Part 3

These reasonings are strengthened by the evidence of analogy. The utter loss of direct influence by the female bird upon its offspring from the time the egg has left her, and the marked effect, originally, of the male; the independence in body, in movement, and in life, of young marsupial mammals, almost from the very moment of their conception, identical analogically with the intra-uterine state of other embryos,—nourishment by teat merely replacing that by placenta at an earlier period; the same in birds, shown by movements in their egg on cold immersion before the end of incubation; the permanence of low vitality, or of impaired or distorted nervous force, arising from early arrest or error of development, and necessarily contemporaneous with it, are all instances in point.

Brute instincts are often thought wholly supplanted by human reason. That this is not so is proved by what obtains in the absence of reason, whether from the outset or subsequently occurring. Idiots and lunatics alike show the actual identity in this respect of man and the brute, however instinct, in the former, may normally be tempered by conscience and reason. 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. This is not conscience, which is stirred only by an afterthought, but instinct.

Thus far, incidental proof concerning the commencement of fœtal life, and so the guilt of unjustifiable abortion. More decisive evidence is at hand.

That the movements of the fœtus, subsequent to quickening, whatever the actual nature of that first sensation may be, declare the existence of intra-uterine life, is allowed by the world; by none more than by mothers themselves, whose statistics prove that after the perception of these movements criminal abortions are comparatively rare.

But quickening,—a period usually occurring from the one hundred and fifteenth to the one hundred and thirtieth day after conception, but varying within still more appreciable limits in different women, and in the same women in different pregnancies, from variations in the amount of liquor amnii, the early strength of the fœtus, and other causes, and also, if at all, owing in its first sensation to rising of the womb from the pelvis, probably occurring a little earlier with boys than with girls, from their relative difference in size,—is often absent, even throughout pregnancy; and fœtal movements are sometimes appreciable to the attendant when not to the mother, or indeed to the mother alone.

Further, in premature births, where quickening has not occurred, or before its usual period, by the movements of the fœtus, its earlier independent and vital existence is sometimes reduced to a matter of ocular demonstration; while to the ear, in very many instances, as early and as conclusive evidence is afforded by the sounds these movements give rise to.

Quickening is therefore as unlikely a period for the commencement of fœtal life as those others set by Hippocrates and his successors, varying from the third day after conception, to that of the Stoics, namely birth, and as false as them all.

We need not, with Dubois and some earlier writers, from the manifest relation of means to the end, consider that the movements of the fœtus in utero, and its consequent attitude and position, are signs of an already developed and decided sentience and will, nor is it requisite to suppose them the effect of an almost rational instinct. But that they are wholly independent of the will and the consciousness of the mother, and yet by no means characteristic of organic life, whether hers or its own,—which latter is also by abundant evidence proved independently to exist,—but decidedly animal in their character; that they are not explainable by gravity, despite all the arguments alleged, latest by Matthews Duncan, nor on any other supposition save that of a special and independent excito-motory system, distinct from that of the mother, brings us directly down to this—the existence of as distinct and independent a nervous centre, self-existing, self-acting, living.

We set aside all the speculations of metaphysicians regarding moral accountability of the fœtus, the “potential man,” and its “inanimate vitalities,” as useless as they are bewildering. If there be life, then also the existence, however undeveloped, of an intellectual, moral, and spiritual nature, the inalienable attribute of humanity, is implied.

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.

And now words fail. Of the mother, by consent or by her own hand, imbrued with her infant’s blood; of the equally guilty father, who counsels or allows the crime; of the wretches who by their wholesale murders far out-Herod Burke and Hare; of the public sentiment which palliates, pardons, and would even praise this so common violation of all law, human and divine, of all instinct, of all reason, all pity, all mercy, all love, we leave those to speak who can.

We have next to prove—

II. ITS FREQUENCY, AND THE CAUSES THEREOF.

Though we cannot at once, and in exact figures, show the yearly amount of criminal abortion in this country, statistics on the subject being necessarily imperfect or wanting, we may yet arrive at an approximate result. This is done by an easy and reliable process of induction, the several factors of which, each of itself rendering probable the conclusion, tend, when combined, to make it almost absolutely certain.

We are to consider, in this connection, the evidence afforded by—

I.—The comparative increase of population.

II.—The published records of still-births.

III.—The number of arrests, or trials for abortion.

IV.—The published number of immediate maternal deaths.

V.—The pecuniary success of abortionists, and abortion-producing nostrums.

VI.—The comparative size of families in present and past times.

VII.—The experience of physicians—direct from applications for abortion and actual cases, and indirect from their results.

Several of these points are as yet almost wholly uninvestigated. They are stated, therefore, with care, as bearing decidedly on the question at issue, and as tending to provoke still further research.

To go into an elaborate comparison of our national and state censuses with themselves, past and present, with each other, and with those of similar communities abroad, involving, as it would do, intricate calculations regarding the effect of emigration from state to state, and from nation to nation, the increase of urban population, and the frequent decrease of rural, is not our present intention, nor is it necessary. By considering this point in connection with that immediately succeeding it, with which it is intimately related, its bearing and importance will at once be seen.

Statistics in this country are as yet so imperfect, that we are necessitated to a process of deduction. If it can be shown that a state of things prevails elsewhere to a certain extent, explainable only on one supposition, and that the same state of things prevails in this country to a greater extent, all other causes, save the one referred to, being in great measure absent, little doubt can be entertained of the part this plays; but if it can, in addition, be proved that this cause must necessarily be stronger with us than elsewhere, then its existence becomes morally certain. Accordingly, if we find that in another country living births are steadily lessening in proportion alike to the population and to its increase, that natural or preventive causes are insufficient to account for this, while the proportion of still-births and of known abortions is constantly increasing, and these last bear an evident yet increasing ratio to the still-births; that in this country the decrease of living births, and the increase of still-births, are in much greater ratio to the population, and the proportion of premature births is also increasing; that these relations are constant and yearly more marked, we are justified in supposing that abortions are at least as frequent with us, and probably more so.

In many countries of Europe, it has been ascertained that the “fecundity” of the population, or the rate of its annual increase, is rapidly diminishing.

In Sweden, it has lessened by one-ninth in 61 years. In Prussia, by a third in 132 years. In Denmark, by a quarter in 82 years. In England, by two-sevenths in a century. In Russia, by an eighth in 28 years. In Spain, by a sixth in 30 years. In Germany, by a thirteenth in 17 years. In France, by a third in 71 years.

Or, in other words: