ANSWERS: 2
  • In ancient Greece abortion was not only a medical but also a legal and political concern. Several philosophers, such as Plato, recommended abortion in certain circumstances. The oath of Hippocrates (460-357 BC) gives evidence that not everyone readily accepted abortion. The oath includes the phrase "…Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly, I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion." Plato (428-347 BC) and Aristotle (384-322 BC)supported abortion in their views on the individual related to the state. Both philosophers distinguish between necessary and unnecessary abortion. Aristotle’s concept of "delayed ensoulment" deeply penetrated into the intellectual world. In his teachings on delayed ensoulment, Aristotle distinguished between vegetable, animal and human life. He believed that the human soul entered the body when the foetus was fully formed. He placed the human ensoulment at forty days for males and at eighty days for females. In Roman law, abortion and infanticide were really not distinguished. An infant did not have legal status until the head of the family, the "pater familias", accepted it. Until accepted, the infant could be destroyed (left outside the home to die of natural causes). In the aqueducts below the Roman baths many child skeletons were unearthed by archaeologists, these have been attributed to the many prostitutes that gathered there to sell their bodies. Nevertheless, in the Roman Republic and later in the Roman Empire, laws were established to limit abortion. From Christian and pagan side, attempts were made to promote the family. In general the anti-abortion attitudes do not in the first place reflect concern for newly developed life. Main concern appears to have been population politics and concern for the women undergoing abortion. http://www.godandscience.org/abortion/earlychristian.html
  • 1) Here is some information about the views of primitive cultures and classical literature about abortion: "Many of the methods employed in early and primitive cultures were non-surgical. Physical activities like strenuous labour, climbing, paddling, weightlifting, or diving were a common technique. Others included the use of irritant leaves, fasting, bloodletting, pouring hot water onto the abdomen, and lying on a heated coconut shell. In primitive cultures, techniques developed through observation, adaptation of obstetrical methods, and transculturation. Archaeological discoveries indicate early surgical attempts at the extraction of a fetus; however, such methods are not believed to have been common, given the infrequency with which they are mentioned in ancient medical texts. - References in classical literature Much of what is known about the methods and practice of abortion in Greek and Roman history comes early classical texts. Abortion, as a gynecological procedure, was primarily the province of women who were either midwives or well-informed laypeople. In his Theaetetus, Plato mentions a midwife's right to induce abortion in the early stages of pregnancy. - Hippocratic Oath The Oath is part of the Hippocratic Corpus. Often ascribed to Hippocrates, the Greek physician, the Corpus is believed to be the collective work of Hippocratic practioners. While the Oath forbids the use of pessaries (vaginal suppositories) to induce abortion, it did not prohibit abortion. Modern scholarship suggests that pessaries were banned because they were reported to cause vaginal ulcers. This specific prohibition has been interpreted by some medical scholars as prohibiting abortion in a broader sense than by pessary. One such interpretation is by Scribonius Largus, a Roman medical writer: "Hippocrates, who founded our profession, laid the foundation for our discipline by an oath in which it was proscribed not to give a pregnant woman a kind of medicine that expels the embryo/fetus." Regardless of the Oath's interpretation, Hippocrates writes of advising a prostitute who became pregnant to jump up and down, touching her buttocks with her heels at each leap, so as to induce miscarriage. Other writings attributed to him describe instruments fashioned to dilate the cervix and curette inside of the uterus. - Soranus' Gynecology Soranus, a 2nd century Greek physician, recommended abortion in cases involving health complications as well as emotional immaturity, and provided detailed suggestions in his work Gynecology. Diuretics, emmenagogues, enemas, fasting, and bloodletting were prescribed as safe abortion methods, although Soranus advised against the use of sharp instruments to induce miscarriage, due to the risk of organ perforation. He also advised women wishing to abort their pregnancies to engage in energetic walking, carrying heavy objects, riding animals, and jumping so that the woman's heels were to touch her buttocks with each jump, which he described as the "Lacedaemonian Leap"." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_abortion#References_in_classical_literature 2) "People commonly suppose that abortion is an invention of modern, technological medicine. In fact, it was well known in Greco-Roman society. Plato's Republic made abortion or infanticide obligatory if the mother was over 40. In Aristotle's ideal society, abortion would be compulsory for families that exceeded a certain size. Aristotle also made a distinction that would develop a life of its own: the "formed" versus the "unformed" fetus. Aristotle believed that human life was present in the fetus when distinct organs were formed, 40 days after conception for males and 90 for females. This was a metaphysical, not a moral, distinction; Aristotle would abort both "formed" and "unformed" fetuses. But some Christians—Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas in particular—would later adopt his distinction. It survived in various forms right down to the arbitrary trimesters of Roe v. Wade. Both Plato and Aristotle believed that a child had life long before birth; it was just that the welfare of society and family were more important to them than the rights of a child. The Roman empire made the same assessment while adopting the Stoic belief that life begins only at birth. Abortion was common. As Michael Gorman puts it in Abortion and the Early Church, the Roman empire was paradoxically "profamily but not fundamentally antiabortion. That the fetus is not a person was fundamental to Roman law. Even when born, the child was valued primarily not for itself but for its usefulness to the father, the family and especially the state."" Source and further information: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/januaryweb-only/1-20-31.0.html

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