[Vision2020] Compassion for All Life

[nickgier at adelphia.net]

Greetings:

The remarkable men (and equally remarkable women behind them) who wrote our founding documents would have followed English Common Law with regard to the rights of human persons and the legality of abortion.

Early American jurists would have read Sir William Blackstone, who believed that abortions could be performed up until the time of quickening.  Following this legal tradition, abortions were common in early America reaching a peak in the mid-19 Century.  At this time it was estimated that one in four pregnancies ended in abortion, a rate equal to that of the 1970s and 80s.  (Gasp! Americans were baby killers then!)

Interestingly enough, America's Protestant churches were much more concerned about freeing slaves than banning abortion.  Indeed, infanticide was widespread in Reformation Europe but Luther and Calvin had nothing to say about it.  Roman Catholic Law did not move their abortion ban back to conception until 1917, keeping it at quickening before the.

The American Medical Association (founded in 1847) made the first moves to ban abortion.  The doctors' main motivation was to eliminate midwives and protect women's health; and it had very little to do with the rights of the fetus. 

The Supreme Court decision of 1973 was not written in a vacuum, and the good justices were well aware of English Common Law as it was practiced in early America.  A cursory reading of the footnotes will show that they did their homework.

So there is a seamless thread from Judge Blackstone (18th C.) to Judge Blackmun in 1973.  It is absurd to think that there is somehow a break between the Declaration of Independence in the 18th Century and the Supreme Court of the late 20th Century.

Yours for clear thinking and accurate history,

Nick Gier