Roe and History of Abortion Law and Science

Consider these items:

1. "Quickening--the mother's sense of fetal movement--was the first reliable evidence that the child was alive, and the [common] law depended on it. Why did the English common law prohibit abortion [only] after quickening? Because there was no reliable evidence that there was an existing child, or that it was alive, before quickening. When medical science challenged the quickening rule in the 1800s by showing that conception was the beginning of the life of a human being, states quickly moved to repeal the quickening rule and replace it with an abortion prohibition from conception."
Forsythe, Abuse of Discretion at 108.


2. The original Hippocratic Oath, taken by doctors for centuries prior to Roe, said this: "I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give to a woman a pessary to procure an abortion."