BY
HORATIO R. STORER, M.D.,
OF BOSTON.
MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION.
“And let the legislator and moralist look to it; for as sure as thereis in any nation a hidden tampering with infant life, whether frequentor occasional, systematic or accidental, so sure will the chastisementof the Almighty fall on such a nation.”—Granville, on Sudden Death.
[From the North American Medico-Chirurgical Review, January to November, 1859.]
PHILADELPHIA:
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.
1860.
TO
THOSE WHOM IT MAY CONCERN,
PHYSICIAN, ATTORNEY, JUROR, JUDGE,—AND PARENT,—
These Pages
ARE RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED.
By the Common Law and by many of our State Codes, fœtal life, perse, is almost wholly ignored and its destruction unpunished; abortion inevery case being considered an offence mainly against the mother, and assuch, unless fatal to her, a mere misdemeanor, or wholly disregarded.
By the Moral Law, the wilful killing of a human being at anystage of its existence is Murder.
In undertaking the discussion at length of this subject, three preliminaryfacts must be assumed:—
First.—That if abortion be ever a crime, it is, of necessity, even inisolated cases, one of no small interest to moralist, jurist, and physician;and that when general and common, this interest is extended to the wholecommunity and fearfully enhanced.
Secondly.—That if the latter assumption be true, both in premise andconclusion, neglected as the crime has been by most ethical writers andpolitical economists, hastily passed over by medical jurists,[1] and confessedly[6]everywhere the great opprobrium of the law, often indeed by tauntthat of medicine, either it cannot in the nature of things be suppressed,as by these facts implied, or its suppression has not been properly attempted.Discarding the former of these alternatives as alike unworthyof belief and proved false by facts hereafter to be shown, it will appear,
Thirdly.—That the discussion now broached is neither supererogatorynor out of place; further, that it is absolutely and necessarily demanded.
Moreover, in order that the importance and various bearings of the subjectmay be better appreciated, and that the writer’s position and aims maybe more fairly understood, it must be borne in mind that there exist tothis discussion certain positive and apparent objections, which have, in ameasure, given rise to much of the silence and omission alluded to above,and are, in the main, as follows:—
1. The natural dislike of any physician to enter upon a subject on somep