IV.—The Inherent Dangers of Abortion to a Woman's Health and to her Life.
It is generally supposed, not merely that a woman can wilfully throw off the product of conception without guilt or moral harm, but that she can do it with positive or comparative impunity as regards her own health. This is a very grievous and most fatal error, and I do not hesitate to assert, from extended observation, that, despite apparent and isolated instances to the contrary—
1. A larger proportion of women die during or in consequence of an abortion, than during or in consequence of childbed at the full term of pregnancy;
2. A very much larger proportion of women become confirmed invalids, perhaps for life; and,
3. The tendency to serious and often fatal organic disease, as cancer, is rendered much greater at the so-called turn of life, which has very generally, and not without good reason, been considered as especially the critical period of a woman's existence.
These, as I have said, are conclusions that cannot be gainsaid, as they are based on facts; and that these facts are merely what ought, in the very nature of things, to occur, can readily enough be shown.
1. Nature does all her work, of whatever character it may be, in accordance with certain simple and general laws, any infringement of which must necessarily cause derangement, disaster, or ruin.
In the present instance, it has been ascertained, by careful dissections and microscopic study, that the woman's general system, both as a whole and as regards each individual organ and its tissues, is slowly and gradually prepared for the great change which naturally occurs at the end of nine months' gestation; and that if this change is by any means prematurely induced, whether by accident or design, it finds the system unprepared. Not even do I except from this law the earlier months of pregnancy, when it is thought by so many that abortion can be brought on without any physical shock.