New Book: For Ancients, Abortion Also A Dilemma

June 24, 2002

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Titled “Whether what is carried in the womb is a living being?” the essay centers on the question of when human life begins.

The latest screed in the abortion controversy? Hardly. It was written in A.D. 150 by an anonymous Greek author.

People often regard abortion, and the moral dilemma and debate that accompany it, as modern phenomena. To the contrary, abortion has been practiced since the dawn of Western civilization and debated for nearly as long, according to a new book by a University of Florida classics professor, “Abortion in the Ancient World,” published by Gerald Duckworth & Co. in London. The book will be available in the United States on June 30.

Author Konstantinos Kapparis spent five years scouring Greek, Roman and Persian medical and philosophical texts dating back as far as 500 B.C. for information on abortion. He condensed the material into seven chapters that address the subject through medical, philosophical, cultural and legal lenses. The book also discusses how ancient men and women viewed abortion.

The result shows that although there are many parallels between ancient and modern views and practices on abortion, there also are great differences.

The most dramatic and obvious difference may be in the medical procedure itself.

Ancient doctors prescribed a variety of herbs to induce abortions and sometimes even performed surgeries. Contrasted with the relative safety and reliability of most of today’s abortions, however, ancient abortions were dangerous, ineffective or both. That said, although there are no statistical records from the period, there is enough discussion of abortion in ancient writings to suggest it was not uncommon, Kapparis said. He noted that even normal pregnancy and birth were dangerous, which may have reduced the perceived risks of abortion.

The character of the abortion debate also has changed.

In Athens and other famed Greek city-states of 5000 B.C., abortion was not outlawed, and there was no moral discussion about life of a fetus. When it appeared in literature from this era, abortion was disparaged only when it left a man without a desired child, Kapparis said. Each man in these city-states

had a vote, and government occurred communally in the city center, so the city-states sought to keep populations low.

Abortion continued to be legal in Greek and early Roman society until the third century A.D., Kapparis said. It was only outlawed early in that century by the emperor Caracalla in response to concerns there were not enough upper-class Romans being born to sustain Rome’s vast empire. Around this period, the “modern” debate over when life begins became prominent in the written record, Kapparis said.

The changing Greek and Roman attitudes about abortion bring to light an oft-unrecognized truth: Societies that feel secure in their numbers generally permit it, while societies that feel threatened do not allow the practice, Kapparis said.

“I think today we are feeling quite safe in our numbers in this country, and this may be the real reason we allow it,” he said.

The book’s chapter on women and abortion reveals that ancient women sought abortions for some of the same reasons as modern women, including ridding themselves of the unintended consequences of unmarried or out-of-wedlock affairs, Kapparis said. But there also are differences. While modern women might seek an abortion because having a child would make it difficult to earn a living or pursue a career, ancient women did not typically have this motivation because they worked in the home. The exception was prostitutes, who did seek abortions so they could continue earning money, Kapparis said.

Today, one of the staunchest institutional opponents of abortion is the Roman Catholic Church. But Kapparis said Christian opposition to all abortion dates only to the fourth century A.D., when St. Basil the Great declared that killing a fetus was murder. Prior to that, abortion was considered murder only when the fetus was “formed” or had all the parts of a full-term baby.

Ironically, this distinction stems from an apparently intentional third century B.C. mistranslation of the Bible, Kapparis said. The only explicit mention of abortion occurs in the Old Testament in a passage that calls for a man to pay a fine if he beats a pregnant woman and she survives but loses the child, while he should be executed if the woman dies. The passage implies that killing a woman is a more serious crime than killing a fetus, he said. When Greek scholars translated the passage, they altered the text to read that if the fetus is physically mature, killing it is tantamount to murder.

After the third century A.D., laws prohibiting abortion as immoral became the norm, but the practice continued. This leads Kapparis to observe in his final chapter that the debate has always been somewhat removed from reality.

“In actual practice,” he writes, “abortion has been an act that has little to do with high principles, and much to do with compelling circumstances. History would clearly suggest that talk about high principles has proven to be ineffective when balanced against the gravity of the circumstances that urge a woman to seek a termination.”