ABSTRACT
The study of abortion promises to cast a fresh light on a number of vital questions: women’s responses to their reproductive function, male and female attitudes towards sexuality, and medical and moral concerns for embryonic life. This chapter attempts to determine who aborted, their motives, their helpers, their methods, their timing, and their attitudes towards such practices. It shows, first, that concerns for health and family well-being could have led many to contemplate abortion; second that there existed a wide range of techniques that were believed to be effective in precipitating miscarriages; and third that the concept of ‘quickening’ permitted women to consider the action as legitimate. The extraordinary number of references in herbals and recipe books to potions designed to ‘restore the menses’ provides evidence that women were not passive in relation to their fertility; they wanted to control it and were willing to go to considerable lengths to do so.
