Abortion - Legal To Illegal And Back
...From being legal to illegal and back again, abortion has been through a long and tough struggle around the world and especially in the United States. Many people see abortion as different kinds of procedures and operations, but there can only be one scientific explanation for the procedure that has been on the minds of millions.
Abortion has been around ever since people have been able to write about it. In the early 12th century it was a crime under the Assyrian code. Women that chose to have an abortion where tried, and if convicted, impaled on a stake and denied the dignity of a proper burial. During the Classical Era (6th 4th century BC), Greece allowed abortion. An abortionist's failure to inform the father was criminally punishable and most of the women were sent to death. In Ancient Rome the father also had the right to know that his wife was going to have an abortion. The women had to tell the father that she was going to have the abortion or face the possibility of death without proper burial. (Flanders 4)
By the end of the 1st century AD the Christian church had declared that abortion was a sin and was punishable with death. In 1588, Pope Sixtus the 5th called abortion the same as murder, and thus subject to the same penalties. Three years later Pope Gregory the 16th eliminated any penalties until ensoulment - which was forty days after conception. In 1869 Pope Pius the 9th removed any distinction between formed and unformed fetus's and made it a sin. (Flanders 5)
In the United States abortion was not an issue until 1812 when Massachusetts' Supreme Court declared that abortion was legal before fetal movement. Until 1821 abortion was legal before fetal movement but Connecticut passed a statute that made it a crime to give a women "quick with a child" a poison meant to cause her to miscarry. Between...
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