the physician who conscientiously
effects abortion, in accordance with his best knowledge, even if
mistakenly, may consider himself safe from all legal penalties,
and that he is much more likely to come in conflict with the law
if it can be proved that death followed as a result of his
neglect to induce abortion.

Pinard, who has discussed the right to control the foetal
life (_Annales de Gynecologie_, vols. lii and liii, 1899 and
1900), inspired by his enthusiastic propaganda for the salvation
of infant life, is led to the unwarranted conclusion that no one
has the rights of life and death over the foetus; "the infant's
right to his life is an imprescriptible and sacred right, which
no power can take from him." There is a mistake here, unless
Pinard deliberately desires to place himself, like Tolstoy, in
opposition to current civilized morality. So far from the infant
having any "imprescriptible right to life," even the adult has,
in human societies, no such inalienable right, and very much less
the foetus, which is not strictly a human being at all. We assume
the right of terminating the lives of those individuals whose
anti-social conduct makes them dangerous, and, in war, we
deliberately terminate, amid general applause and enthusiasm, the
lives of men who have been specially selected for this purpose on
account of their physical and general efficiency. It would be
absurdly inconsistent to say that we have no rights over the
lives of creatures that have, as yet, no part in human society at
all, and are not so much as born. We are here in presence of a
vestige of ancient theological dogma, and there can be little
doubt that, on the theoretical side at all events, the
"imprescriptible right" of the embryo will go the same way as the
"imprescriptible right" of the spermatozoeon. Both rights are
indeed "imprescriptible."

Of recent years a new, and, it must be admitted, somewhat unexpected,
aspect of this question of abortion has been revealed. Hitherto it has
been a question entirely in the hands of men, first, following the Roman
traditions, in the hands of Christian ecclesiastics, and later, in those
of the professional castes. Yet the question is in reality very largely,
and indeed mainly, a woman's question, and now, more especially in
Germany, it has been actively taken up by women. The Graefin