We have next to prove—

II. ITS FREQUENCY, AND THE CAUSES THEREOF.

Though we cannot at once, and in exact figures, show the yearly amount of criminal abortion in this country, statistics on the subject being necessarily imperfect or wanting, we may yet arrive at an approximate result. This is done by an easy and reliable process of induction, the several factors of which, each of itself rendering probable the conclusion, tend, when combined, to make it almost absolutely certain.

We are to consider, in this connection, the evidence afforded by—

I.—The comparative increase of population.
II.—The published records of still-births.
III.—The number of arrests, or trials for abortion.
IV.—The published number of immediate maternal deaths.
V.—The pecuniary success of abortionists, and abortion-producing nostrums.
VI.—The comparative size of families in present and past times.
VII.—The experience of physicians—direct from applications for abortion and actual cases, and indirect from their results.

Several of these points are as yet almost wholly uninvestigated. They are stated, therefore, with care, as bearing decidedly on the question at issue, and as tending to provoke still further research.

To go into an elaborate comparison of our national and state censuses with themselves, past and present, with each other, and with those of similar communities abroad, involving, as it would do, intricate calculations regarding the effect of emigration from state to state, and from nation to nation, the increase of urban population, and the frequent decrease of rural, is not our present intention, nor is it necessary. By considering this point in connection with that immediately succeeding it, with which it is intimately related, its bearing and importance will at once be seen.

Statistics in this country are as yet so imperfect, that we are necessitated to a process of deduction. If it can be shown that a state of things prevails elsewhere to a certain extent, explainable only on one supposition, and that the same state of things prevails in this country to a greater extent, all other causes, save the one referred to, being in great measure absent, little doubt can be entertained of the part this plays; but if it can, in addition, be proved that this cause must necessarily be stronger with us than elsewhere, then its existence becomes morally certain. Accordingly, if we find that in another country living births are steadily lessening in proportion alike to the population and to its increase, that natural or preventive causes are insufficient to account for this, while the proportion of still-births and of known abortions is constantly increasing, and these last bear an evident yet increasing ratio to the still-births; that in this country the decrease of living births, and the increase of still-births, are in much greater ratio to the population, and the proportion of premature births is also increasing; that these relations are constant and yearly more marked, we are justified in supposing that abortions are at least as frequent with us, and probably more so.

In many countries of Europe, it has been ascertained that the “fecundity” of the population, or the rate of its annual increase, is rapidly diminishing.[9]