HISTORY
ABORTION
Kahun Medical Papyrus (1850 BC)
In the Egyptian city of El Lahun (AKA, Kahun) the oldest known Egyptian medical text was found. ( 2 ) It dates to the 12th Egyptian dynasty, somewhere between 1850-1800BC, and was written on pages of hammered plant fibers, known as papyrus. This ancient text is known as The Kahun Medical Papyrus, or more specifically, The Kahun Gynecological Papyrus. It records 3 different prescriptions for contraceptives (“contra-conception” - it prevents pregnancy). ( 1 ) Ancient Egyptian medicine loosely mingled magic and natural medicine. So, prescriptions in that day were basically recipes mixing things like crocodile dung, and fermented dough, along with herbs and extracts, and there could be a magic spell written or spoken over the process. While this text is too fragmentary to tell us much about Egyptian views on abortion, it does show that they understood the concept of contraceptives and took measures to prevent unwanted pregnancy.
Kahun Medical Papyrus, Plate VI.1 (Medical Papyrus), Middle Kingdom Egypt. Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology (UCL), via ETANA Core Texts.
Kahun Medical Papyrus, Plate VI.1 (Medical Papyrus), Middle Kingdom Egypt. Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology (UCL), via ETANA Core Texts.
Kahun Medical Papyrus, Plate VI.1 (Medical Papyrus), Middle Kingdom Egypt. Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology (UCL), via ETANA Core Texts.
Kahun Medical Papyrus, Plate VI.1 (Medical Papyrus), Middle Kingdom Egypt. Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology (UCL), via ETANA Core Texts.
Ebers Medical Papyrus (1500 BC)
Representing the best preserved of the ancient Egyptian medical texts, the Ebers Medical Papyrus is an impressive 68ft long (!) and 12inches tall. Discovered in the royal tombs in Thebes, Egypt (modern day Luxor) in the mid-19th century, it was later purchased by its eventual namesake and famed Egyptologist George Ebers. The text dates to the 2nd intermediate period or new kingdom era in Ancient Egypt, roughly 1550-1500BC. The prescriptions described here differ from the Rammesseum and Kahun Medical Papyri in that it’s entirely herbal (no crocodile or elephant dung required). And the prescription is for stopping a pregnancy in the “first, second, or third period.” ( 3 ) ( 4 ) In other words, it’s intended for contraception and abortion depending on how Egyptians would have understood life-in-utero.
Picture: Skolicki, Papyrus Ebers, (Public Domain)
The Hebrew Bible (1500-430 BC)
The Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa) from the Qumran or “Dead Sea” Scrolls in 1947. Image (Public Domain)
The Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa) from the Qumran or “Dead Sea” Scrolls in 1947. Image (Public Domain)
The Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa) from the Qumran or “Dead Sea” Scrolls in 1947. Image (Public Domain)
The Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa) from the Qumran or “Dead Sea” Scrolls in 1947. Image (Public Domain)
Conservative Bible scholars date the first book of the Hebrew Bible, Genesis, around 1440 BC attributing authorship to Moses. But even though Genesis 1-2 describes prehistoric Creation, the earliest written book of the Bible was probably Job since contextual clues suggest it was written between the time of Abraham and Moses. Nevertheless, From the earliest poetry (Job) to the last prophet of the Hebrew Bible (Malachi, in the Book of the Twelve), the overarching biblical message about children and child-bearing is that children are a blessing (Ps 127:3-5), human life is sacred (Gen. 1:26-28), and marriage, family, and parenting are God-ordained pillars of civilization (Gen. 1-2; Deut. 6:4-9; Song of Solomon 8:6-7). There are two passages, however, that advocates suggest are “pro-choice” – Exodus 21:22-25 and Numbers 5:11-31. But neither of these refer to elective abortion, much less an elective abortion policy. And both rely on a questionable translation or interpretation. ( 5 )
Molech Worship at the Amman Citadel (1400 BC)
The ruins of an ancient citadel-temple were found in Amman Jordan. Among the remains is a written dedication to Molech (Moloch/Moleck/Melech/Milchom). That dedication tablet indicates that this was where people worshipped the ancient Canaanite god Molech. These ruins include over 1,000 bone fragments, 90% of which were human, and most of them from adolescents between 14-18 years old. This was not just a place of ritual sacrifice, nor of human sacrifice, but child sacrifice. This site was a Tophet (or Topheth), that is, an ancient burial site for human sacrifices. Molech worship was believed to include child sacrifice long before the Amman temple was discovered in the Modern era. Medieval scholar Rabbi “Rashi” Schlomo Tizchaki in the 11th-12th cent. AD describes this practice attributed to Molech-worship: ( 6 )
Picture: Molech Sacrifice sketch (Public Domain)
the high places of Topheth, That is Molech, which was of copper, and they would heat it up from underneath it with its hands spread out and heated. And they would place the child on his hands, and he would be burnt and moan, and the priests would beat drums so that the father should not hear his son’s voice and take pity.
Phoenician Baal Worship at Carthage (730-146 BC)
Archaeological remains at an ancient cemetery in Carthage (North Africa in modern day Tunisia) indicate that for about 600 years citizens of this Phoenician city practiced ritual child sacrifice. ( 7 ) Discovered in 1921 by French archaeologists, this site included dedications to Baal (whom the Greeks identified as Cronus), and 20,000 urns, each containing the ashes and charred remains of Children (infants through age 4). These human sacrificial burial grounds are known as Tophets and the one found in Carthage is believed to be the largest, most well-preserved, in the Mediterranean world. This practice was not officially ended till it was prohibited as part of their peace treaty with Galen following the Greek siege of Carthage (149-146BC).
Excavations at the Tophet of Carthage, Tunisia, showing archaeological remains of the Punic-era burial site unearthed in 1921. Cité par Serge Lancel, Carthage, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Stelae in the Tophet of Salammbô (ancient Carthage, Tunisia). GIRAUD Patrick, CC BY-SA 2.5 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5>, via Wikimedia Commons
Stelae at the Tophet of Carthage. User: (WT-shared) Shoestring at wts wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Excavations at the Tophet of Carthage, Tunisia, showing archaeological remains of the Punic-era burial site unearthed in 1921. Cité par Serge Lancel, Carthage, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Twelve Tablets of Roman Law (450 BC)
Around 450BC the Twelve Tablets of Roman Law were written and ratified. These are a legal charter and law code for the Roman world. The original tablets are lost, but they were referenced many times in later works. Tablet IV "Patria Potestas" (power of the father) reads: ( 8 )
1. A notably deformed child shall be killed immediately.
2a. To a father... shall be given over a son the power of life and death.
2b. If a father thrice surrenders a son for sale the son shall be free from the father.
3. To repudiate his wife her husband shall order her... to have her own property for herself, shall take the keys, shall expel her.
4. A child born within 10months of the father's death shall enter into the inheritance...
Simeon Netchev, 2 June 2023
Roman society was patriarchal and authoritative. Wives were property, and part of the "estate." Fathers could sell their sons into slavery if they chose. And birth defects and physical disabilities were met with infanticide; by "exposure" (exposti; left out to die in the woods).
Tertullian, however, referring to infanticide, points out other methods allegedly used against disabled neonates in Rome: "you expose them [infants] to the cold and hunger, and to wild beasts, or else you get rid of them by the slower death of drowning.' ( 9 ) In practice, Roman laws allowed fathers near total sovereignty over their household. Fathers, or sometimes the eldest son (if the father was gone) were known as the pater familias (head of the family). Their "paternal power" meant almost total authority over their wife and children. They could abuse their children, sell them into slavery, or even kill them if they desired, until the day that child was legally recognized as an adult. The idea was the father was the governing sovereign over his household, and he was to model roman rule in the home just as the Emperor did over the Empire. There were some limitations including no sexual abuse. The republican era of Rome lasted till 31BC when Rome became an empire under Octavian, the first emperor of Rome. Imperial Rome endured till Western Rome fell to Germanic invaders in 476AD. The Eastern Roman Empire held on for another millennium, till 1453AD, in what is known as the Byzantine empire, in Asia Minor (modern day Turkey). While it's unclear how much of the Patria Potestas doctrine endured across the nearly two millenia of Rome civilization (451BC to 1453AD) that doctrine undoubtedly left a patriarchal imprint on western civilization.
Hippocrates and the Hippocratic Oath (400 BC)
The ancient Greek doctor, and one of the most famous in the world, Hippocrates is most known for his Hippocratic Oath (400BC). But he is also credited with writing a text devoted to women’s health issues titled On the Diseases of Women. Factoring heavily into this text are the fields of obstetrics and gynecology, as he addresses various aspects of women’s reproductive health. At least 10 different recipes are given for abortifacients and contraceptives. ( 11 ) But, in light of his famous oath, these prescriptions are not intended for use in elective abortion, but rather for life-saving therapeutic abortions.
Hippocrates is the namesake of perhaps the most famous medical oath in world history, the Hippocratic Oath. Believed to date to 400BC, the oldest surviving versions are from 275AD. Long used as a “swearing in” creed for medical professionals the Hippocratic Oath is a sworn commitment, before “the gods”, to practice medicine in an ethical and upstanding way. In the classic version of this oath it includes an explicit ban on euthanasia and abortion saying: ( 10 )
Nor shall any man’s entreaty prevail upon me to administer poison to anyone [to deliberately harm or kill them]; neither will I counsel any man to do so... I will give no sort of medicine to any pregnant woman, with a view to destroy the child.
This oath would be rewritten in 1965 by Luis Lasagna to permit abortion. It is popularly believed that all medical professionals have to swear by this oath to earn their medical license but that’s not the case. Only about 80% do so. Nevertheless, the oath reflects an established convention for the ethics of medical care, informing ethics boards, and legal cases wherever a physician is under scrutiny or suspected of malpractice.
Plato Endorses Government-based Population Control (400 BC)
The Ancient Greek thinker Plato (428-327BC) is widely considered the most influential philosopher of all time. In his Laws he casually suggests that states can/should use various means to control the population rate through “methods of inhibition”, suggesting contraception and perhaps abortion (Laws, V.740D). ( 13 ) In Thaeateus, Plato mentions in passing that midwives (birthing nurses) are well-versed in ways to induce early labor or cause miscarriages. ( 12 )
Socrates: ...midwives should know better than anyone else who are pregnant and who are not?
Theaetetus: Certainly.
Socrates: And furthermore, the midwives, by means of drugs and incantations, are able to arouse the pangs of labor and, if they wish, to make them milder, and to cause those to bear who have difficulty in bearing; and they cause miscarriages if they think them desirable.
(Plato, Thaeateus, 149c-d)
Plato acknowledges that there was some knowledge of pharmacology that could induce abortion and possibly contraception, increasing or reducing fertility. He also supports government population control measures, including contraception and perhaps even abortion.
Serrano, Edgar. "Statue of Plato." World History Encyclopedia, July 02, 2020.
Aristotle Endorses Government-Based Population Control (350 BC)
The celebrated Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322BC) known for tutoring Alexander the Great supported government-based population control including contraception, early-term abortion, and eugenic infanticide. In his Politics he writes: ( 14 )
As to exposing or rearing the children born, let there be a law that no deformed child shall be reared; but on the ground of number of children, if the regular customs hinder any of those born being exposed, there must be a limit fixed to the procreation of offspring, and if any people have a child as a result of intercourse in contravention of these regulations, abortion must be practiced on it (the child).
(Politics, 7.1335b)
Aristotle would hardly qualify as “humanitarian” by modern standards. Whatever wisdom and enlightenment he brought to the world of ethics and politics, it was generously mixed with prejudice, classism, and confidence in monarchic government. Here he affirms eugenic infanticide (by exposure), and government-based population control. Nevertheless, “Aristotle disapproved of abortions after the fetus had formed.” ( 15 )
In Aristotle’s view, humans develop in the womb through different stages of biological life progressing from nutritive life (able to digest nutrients), to sensate life (sensory ability), to animate life (able to move itself), and eventually to rational life (able to think, reason, desire, understand, etc.). In his view, the developing human might not have a “soul” (animating force) until about 40 days after conception for males, and 90 days for females (see, Aristotle, History of Animals 7.3.588b). Elsewhere, Aristotle seems to suggest that human development is incremental, making it too difficult to specify an exact point where ensoulment occurs (Aristotle, Generations of Animals, 736a-b; see John Riddle, Conception and Abortion, 21). In Aristotle’s view, “early-term” abortion isn’t killing a human being, but rather a sub-human organism. Modern science has since clarified that new human beings begin at conception. Regardless of when “ensoulment” might occur (if at all), inserting that notion into natural science or politics would be a religious imposition.
Greek manuscript of Aristotle’s works (12th century, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, pluteo 87.4): manuscript pages showing text from Aristotle’s Sense and Sensibilia (and associated with Historia Animalium tradition). Image by Sailko, Wikimedia Commons, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0).
Cicero Confirms Roman Infanticide and An Abortion Trial (66 BC)
In his book On the Laws 3.8 the famous stoic philosopher and Roman statesmen Cicero (106-43BC) says that “Deformed infants shall be killed.” ( 16 ) He’s quoting tablet IV, “Patria Potestas” from the Twelve Tablets of Roman Law. As such, he confirms the practice of Roman eugenic infanticide. This testimony also confirms that “exposure” was not just legal in the early Roman Empire, but was practiced in the 1st Century BC.
I remember a case which occurred when I was in Asia: how a certain woman of Miletus, who had accepted a bribe from the alternative heirs and procured her own abortion by drugs, was condemned to death : and rightly, for she had cheated the father of his hopes, his name of continuity, his family of its support, his house of an heir, and the Republic of a citizen-to-be. How much more severely did the same crime deserve to be punished in Oppianicus; for she in doing violence to her body brought pain upon herself, but he produced the same result as she by the painful death of another. Most men seem unequal to the task of murdering a succession of victims one at a time : Oppianicus came as a discovery - the murderer, in a single victim, of more than one person. (Cicero, For Aulus Cluentius, sect. 32)
Elsewhere, Cicero reports how a “Milesian woman” was convicted of a capital crime when she had an abortion at the prompting of relatives. She was motivated by inheritance rights, where a child would be entitled to the inheritance, but if that child died, the inheritance would go to her other family. ( 17 ) While abortion was not legally protected, neither was it legally banned. In this case, abortion wasn’t a matter of women’s rights or choice. Nor was it about fetal personhood or sanctity of human life. Rather, the Roman law of Patria Potestas placed reproductive rights under the rule of the pater familias (the male head of the household). Abortion law was implicit and framed by inheritance rights, paternalism, and family law, under the will of the “Man of the House.” Women did not have a “right” to elective abortion or a right to resist forced abortion either.
Page Citations & Notes
1. Griffith, F. Ll., ed. The Petrie Papyri: Hieratic Papyri from Kahun and Gurob. London, 1898. ETANA PDF. Referenced for: the Kahun Gynecological Papyrus as an Egyptian medical text from the Middle Kingdom that preserves prescriptions relating to fertility control and contraception.
2. Lopes, Helena Trindade, and Ronaldo G. Gurgel Pereira. “The Gynaecological Papyrus Kahun.” Open-access PDF. Referenced for: modern scholarly description of the Kahun papyrus as the oldest known Egyptian medical document focused on gynecological and midwifery issues.
3. Riddle, John M. Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992. Quoted/reference point: the Ebers recipe is cited for a woman “empti[ing] out the conceived in the first, second or third time period,” which the page uses to describe an ancient Egyptian fertility-control/abortion remedy.
4. “Abortion in Antiquity.” Museum of Contraception and Abortion, Vienna. Quoted/reference point: summary of the Ebers Papyrus as describing a method by which “the woman empties out the conceived in the first, second or third time period.”
5. The Bible. Quoted/reference points: Psalm 127:3–5; Genesis 1:26–28; Genesis 1–2; Deuteronomy 6:4–9; Song of Solomon 8:6–7; Exodus 21:22–25; Numbers 5:11–31. Referenced for: the page’s claim that the Hebrew Bible consistently treats children as blessing, life as sacred, and family as divinely ordered, while noting the two passages often invoked in abortion debates.
6. Rashi. “Rashi on Jeremiah 7:31.” Sefaria. Quoted/reference point: “That is Molech, which was of copper, and they would heat it up from underneath it with its hands spread out and heated. And they would place the child on his hands…”
7. Lancel, Serge. Carthage. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995. Referenced for: Carthage as a Punic tophet associated with urn burials and dedications tied to child sacrifice.
8. “The Twelve Tables, Table IV.” In Roman Law Library. Quoted/reference points: “A notably deformed child shall be killed immediately”; “To a father… shall be given over a son the power of life and death.”
9. Tertullian. Ad Nationes, book 1, chapter 15. Catholic Library text and New Advent. Quoted/reference point: “you expose them to the cold and hunger, and to wild beasts, or else you get rid of them by the slower death of drowning.”
10. Hippocrates. “The Oath.” University of Minnesota Human Rights Library. Quoted/reference point: “I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy.”
11. Hippocrates. Diseases of Women. Referenced for: the page’s claim that Hippocratic writings on women’s medicine include multiple abortifacient and contraceptive recipes, contrasted with the Oath’s abortion prohibition.
12. Plato. Theaetetus. Direct text. Quoted/reference point: 149c–d, “the midwives, by means of drugs and incantations… cause miscarriages if they think them desirable.”
13. Plato. Laws. Project Gutenberg text. Referenced for: the page’s claim that at Laws 740d Plato discusses state regulation of fertility and “methods of inhibition.”
14. Aristotle. Politics. Direct PDF text. Quoted/reference point: 1335b, “let there be a law that no deformed child shall be reared… abortion must be practiced on it.”
15. Riddle, John M. Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992. Referenced for: the page’s summary that Aristotle disapproved of abortion after fetal formation and treated embryonic development as staged.
16. Cicero. De Legibus [On the Laws] 3.8. Referenced for: the page’s quotation “Deformed infants shall be killed,” cited as Cicero’s preservation of the Twelve Tables’ rule on infanticide.
17. Cicero. Pro Cluentio [For Aulus Cluentius], section 32. Wikisource and Attalus. Quoted/reference point: the “Milesian woman” who “had by medicines brought on abortion… was convicted of a capital crime,” because she had destroyed “the hope of the father… and a citizen intended for the use of the republic.”
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