III. ITS VICTIMS.
We have hitherto discussed abortion in the abstract, as a crime, and in its relations to the community at large. We have seen its heinous nature, and its awful extent.[94]
The division of the subject now to be examined naturally presents itself under a fourfold aspect, numerical, relational, social, and medical; representing respectively the multitude of the victims of abortion, their character as parent and child, their standing in the community, and the degree, whether unto death or otherwise, of their suffering.
So far as statistics will at present allow, the numerical relations of the victims of abortion have already been fully discussed, the yearly thousands of fœtal and the frequent maternal deaths; one sacrifice at least, that of the child, being implied in every case.
Various incidental questions suggest themselves in this connection, curious, and by some, though erroneously, thought to be of judicial importance. Two of them will be here adverted to; they are the age or the mother and that of the fœtus.
It was formerly supposed, as in infanticide, that criminal abortion was seldom resorted to save for the concealment of shame; and as seductions, confessedly frequent in comparison with adultery, are most common in youth, it was laid down as probable that wilful abortions are most frequent between the years corresponding, from sixteen to twenty-five. Subsequent experience, however, has disproved this conclusion, and it is evident that the only real limit to its later occurrence is the menstrual climacteric. In many instances of marriage, abortions are resorted to at once, in others after the family has reached a certain point, and are thence regularly continued.
The age of the fœtus is of much more interest; not, as will ultimately appear, for the same reason as in cases of infanticide, but as proving to a certain extent one of the facts we have already considered, the error prevalent regarding the commencement of fœtal life.
It was Orfila’s opinion that criminal abortion was most frequent in the two first months of pregnancy. This would naturally have been supposed the case, as then some doubt might always obtain regarding its existence, and the excuse that the measures resorted to were for the purpose of preventing ill effect from an abnormal menstrual suppression would be more available. Devergie, on the other hand, was inclined to put the limits of greatest frequency at from three months to four and a half; while Briand and Chaudé thought the crime more common in the third month than the fifth, and in this last month much more frequent than even in the first or second. Tardieu also came to a similar conclusion.[95] He ascertained, that of 34 cases investigated by himself, 25 were in from the third to the sixth month, most in the third; 5 in the first two months; 4 in the seventh and eighth; or that the cases in the third month, or shortly after, were five times as numerous as at either an earlier or a later period, and nearly three times as numerous as in both combined.
Upon examining the Register of the Morgue, we find its statistics strikingly corroborative of these deductions. We have already seen that from 1837-54 there had been deposited at the Morgue 692 fœtuses of less than nine months. Of these,