If the inclusion in the French Constitution of a “guaranteed freedom” for women to resort to abortion has not given rise or resurface a debate comparable to that raging in the United States, certain elected officials and commentators, essentially right-wingers continue to oppose this practice. These conservatives, in this case, agree with the position of their American counterparts, according to which life is “sacred” from conception and its preservation is a moral imperative.
This position is accompanied by a widespread prejudice according to which the social acceptance of abortion, in the light of human history, is recent, particularly encouraged by the wave of liberalization of morals in the 1960s. The reality is quite different. . For thousands of years, our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived in small communities in which, to use the words of the American sociologist Robert Nisbet in Prejudice: A Philosophical Dictionary (1982), “sentimentality toward fetal life, and even toward the newborn, was absent.” Literally possessing a right of life or death over infants and unborn children, these human groups exercised it according to the resources of the community, the existing ratio between men and women and the health of the child. The real birth, later, took the form of a ritual of admission into the community.
Among the Romans, the authority of paterfamilias was exerted almost without limits on other members of the household, including fetuses. Kinship, in this case, was based on tradition and custom – which notably allowed adoption – much more than on the concrete act of birth and blood ties. As for the Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle, they approved abortion under certain conditions, the first as a tool of population control, the second as the prerogative of family freedom. Nisbet also notes that Hippocrates, for his part, warned doctors not to provide women with “abortive pessaries”… without commenting on other possible means.
Christianity, apparently severe towards abortion, was not always so in practice. Nisbet notes that no religion, including Christianity, recognizes miscarriage, induced or not, as a death to be commemorated through prayer and ritual. The Bible itself does not explicitly prohibit abortion. Overall, it remains, in the same way as adultery or pride, a sin, sometimes mortal, sometimes venial, depending on whether it is practiced before “animation” – the appearance of the soul – of the fetus.
In France, if theedict of Henry II of 1556 punished abortion and infanticide with the death penalty, the jurisprudence of the Ancien Régime seems to have been lax. For a long time, on the whole, abortion was theoretically condemned by civil and religious governments, but in practice tolerated, not in the name of individual rights, a still very limited notion, but because the authority which governed firstly, the life of individuals, explains Nisbet, remained that of the family.
Reasons and feelings
The rupture occurred in the 19th century, driven by moral, demographic and military concerns. “The contemporary concern with regard to abortion, explains Nisbet about the English-speaking world, finds its source in the late 19th century, [quand il] becomes the centerpiece of a moral crusade, just like alcohol, tobacco, premarital sex, masturbation, meat eating, narcotics, and opening the saloon on Sunday.” The sociologist evokes a “gigantic crusade orchestrated by the middle class against the morals and customs of other classes, including the upper classes”. It was also at this time that childhood took on a new sentimental dimension, parents being encouraged to get closer of their children, who are no longer considered just miniature adults but full-fledged beings. This results in a certain idealization of pregnancy… and fetuses.
In France, the geopolitical context, after 1870 and especially 1918, fueled pronatalist positions such as that of the League against the crime of abortion. In the Penal Code of 1810, abortion was defined as a crime, judged by an assize court, and punishable by a prison sentence. Assize juries were considered too lenient, the law of March 21, 1923 defined abortion as an offense, in the hope that by giving jurisdiction to professional judges, the penalties would be better applied.
Significantly, it is authoritarian regimes, eager to have a large industrial and military workforce, and taking a dim view of the autonomy of families, always likely to obstruct their ambitions, which have enacted the strictest anti-abortion laws. In fact, Tsarist Russia, Stalin’s USSR, Mussolini’s Italy, Hitler’s Germany and Vichy France all sought to restrict or prohibit access to abortion. Under Vichy, according to the law of February 15, 1942, abortion was considered a state crime punishable by death.
After the Second World War, the growing defense of abortion was based on completely new justifications in view of its long history: no longer the autonomy of families but individual freedom, in this case that women to dispose of their bodies, including against family authority. “Ironically, notes Nisbet, the act of abortion is conferred […] the same meaning, sacred, formerly granted at birth” And surprisingly, the contemporary opposition to abortion, by defending the “right to life”, including from conception, turns out to be an equally individualist conception as the defense of abortion.
Ultimately, we can undoubtedly be amused by the astonishing proximity existing between the progressives of today and the Romans of yesterday, and the unexpected disagreement between contemporary conservatives, keen on tradition, and the traditions actually in force. formerly.
.