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Abortion

May 22, 2019 /

History of Abortion Laws

Abortions have been happening for a long time. Pretty much as long as people realized they’d rather have sex more often than they want to be pregnant.

For a lot of history, abortions were legal until the woman felt the fetus moving, known as “quickening” or “ensoulment.” After the quickening, it was illegal to perform an abortion. These were the laws that governed the United States until the 1800s. In the 1820s, Connecticut enacted laws aimed at apothecaries who sold women “poisons” to induce a abortion, and New York declared post-quickening abortions a felony, and pre-quickening abortions a misdemeanor. As the medical profession advanced, physicians advocated to make abortions illegal.  Their reasons are described as either out of safety concerns (any surgery was pretty dangerous in those days), or as a way to standardize the medical profession (therefore not allowing nurses, midwives, or other “irregulars” to encroach on their field). The Comstock Laws of 1873, aimed at “obscene” materials, placed restrictions on information about contraceptives or abortion to be distributed through the mail, even to medical professionals. By 1880, all abortions were criminalized in the United States, except in cases where it was necessary to save the woman’s life. However, abortions still occurred, hospitals in large cities had wings dedicated to treating women harmed due to abortion procedures. By 1930 an estimated 800,000 abortions were performed per year by licensed physicians, with many more being performed by unlicensed practitioners.

Historical Abortion Procedures (aka my new soap opera “The Young and the Desperate”)

Throughout history, there are records of the things people tried to prevent pregnancies from becoming babies. A lot of times it was eating a certain plant or poison, inserting strange combinations of honey, myrrh, pepper, and other things into the vagina, or treatments like squatting over a steaming pot, occasionally with onions in it. Or there was physical activity like weightlifting, diving, or jumping high enough that your feet hit your butt on the way up. Or wearing a tight belt or girdle, yourself or someone else hitting your stomach repeatedly, and the most questionable “a controlled fall down a flight of stairs.” Apparently it was a combination of observation, recipes passed down through generations, and flat out desperation to induce a miscarriage. 

Those methods seem tame compared to what some women resorted to (warning: this gets rough to read.) To cause a miscarriage, a woman (or her potentially unqualified practitioner) would insert a blunt object through the vaginal canal into the uterus. These included knitting needles, bicycle spokes, and coat hangers. These procedures were incredibly risky due to the potential to cause damage to other body parts, unsanitary conditions, unscrupulous practitioners, and lack of anesthesia. 

But Wait, It Gets Worse

Traditional medicinal abortion techniques have largely been abandoned due to the creation of 2 drugs (misoprostol, a prostaglandin sold primarily under the trade name Cytotec, and mifepristone, an antiprogestogen, known under the trade name RU486). These are reliable and safe and used for induced abortion and post-abortion care where they are available. 

However. Where these medications are not available, unsafe, painful, and invasive procedures are common among women who wish to end a pregnancy. These barbaric methods are sickeningly common among low income women and in developing countries with restrictive abortion laws. 45% of induced abortions in developing countries are classified by the UN Population Division as unsafe, with even higher rates in nearly all regions of Africa. 

Abortion Laws Around the World

Until the 1960s, most abortion laws were decided by the statutes of whatever country colonized you last. English-speaking countries followed the British Offenses Against the Person Act of 1861, in French-speaking African countries, abortion was illegal under the French criminal code of 1810 and a 1920 law that outlawed “anti-conceptive propaganda”, and Belgian colonies were subject to the Belgian law of 1867. Nations with a strong Spanish or Italian influence with a large Catholic population have traditionally held more restrictive laws regarding abortion. Soviet countries were the first to legalize abortion as a form of population control due to the unavailability of contraceptives. Over the past 5 decades, legislation has oscillated between liberal and conservative sentiments regarding women’s rights versus the rights of the fetus. 

Nearly all countries have exceptions for abortion when the pregnancy threatens the life of the woman, and exceptions for rape, incest, and fetal malformation are also found in even highly restrictive countries. Most laws are aimed at abortion providers, but many also target the woman seeking the abortion. Countries where abortion is available at the request of the woman have lower rates of mortality associated with abortion, as well as lower abortion rates in general which can be correlated with more available education about contraceptives, as well as less traditional concepts on the role of women in those societies.  The WHO and the United Nations have not made blanket statements regarding the criminality of abortion, but have made recommendations related to addressing the morbidity and mortality of women related to illegal abortions. 

 

Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton

In 1973 the United States Supreme Court ruled on a the case of Roe v. Wade. Jane Roe (an alias for a 21-year-old pregnant woman), represented all women who wanted abortions but could not get them legally and safely and Henry Wade was the Attorney General of Texas, defending a law that prohibited abortion except to save the woman’s life. After hearing the case, the Supreme Court ruled that Americans’ right to privacy included the right of a woman to decide whether to have children, and the right of a woman and her doctor to make that decision without state interference.

The court decision struck down all state laws outlawing abortions in the first trimester, but allowing increasing restrictions or bans later in pregnancy, as the fetus reaches viability. However Roe v. Wade strictly states that governments cannot prohibit late terminations of pregnancy when “necessary to preserve the woman’s life or health.”

On the same day as Roe v. Wade was decided, the court ruled on Doe v. Bolton which clarified “that the medical judgment may be exercised in the light of all factors—physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age—relevant to the well-being of the patient.” This preempted any arguments about the definition of a woman’s health by defining it as physical AND emotional health, depending on any factors in the woman’s life, psychological, familial, or physiological.

Abortion Statistics in the United States

In 2015, the CDC did a study to document the number and characteristics of women obtaining legal abortions in the United States. 

  • 24.6% of procedures were medical (non-surgical) abortions (effective up to 8 weeks gestation, but used by only 36% of women eligible)
  • 64.3% of procedures were surgical abortions during the first trimester
  • 8.8% of procedures were surgical abortions after the first trimester
  •  
  • 65% of abortions were performed at less than 8 weeks
  • 91% were performed at less than 13 weeks (first trimester)
  • 1.3% were performed after 21 weeks (5 months pregnant)
Sources

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