using every means to abort them, took all kinds of internal medicines until they were deathly sick, and still they were born perfectly healthy and normal. I know children whose mothers tried to abort them by mechanical means, who went to abortionists who made one or more attempts to induce the abortion—I know even cases where the mothers bled as a result of such attempts—and nevertheless, the children were born perfectly healthy, developed normally physically and mentally. ”

“ We have seen that unjustifiable abortion, alike as concerns the infant and society, is a crime second to none; that it abounds, and is frightfully on the increase; and that on medical grounds alone, mistaken and exploded, a misconception of the time at which man becomes a living being, the law fails to afford to infants and to society that protection which they have an absolute right to receive at its hands, and for the absence of which every individual who has, or can exert, any influence in the matter, is rendered so far responsible. ”

“ Thus it is seen that abortion is a crime not merely against the life of the child and the health of its mother, and against good morals, but that it strikes a blow at the very foundation of society itself. ”

“ Roughly 21 to 23% of people at one end of the spectrum are of the view, on the one hand, that abortion is a matter solely for the decision of the pregnant woman and that any legislation on this subject is an unwarranted interference with a woman's right to deal with her own body, while about 19 to 20% are of the view, on the other hand, that destruction of the living fetus is the killing of human life and tantamount to murder. ”

“ Would mankind, in following such advice, merely resort to greater abstinence before their means allow the expense of children, and to greater prudence after that period, no fault could be found; but when we discover criminal abortion thus justified and almost legitimated, we may well oppose to such doctrine the words of the indeed admirable Percival, “To extinguish the first spark of life is a crime of the same nature, both against our Maker and society, as to destroy an infant, a child, or a man.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Blatchford, of Troy, N. Y., writes me thus: “A crime which forty years ago, when I was a young practitioner, was of rare and secret occurrence, has become frequent and bold.” But why multiply instances of what must be the almost universal experience?
Applications for abortion are in many neighborhoods of constant occurrence, by no means among the poorer classes alone; and few women, unless also convinced by their physician of the enormity and guilt of that they intend, are deterred by his refusal from going elsewhere for aid, or from inducing abortion upon themselves. ”

“ We have now seen that the induction of a forced abortion is, in reality, a crime against the infant, its mother, the family circle, and society; that it is attended with extreme danger, whether immediate or remote, to the mother's happiness, to her health, mental and physical, and to her life ”

“ No man dare make such a choice, for we have neither the necessary knowledge, nor the right, nor the authority, to decide which is the more important life and best worth preserving.” [150]
“My own opinion is that such a course (the repetition of abortion) ought not to be adopted, but that pregnancy should be allowed to proceed, without interruption, to the full period; and when labor declares itself, that the infant should invariably be extracted by the Cæsarean section,” [151] which, when performed in season, is by no means necessarily fatal to the mother, and may preserve life to the child. ”

“ It may be admitted that women have an abstract right to abortion and that in exceptional cases that right should be exerted. Yet there can be very little doubt to most people that abortion is a wasteful, injurious, and almost degrading method of dealing with the birth-rate, a feeble apology for recklessness and improvidence. A society in which abortion flourishes cannot be regarded as a healthy society. Therefore, a community which takes upon itself to encourage abortion is incurring a heavy responsibility. ”

“ I In the almost 30 years since Roe, this Court has never described the various methods of aborting a second- or third-trimester fetus. From reading the majority's sanitized description, one would think that this case involves state regulation of a widely accepted routine medical procedure. Nothing could be further from the truth. The most widely used method of abortion during this stage of pregnancy is so gruesome that its use can be traumatic even for the physicians and medical staff who perform it. ”

“ 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. But if, taking into account the patient’s constitution, her previous health and the period of gestation, the abortion has been criminal, these risks are infinitely increased. [106] Those who escape them are few. ”

“ The cases where she is under duress, by threat of other personal violence from her husband or seducer, and thus compelled to submit to abortion, or where the act is performed by his direction but without her knowledge, are so rare, that in a general statement they may be assumed not to exist. If the mother does not herself induce the abortion, she seeks it, or aids it, or consents to it, and is, therefore, whether ever seeming justified or not, fully accountable as a principal. ”

“ While the practice of abortion has by no means, like the practice of preventing conception, become accepted in civilization, it scarcely appears to excite profound repulsion in a large proportion of the population of civilized countries. The majority of women, not excluding educated and highly moral women, who become pregnant against their wish contemplate the possibility of procuring abortion without the slightest twinge of conscience, and often are not even aware of the usual professional attitude of the Church, the law, and medicine regarding abortion. ”

“ They apply more especially to the early months of pregnancy, where it is always impossible to know its existence; and were direct or probable emmenagogues, or instrumental interference, to be here allowed, criminal abortion might be always induced before quickening, sanctioned and permitted by the rules of medicine. To justify abortion, life must certainly or very probably be endangered, not possibly merely, which is true in every pregnancy, and might be alleged at every trial for the crime. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We have shown reason to suppose that we equal them in guilt, if we do not exceed them. Now it must be borne in mind that the French are Catholic; that the rules of that church do not, as has been generally supposed, permit abortion in the earlier months, [99] but that they rigidly exercise over fœtal life throughout pregnancy the most absolute guard and supervision; [100] instances of this in cases where craniotomy is supposed to be indicated, are familiar to every practitioner. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We forthwith acknowledge our awareness of the sensitive and emotional nature of the abortion controversy, of the vigorous opposing views, even among physicians, and of the deep and seemingly absolute convictions that the subject inspires. One's philosophy, one's experiences, one's exposure to the raw edges of human existence, one's religious training, one's attitudes toward life and family and their values, and the moral standards one establishes and seeks to observe, are all likely to influence and to color one's thinking and conclusions about abortion. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Here and there, however, medical authors of repute have advocated the further extension of abortion, with precautions, and under proper supervision, as an aid to eugenic progress. Thus, Professor Max Flesch (Die Neue Generation, April, 1909) is in favor of a change in the law permitting abortion (provided it is carried out by the physician) in special cases, as when the mother's pregnancy has been due to force, when she has been abandoned, or when, in the interests of the community, it is desirable to prevent the propagation of insane, criminal, alcoholic, or tuberculous persons. ”

“ It is a flagrant crime at common law to attempt to procure the miscarriage, or abortion, of the woman, because it interferes with, and violates, the mysteries of nature in the process by which the human race is propagated and continued. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But it has been shown that the laws on the subject of criminal abortion are radically imperfect and defective, and that this is attributable, wholly, to a medical cause. We assert, therefore, that not only is it the duty of the profession as individual components of society, but more especially as medical men, to see them amended, and to leave no means untried, no effort unmade, for the attainment of this end. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As to the legal aspect of the matter, the laws relating to therapeutic abortion vary in the different states. But they are fairly uniform in their intent, and make quite clear the difference between this procedure and the induction of abortion for any reason other than medical necessity.
Dr. Slemons writes of the seriousness of criminal abortion in no uncertain terms, in “The Prospective Mother.” “At Common Law” (an inheritance from England) he tells us, “abortion 172is punishable as homicide when the woman dies or when the operation results fatally to the infant, after it has been born alive. ”