Gesellschaft_, Bd. II, Heft 5; and _Sexual-Probleme_, Jan.,
1908, p. 23.)

In view of these facts it is not surprising that the induction of abortion
has been permitted and even encouraged in many civilizations. Its
unqualified condemnation is only found in Christendom, and is due to
theoretical notions. In Turkey, under ordinary circumstances, there is no
punishment for abortion. In the classic civilization of Greece and Rome,
likewise, abortion was permitted though with certain qualifications and
conditions. Plato admitted the mother's right to decide on abortion but
said that the question should be settled as early as possible in
pregnancy. Aristotle, who approved of abortion, was of the same opinion.
Zeno and the Stoics regarded the foetus as the fruit of the womb, the soul
being acquired at birth; this was in accordance with Roman law which
decreed that the foetus only became a human being at birth.[438] Among the
Romans abortion became very common, but, in accordance with the
patriarchal basis of early Roman institutions, it was the father, not the
mother, who had the right to exercise it. Christianity introduced a new
circle of ideas based on the importance of the soul, on its immortality,
and the necessity of baptism as a method of salvation from the results of
inherited sin. We already see this new attitude in St. Augustine who,
discussing whether embryos that died in the womb will rise at the
resurrection, says "I make bold neither to affirm nor to deny, although I
fail to see why, if they are not excluded from the number of the dead,
they should not attain to the resurrection of the dead."[439] The
criminality of abortion was, however, speedily established, and the early
Christian Emperors, in agreement with the Church, edicted many fantastic
and extreme penalties against abortion. This tendency continued under
ecclesiastical influence, unrestrained, until the humanitarian movement of
the eighteenth century, when Beccaria, Voltaire, Rousseau and other great
reformers succeeded in turning the tide of public opinion against the
barbarity of the laws, and the penalty of death for abortion was finally
abolished.[440]

Medical science and practice at the present day--although it can scarcely
be said that it speaks with an absolutely unanimous voice--on the whole
occupies a position midway between that of the classic lawyers and that of
the later Christian ecclesiastics. It is, on the whole, in favor of
sacri