[Pete F.]

Better look back in History
When the United States first became independent, most states applied English common law to abortion. This meant it was not permitted after quickening, or the start of fetal movements, usually felt 15–20 weeks after conception.[6]

Abortions became illegal by statute in Britain in 1803, and various anti-abortion statutes began to appear in the United States in the 1820s that codified or expanded common law. In 1821, a Connecticut law targeted apothecaries who sold "poisons" to women for purposes of inducing an abortion, and New York made post-quickening abortions a felony and pre-quickening abortions a misdemeanor in 1829. Some argue that the early American abortion laws were motivated not by ethical concerns about abortion but by concern about the procedure's safety. However, some legal theorists point out that this theory is inconsistent with the fact that abortion was punishable regardless of whether any harm befell the pregnant woman and the fact that many of the early laws punished not only the doctor or abortionist, but also the woman who hired them.[7]

A number of other factors likely played a role in the rise of anti-abortion laws in the United States. Physicians, who were the leading advocates of abortion criminalization laws, appear to have been motivated at least in part by advances in medical knowledge. Science had discovered that conception inaugurated a more or less continuous process of development, which would produce a new human being if uninterrupted. Moreover, quickening was found to be neither more nor less crucial in the process of gestation than any other step. On a logical basis, many physicians concluded that if society considered it unjustifiable to terminate pregnancy after the fetus had quickened, and if quickening was a relatively unimportant step in the gestation process, then it was just as wrong to terminate a pregnancy before quickening as after quickening.[8] Ideologically, the Hippocratic Oath and the medical mentality of that age to defend the value of human life as an absolute also played a significant role in molding opinions about abortion.[8] Doctors were also influenced by practical reasons to impose anti-abortion laws. For one, abortion providers tended to be untrained and not members of medical societies. In an age where the leading doctors in the nation were attempting to standardize the medical profession, these "irregulars" were considered a nuisance to public health.[9] The more formalized medical profession disliked the "irregulars" because they were competition, often at a cheaper cost.

Despite campaigns to end the practice of abortion, abortifacient advertising was highly effective in the United States, though less so across the Atlantic. Contemporary estimates of mid-19th century abortion rates in the United States suggest between 20-25% of all pregnancies in the United States during that era ended in abortion.[10] This era saw a marked shift in those who were obtaining abortions. Before the start of the 19th century, most abortions were sought by unmarried women who had become pregnant out of wedlock. Out of 54 abortion cases published in American medical journals between 1839 and 1880, over half were sought by married women, and well over 60% of the married women already had at least one child.[11] The sense that married women were now frequently obtaining abortions worried many conservative physicians, who were almost exclusively men. In the post-Civil War era, much of the blame was placed on the burgeoning women's rights movement.

Though the medical profession expressed hostility toward feminism, many feminists of the era were opposed to abortion.[12][13] In The Revolution, operated by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, an anonymous contributor signing "A" wrote in 1869 about the subject, arguing that instead of merely attempting to pass a law against abortion, the root cause must also be addressed. Simply passing an anti-abortion law would, the writer stated, "be only mowing off the top of the noxious weed, while the root remains. [...] No matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; But oh! thrice guilty is he who drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the crime."[13][14][15][16] To many feminists of this era, abortion was regarded as an undesirable necessity forced upon women by thoughtless men.[17] Even the "free love" wing of the feminist movement refused to advocate for abortion and treated the practice as an example of the hideous extremes to which modern marriage was driving women.[18] Marital rape and the seduction of unmarried women were societal ills which feminists believed caused the need to abort, as men did not respect women's right to abstinence.[18]

However, physicians remained the loudest voice in the anti-abortion debate, and they carried their anti-feminist agenda to state legislatures around the country, advocating not only anti-abortion laws, but also laws against birth control. This movement presaged the modern debate over women's body rights.[19] A campaign was launched against the movement and the use and availability of contraceptives.

Criminalization of abortion accelerated from the late 1860s, through the efforts of concerned legislators, doctors, and the American Medical Association.[20] In 1873, Anthony Comstock created the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, an institution dedicated to supervising the morality of the public. Later that year, Comstock successfully influenced the United States Congress to pass the Comstock Law, which made it illegal to deliver through the U.S. mail any "obscene, lewd, or lascivious" material. It also prohibited producing or publishing information pertaining to the procurement of abortion or the prevention of conception or venereal disease, even to medical students.[21] The production, publication, importation, and distribution of such materials was suppressed under the Comstock Law as being obscene, and similar prohibitions were passed by 24 of the 37 states.[22]

In 1900, abortion was a felony in every state. Some states included provisions allowing for abortion in limited circumstances, generally to protect the woman's life or to terminate pregnancies arising from rape or incest.[23] Abortions continued to occur, however, and became increasingly available. The American Birth Control League was founded by Margaret Sanger in 1921 to promote the founding of birth control clinics and enable women to control their own fertility.[24]

By the 1930s, licensed physicians performed an estimated 800,000 abortions a year.[25]