In 1651 William Harvey (1578-1657) discovered the ''eggs'' in deer and declared that ''all living things come from an egg.'' To this he added that the fetus developed ''gradually,'' not in stages, as Aristotle implied. Marcello Malpighi (1628-1694) and Jan Swammerdam (1637-1680) examined fetal development in eggs, and Swammerdam declared that the black spot in a frog's egg is ''the frog itself complete in all its parts.''

The hypothesis was that each ovum contains the individual seed of the entire species that is to come afterward. The preformationists regarded the egg as central to reproduction, while the male triggered the process. But with the invention of the microscope, the debate was enriched. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) saw first that each drop of seminal fluid contained millions of ''worms'' or, in the less dramatic term, ''animalcules.'' Contemporaries were fascinated by the news, but they were baffled by all those worms. The preformationists and epigenecists--the egg-people and the sperm people--debated what they saw murkily. The debate spilled from the drawing rooms to the public arena. Europeans saw that older theories about fetal life were wrong, and the new ideas caused them to reexamine their positions on abortion. Even though it was not until 1876 that Oskar Hertwig actually saw a sperm fertilizing an egg, the event was known to science and to much of the public.

France made abortion criminal in 1792 with words based on the provisions of medieval town ordinances. In 1803, through Lord Ellenborough's bill, Britain declared anyone who administered an abortion a criminal, specifying only drug-induced abortions. The same act defined abortion as a procedure performed on any woman ''being quick with child.'' In 1810 Napoleon's Penal Code declared criminal any act whereby someone gave ''food, beverage, medicines, violence or any other means'' to procure an abortion. By the 1830s it was recognized that the concept of quickening, based on Aristotle, was untenable. The question was when was an abortion an abortion? In 1837 abortion was defined as eliminating pregnancy at any period, thereby dropping reference to quickening. In 1851 Pope Pius IX declared as subject to excommunication anyone who procured ''a successful abortion.'' Even though conception per se was not specified, gone were concepts such as ensoulment and ''formed fetus'' (quickened). One by one the nation-states of Europe defined abortion as occurring anytime after conception that pregnancy was deliberately terminated: Austria, 1852; Denmark, 1866; Belgium, 1867; Spain, 1870; Zu¨rich Canton, 1871; Netherlands, 1881; Bosnia/Herzegovina, 1881; Norway, 1885; Italy, 1889; and Turkey, 1911.

The actual history and context of abortion both explained and defied legal patterns. Sexual activity was rising, particularly among young people and the lower classes. Many women found themselves pregnant before marriage, and while rates of illegitimacy increased, there was also a new desire to terminate pregnancy. Wives might also seek means of reducing the threat of unwanted children in overcrowded, impoverished families. The desire for abortion increased, at least in some quarters. This helps explain the new efforts at legislation, but also their considerable ineffectiveness. Many women experienced illegal abortions--one estimate held that a quarter of workingclass women in Berlin had had at least one abortion by the 1890s. Even in the twentieth century, when more effective birth control limited the need for abortion within marriage in Western Europe, premarital sexual activity among youth maintained considerable demand. In Eastern Europe, where available birth control devices remained limited or poor quality into the late twentieth century, abortion was even more common, serving as a basic means of birth control, even though here too it was frequently illegal. Only in the later twentieth century did most European countries move to legalize abortion, thus reducing the often dangerous gap between law and practice.

Bibliography:

1)         Banks, Amand Carson. Birth Chairs, Midwives, and Medicine. Jackson, Miss., 1999.

2)         Eccles, Audrey. Obstetrics and Gynaecology in Tudor and Stuart England. Kent, Ohio, 1982.

3)         Heinsohn, Gunnar, and Otto Steiger. Die Vernichtung der weisen Frauen: Beitrage zur Theorie und Geschichte von Bevolkerung und Kindheit. Munich, 1985.

4)         McLaren, Angus. A History of Contraception from Antiquity to the Present. Oxford, 1990.

5)         Noonan, John T., Jr. Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by Catholic Theologians and Canonists. Enlarged ed. Cambridge, Mass., 1986.

6)         O'Dowd, Michael J., and Elliot E. Philipp. The History of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. New York, 1994.

7)         Shorter, Edward. A History of Women's Bodies. New York, 1982.

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