Punishing Abortion: Duty, Morality, and Practicality in Early 20th‐Century France

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12176
• Published date: 01 January 2017
• Author: Karen E. Huber
• Date: 01 January 2017

Punishing Abortion: Duty, Morality, and

Practicality in Early 20

th

-Century France

By KAREN E. HUBER

ABSTRACT. Debates over the legality and morality of abortionin Europe,

especially France, were quite different in the early 20

th

century than they

became in Europe and America after widespread legalization. Instead of

focusing on the potential rights of the unborn, politically powerful pro-

natalist activists and their less influential neo-Malthusian adversaries

debated the need for larger populations, the role of abortion in

facilitating sexual immorality, and the economics of single motherhood.

The fetus was largely ignored as most French people continued to hold

pre-modern views of abortion prior to fetal movement as the morally

neutral act of restoring delayed menstruation. French juries often

showed leniency to women who aborted, although they more

frequently voted to convict abortionists, especially midwives.

Recent debates over abortion in the United States often seem to take

place on either side of an unbridgeable chasm. On one rocky slope are

people who see abortion as the selfish murder of a fully human person,

against which deeply held moral and religious convictions require abso-

lute and sustained action. On the other slope are those who do not

believe that fetuses are fully human individuals entitled to equal rights

with adult women, and who prioritize the rights of these women, whose

lives will be changed and in some cases damaged by an undesired preg-

nancy, over any rights the fetus might have. This enduring and conten-

tious debate is fundamentally different than discussions about abortion in

Europe, especially in France, during the late 19

th

and early 20

th

centuries.

At that time, the rights and personhood of the fetus were of little

importance. In France, concerns about sexual morality, national

requirements for workers and soldiers, and practical considerations like

*Associate Professor of History at Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia. She earned

her Ph.D. in European history from Ohio State University. Her research focuses on

the history of female criminality and women’s sexual and reproductive decision

making in France during the 20

th

century. Email: khuber@wesleyancollege.edu

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 76, No. 1 (January, 2017).

DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12176

V

C2017 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

family economics and maintaining employment far outweighed consid-

erations of the rights or suffering of the fetus. Furthermore, French pop-

ular opinion divided abortion defendants into perpetrators (the

abortionists) and victims (the pregnant women). The public (including

juries and judges) could and did forgive an unsavory but necessary

action taken by the woman who had the abortion. However, women

and men who performed the abortions, especially the professionals,

who were called “angel-makers,” received little sympathy and were

widely portrayed as selfish uncaring monsters.

This article addresses the ways different parts of French society—the

law, the church, pro-natalist and neo-Malthusian activists, and judges

and juries—responded to abortion. It relies on 159 case files from pros-

ecutions of abortion and other reproductive crimes in two French

departments, Ille-et-Vilaine and the Rh^

one. Ille-et-Vilaine in Brittany

was largely rural and strongly Catholic, with its capital in Rennes. The

Rh^

one, centered on the city of Lyon, was predominately urban and had

many factories. We shall see that despite efforts by the Catholic Church

and pro-natalist activists to redefine abortion as a sinful crime against

an innocent fetus or even against national security, French judges,

juries, and popular opinion all continued to understand abortion as a

sometimes necessary, if distasteful, part of modern life.

Traditions of Abortion in Pre-Modern Europe

Abortion has long been a part of European society. John Riddle (1997)

traces mention of using certain plants to prevent pregnancy or induce

abortion back to Ancient Egypt and Greece, and showed that ordinary

women continued to use plants to regulate their fertility throughout the

Middle Ages and the early modern era. Throughout the Middle Ages,

abortion was sometimes tolerated, sometimes punished. Traditional

Catholic teaching held that a fetus did not receive its soul until

“ensoulment,” between 40 and 80 days after conception. Since this

roughly coincided with the moment, called “quickening,” when preg-

nant women first felt the movement of the fetus in their wombs, the

two became linked in popular understanding. Until this moment, tradi-

tion held, any efforts to reestablish a woman’s delayed menstrual cycle

The American Journal of Economics and Sociology96