Historical Abortion

Kitsune · Post by **Kitsune** » 2008-03-21 02:51pm

Spin off of the rape thread......Historically what is the most common means of abortion?

Would "Exposing" the children be considered a means of abortion?

Pablo Sanchez · Post by **Pablo Sanchez** » 2008-03-21 03:21pm

Infanticide is obviously very different from abortion, unless you're the type of rube who believes that life begins at conception. And yes, infanticide was historically rather common, partially because abortion was very difficult and dangerous. Killing a baby was simple, safe, and people apparently didn't think that much of it. After all, most people lived close to the land and killed domestic animals with some regularity, saw human death on a regular basis, and infant mortality was 30-50% anyway.

I believe that prior to the advance of the medical profession the only way to perform an abortion was to have the woman ingest poisons or to attack the womb (kick her in the stomach or push her down the stairs--and no I'm not kidding). Both of these would have a fairly high probability of harming or killing the mother, but then again, so did childbirth.

PeZook · Post by **PeZook** » 2008-03-21 03:37pm

Pablo Sanchez wrote:Infanticide is obviously very different from abortion, unless you're the type of rube who believes that life begins at conception. And yes, infanticide was historically rather common, partially because abortion was very difficult and dangerous. Killing a baby was simple, safe, and people apparently didn't think that much of it. After all, most people lived close to the land and killed domestic animals with some regularity, saw human death on a regular basis, and infant mortality was 30-50% anyway.

Sorry, but people didn't "think nothing of it".

I have recently read a book about criminal prosecution in Poland throughout the ages, and infanticide was covered extensively there.

It was, in fact, considered an extremely serious crime. The main problem was that single mothers had a hell of a time raising a child because they were considered whores by their community and given all kinds of grief - often families would disown a woman who fell pregnant and didn't know the father, etc.

The second problem was that forensics was extremely primitive up untill the second half of the XIXth century, which meant that a young single mother could get away with killing a child most of the time. You can see why a combination of these two factors led to a high infanticide rate, particularly in the cities, where you could expect to become pregnant and not have the village instantly know about this.

Still, if caught, the mother could expect to be sentenced to extremely brutal death. Despite that, people fucked around as much as ever, except they had no birth control, and in many cases didn't even know what, exactly, caused conception to happen. And this is relevant to today's time: if being drawn and quartered didn't discourage people from promiscous behavior, why do some people think abstinence-only sex ed will?

We come down to religiously-fuelled persecution of single mothers which led to rampant infanticide. Does this surprise anybody here?

Imperial Overlord · Post by **Imperial Overlord** » 2008-03-21 06:54pm

There is a primitive method of abortion where one puts a hot rock on the pregnant one's stomach. It's not particularly reliable, but fairly safe for the woman and was practiced on a South Pacific island (the name escapes me at the moment, it's in Jared Diamond's Collapse) which practiced vigorous population control because of limited resources.

Aaron · Post by **Aaron** » 2008-03-21 06:57pm

Imperial Overlord wrote:There is a primitive method of abortion where one puts a hot rock on the pregnant one's stomach. It's not particularly reliable, but fairly safe for the woman and was practiced on a South Pacific island (the name escapes me at the moment, it's in Jared Diamond's Collapse) which practiced vigorous population control because of limited resources.

I believe the island is called Tikopia.

Post by **Broomstick** » 2008-03-21 07:13pm

There's obvious infanticide, such as leaving a newborn in the woods or crushing its skull, and not so obvious, such as simply not providing adequate food or neglecting to supervise a toddler near falling hazards....

There are several hunter-gatherer groups that view infanticide of a flawed child (or sometimes a twin, when a woman could only be expected to raise one at a time) was viewed as acceptable (not a good thing, but tolerable) when the child was not permitted even a first breath. Killing the baby after that first breath or first cry was a crime/sin/bad thing. Which is not to say anyone was happy about such things, or didn't feel grief. The certainly did, and their modern descendants who no longer need to do such things are, by and large, happy to not face such choices.

Adrian Laguna · Post by **Adrian Laguna** » 2008-03-22 12:36am

The Hellenic civilizations and the Romans practiced infanticide extensively and it wasn't a particularly big deal. I think this was also true of the Celtic tribes, but I don't know about the various other barbarian groups. In the Roman Empire, the paterfamilias (oldest male in a family) could simply not recognize a child as his and it would either be put up for adoption or thrown into the sewers. Though he didn't have absolute power, the social conventions of the time also stipulated that a man should always listen to his wife, whether he wanted to or not.

Mayabird · Post by **Mayabird** » 2008-03-22 08:58pm

The Romans used a plant called silphium to induce abortions. It only grew in a small coastal area in what's now Libya, and was so popular that it was traded for its weight in silver and was harvested to extinction.

Pablo Sanchez · Post by **Pablo Sanchez** » 2008-03-23 03:24am

PeZook wrote:Sorry, but people didn't "think nothing of it".

There's often a large difference between the legality and cultural standing of an act and its social status. Infanticide in the middle ages and working-class women working as prostitutes in Victorian England are two examples of activities which were illegal and regarded as immoral, but were also acts of survivals not especially remarked upon by the people engaged in them.

PeZook · Post by **PeZook** » 2008-03-23 12:40pm

Pablo Sanchez wrote: There's often a large difference between the legality and cultural standing of an act and its social status. Infanticide in the middle ages and working-class women working as prostitutes in Victorian England are two examples of activities which were illegal and regarded as immoral, but were also acts of survivals not especially remarked upon by the people engaged in them.

This distinction seems important, but it was only because social stigma directed at single mothers was perceived as slightly more dangerous than the risk of being horribly executed if caught comitting infaniticide. You're right that killing an infant may have been far easier for the mother to do than today, of course.