On criminal abortion in America

by Horatio Robinson Storer

It is impossible that the results quoted from the Registry of New York, any more than those of France, even if so far, can in any great measure be owing to natural causes alone. They are wholly inexplicable on any principles, “which do not recognize an amount of guilt at which humanity shudders.” In comparing that city with Paris, certain allowances must indeed be made; abroad, for the effects of wars and conscription, of despotism, and of migration outward; at home, for the effects of governmental laxity, and of migration inward. In both cities the amount of prostitution, an element not to be lost sight of, must be nearly the same; and in both, under the steady progress of science, medical and hygienic, the ratio of fœtal mortality, unless induced by criminal causes, may year by year be supposed to have been steadily diminished.

We have seen that in New York, in the absence of all influences that tend to keep down population in foreign countries, old and crowded, and under the yoke of despotism, the effects, attributable elsewhere to these causes, exist, and to a greater degree than in any other country;

That the ratio of fœtal deaths to the population had swelled from 1 in 1633, in 1805, to 1 in 340, in 1849; while in France, at a later period, 1851, they were only about 1 in 1000;

That the actual number of fœtal deaths in seven years, from 1850 to 1857, had very nearly doubled;

That the fœtal deaths, as compared with the total of births, elsewhere in cases of illegitimacy, where the results are the very worst, and where crime is confessed to have produced them, being 1 in 16.8,[61] had here, legitimate and natural, reached the frightful ratio of 1 in 8.1;

That the fœtal deaths, as compared with the total mortality, had increased from 1 in 37, in 1805, to 1 in 13, in 1855;

That the reported early abortions, of which the greater number of course escape registry, bear the ratio to the living births of 1 in 40.4, while elsewhere they are only 1 in 78.5;

And finally, that early abortions, bearing the proportion to the still-births at the full time of 1 in 10.2, in 1846, had increased to 1 in 4.02, in 1856.

It must be borne in mind that these statistics are positive, proving the existence of a certain number of pregnancies abruptly terminated. They cannot therefore be controverted by any argument regarding means for the prevention of pregnancy, no matter to what extent these may be used. Nor should it be forgotten that for every registered premature birth or abortion, innumerable ones occur that are never recorded.