Abortion, AD 70 – An Ancient Practice, a New Debate

The practice of abortion began thousands of years ago with a wide range of effective and ineffective methods, from medicinal herbs and vigorous abdominal massage to the insertion of sharpened instruments.

For example, around AD 70, the Greek pharmacologist Dioscorides recommended an "abortion wine" made with hellebore, squirting cucumber, and scammony. Soranus, a Greek physician who lived in the second century, wrote a prescription to induce abortion that included riding animals or jumping energetically so that the woman's heels touched her buttocks. Today, removal of an embryo or fetus from the uterus is performed through various procedures. For example, medical abortions are nonsurgical and use specific (hormonal) medicines. Vacuum aspiration uses a manual syringe or an electric pump. Dilation and curettage is performed using a scraping instrument.

Abortion is a major source of debate, and some argue that destroying a fertilized egg is the murder of a human being. However, as ethicist Louis Guenin discusses, “zygotic personhood” (the idea that a fertilized egg is a person) is a new concept. For example, before 1869, the Catholic Church accepted the idea that an embryo was not human until it was 40 days old and that the soul entered after the 40th day. Aristotle also assumed this 40-day threshold. If the early embryo had no soul, perhaps early abortion was not murder. Pope Innocent III placed spiritual turmoil between three and four months in 1211. In Jewish law, a fetus becomes a fully fledged human being when its head emerges from the womb. Before the embryo is 40 days old, it is “mere water” (Talmud, Yevamot 69b).

In the 1973 Roe Wade case, the US Supreme Court invalidated state laws prohibiting abortion, ruling that such laws violated a woman's right to privacy. The US state cannot restrict a woman's right to abortion in any way, particularly during the first trimester (the first three months of pregnancy).

Description of the Article Image: A Soviet poster from 1925 warning midwives not to perform abortions and indicating that abortions often led to the mother's death. The poster also warns that midwives performing abortions are committing a crime.

Historical Figures Mentioned in the Article: Pedanius Dioscorides (c. 40–90)

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