The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization

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abortion

abortion
was controversial in antiquity. Doctors taking the Hippocratic Oath (see medicine, §1.5) swore not to administer abortifacients, but other Hippocratic texts suggest that prostitutes (see prostitution, secular) often employed abortion. A Lysias fragment suggests that abortion was a crime in Athens against the husband, if his wife was pregnant when he died, since his unborn child could have claimed the estate. Greek temple inscriptions show that abortion mae a woman impure for 40 days (see pollution).

The Stoics (see Stoicism) believed that the foetus resembled a plant and only became an animal at birth when it started breathing. This attitude made abortion acceptable. Roman jurisprudence maintained that the foetus was not autonomous from the mother's body. There is no evidence for laws against abortion...

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