Why not? A book for every woman

by Horatio Robinson Storer

The old Hippocratic oath, to which each of his pupils was sworn by the father of medicine, pledged the physician never to be guilty of unnecessarily inducing miscarriage. That the standard, in this respect, of the profession of the present day has not deteriorated, is proved by the first of the resolutions adopted by the Convention at Louisville, in 1859: "That while physicians have long been united in condemning the procuring of abortion, at every period of gestation, except as necessary for preserving the life of either mother or child, it has become the duty of this Association, in view of the prevalence and increasing frequency of the crime, publicly to enter an earnest and solemn protest against such unwarrantable destruction of human life. "[5]

It is true, however, that while physicians are unanimous as to the sanctity of fœtal life, they have yet to a certain extent innocently and unintentionally given grounds for the prevalent ignorance upon this subject, to which I shall soon allude. The fact that in some cases of difficult labor it becomes imperatively necessary to remove the child piecemeal, if dead, or, if living, to destroy it for the sake of saving the mother's life, ought not to imply that the physician has attached a trifling value to the child itself. Compared with the mother, who is already mature and playing so important a part in the world, he justly allows the balance to fall, but he fully recognizes that he is assuming a tremendous responsibility, that his action is only justified by the excuse of dire necessity, and he suffers, if he is a man of any sensibility and feeling, an amount of mental anguish not easily to be described, and that none of us, who have been compelled to so terrible a duty, need feel ashamed to confess.

There are cases again, where, during pregnancy, the patient may be reduced by the shock of severe and long-continued pain or excessive vomiting, and its consequent inanition, to the verge of the grave. In such instances, it has been supposed that abortion was necessary to preserve the woman's life. The advance of science, however, has now shown that this procedure is not only often unnecessary, but in reality unscientific; the disturbances referred to occurring, as they generally do, in the earlier months of gestation, being owing not to the direct pressure of the womb upon the stomach or other organs, but to a so-called reflex and sympathetic disturbance of those organs, through the agency of the nervous system; and that a cure can in general be readily effected without in any way endangering the vitality of the child.

There are other instances that might be cited, cases of dangerous organic disease, as cancer of the womb, in which, however improbable it might seem, pregnancy does occasionally occur; cases of insanity, of epilepsy, or of other mental lesion, where there is fear of transmitting the malady to a line of offspring; cases of general ill-health, where there is perhaps a chance of the patient becoming an invalid for life; but for all these, and similar emergencies, there is a single answer, and but this one—that abortion, however it may seem indicated, should never be induced by a physician upon his own uncorroborated opinion, and, in a matter so grave, affecting, with his own reputation, the life of at least one, if not of a second human being, every man worthy of so weighty and responsible a trust will seek in consultation a second opinion. This is a matter of such importance to the welfare of the community, that long ago the law should have provided for its various dangers, and should wisely have left it to no man's discretion or purity of character to withstand the tremendous temptations which must be allowed to here exist. The law now provides, in one or more at least of our States, that the certificate of a single physician, no matter what his skill or standing, cannot commit a patient to the often necessary and beneficial seclusion of a lunatic asylum; two are required. How much more requisite is it that in the question we are now considering, to one mode of deciding which the physician may be prompted by pity, by personal sympathy, the entreaties of a favorite patient, and not seldom by the direct offer of comparatively enormous pecuniary compensation, the law should offer him its protecting shield, saving him even from himself, and helping him to see that the fee for an unnecessarily induced or allowed abortion is in reality the price of blood. As a class, it cannot be gainsaid that physicians of standing will spurn with indignation the direct bribe; let them look to it that they never carelessly permit what they condemn, by endeavoring to bring on the woman's periodical discharge when it is possible that she may have conceived, or by carelessly passing an instrument into her womb without ascertaining whether or no it contain the fruit of impregnation, or by allowing the completion of a miscarriage that may threaten or even have commenced, without resorting to every measure, of whatever character, that can possibly result in its arrest, and the consequent completion of the full period.

III.—What is the True Nature of an Intentional Abortion when not Requisite to Save the Life of the Mother.

There are those who will be influenced by evidence presented from abstract morality and religion. To such I shall first address myself. There are others who care nothing for ethical considerations, and who arrogate to themselves a right to decide as to the morality of taking or destroying the life of an unborn child. For these, also, I have an unanswerable argument—their own self-interest—an appeal to which will usually arrest the most hardened adept in other crime, much more these intelligent and otherwise innocent women, who have mostly erred through ignorance and a misapprehension of their own physical condition, and their own physical dangers, their own physical welfare.