History of Abortion

Paper Summary:

This paper attempts to provide both a factual background of the history of abortion in America and the reason that the topic of abortion has had such a dramatic influence on American history and politics, while minimizing the effects of personal bias on the topic.

From the Paper:

"In early America, only white men could vote and women were considered the legal property of their husbands. While women's rights were largely unprotected during those times, the issue of abortion was not yet controversial. There seem to be a variety of reasons for that. The first reason is that women were in charge of taking care of pregnancy. Women sought out midwives, rather than doctors, for the diagnosis and treatment of pregnancy. There is little information about the historical numbers of early abortions, but there is anecdotal evidence that midwives did help some women terminate their pregnancies. "At common law, abortion performed before 'quickening' - the first recognizable movement of the fetus in utero, appearing usually from the 16th to the 18th week of pregnancy was not an indictable offense" (Roe v. Wade, 132). In fact, abortion remained legal throughout most of the United States until approximately the 1820s. Even when abortion was considered illegal, the fact that pregnancy could not be verified until a doctor could hear a fetal heartbeat allowed many women to get abortions under the guise of having a doctor bring on their period."

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