On criminal abortion in America

by Horatio Robinson Storer

But the mere passage of resolutions in disapproval of this horrible and so rapidly increasing crime is not sufficient to effect its abatement. Something more is wanted than the testimony of record books, the pointless vote of a board of councillors. There must come a hearty, earnest, and unanimous voice from the mass of the profession; an assertion that criminal abortion, or at least its permitted commission, shall no longer exist.

Too much zeal cannot be shown by physicians in relieving themselves from the weight of responsibility they may have incurred by innocently causing the increased destruction of human life. Let it not be supposed by the public that there is among us, either in theory or practice, any disregard of the unborn child. If such impression have already obtained, from our own negligence, the falsehoods of irregular practitioners, or otherwise, it should at once be removed. Fœtal life ever is, and ever has been, held sacred by all respectable physicians, and whenever criminal abortion has been known to have been advised, perpetrated or abetted by one claiming our honorable name, he has invariably and at once lost all professional standing.

We have seen that it is no trifling matter, this awful waste of human life. It is a subject that demands the best efforts of the whole profession as a body and as men. The crime, no longer practiced in secret, must be met boldly; and met with unanimity, it will be met successfully.

But whether these efforts are to be at once decisive or not, whether they are to be received with the gratitude of the community or its disfavor, is no concern of ours. Our duty is very plain; it is to stand, irrespective of personal consequences, in the breach fast making in the public morality, decency, and conscience, and, to the best of our strength, to defend them.

It might be, it very likely would be, for our immediate pecuniary interest, as a profession, to preserve silence; for we have shown that abortions, of all causes, tend to break down and ruin the health of the community at large. But to harbor this thought, even for a moment, were dishonorable. “I will never set politics against ethics,” said Bacon, “for true ethics are but as a handmaid to divinity and religion.”

We must take this decided stand, there is no choice; else we are recreant to the high trust we have assumed, and to ourselves. Whether the suppression of abortion be effected or no, one thing is certain, our own hands will have been cleansed of this sea of blood. We shall have declared our abhorrence and our innocence of the crime.

Longer silence and waiting by the profession would be criminal. If these wretched women, these married, lawful mothers, aye, and these Christian husbands, are thus murdering their children by thousands, through ignorance, they must be taught the truth; but if, as there is reason to believe is too often the case, they have been influenced to do so by fashion, extravagance of living, or lust, no language of condemnation can be too strong.

Let us, then, meet the issue earnestly and boldly. Silence and patient expectance have been fairly tried; the disease is not self-limited; the evil, instead of working its own cure, has assumed a gigantic, an awful growth.

Abstract discussions of this matter, by ourselves, and within the closed doors of our several societies, no longer avail. We are all agreed upon the guilt of abortion; we ever have been. Our prayers for its suppression have not been answered, for they have hitherto been offered with inactive hand.

We should, as a profession, openly and with one accord appeal to the community in words of earnest warning; setting forth the deplorable consequences of criminal abortion, the actual and independent existence, from the moment of conception, of fœtal life. And that the effort should not be one of words merely, we should, as a profession, recommend to the legislative bodies of the land, the revision and subsequent enforcement of all laws, statutory or otherwise, pertaining to this crime,—that the present slaughter of the innocents may to some extent, at least, be made to cease. For it is “a thing deserving all hate and detestation, that a man in his very originall, whiles he is framed, whiles he is enlived, should be put to death under the very hands and in the shop of nature.”[274]