have previously miscarried is well known, and should ever
be borne in mind with the view of avoiding any cause likely
to lead to a repetition of the accident. Abortion resembles
ordinary labour in its general phenomena, excepting that in
the former hemorrhage often to a large extent forms one of
the leading symptoms. The treatment embraces the means to
be used by rest, astringents and sedatives, to prevent the
occurrence when it merely threatens; or when, on the contrary,
it is inevitable, to accomplish as speedily as possible
the complete removal of the entire contents of the uterus.
Among primitive savage races abortion is practised to a
far less extent than infanticide (q.v.), which offers a
simpler way of getting rid of inconvenient progeny. But it
is common among the American Indians, as well as in China,
Cambodia and India, although throughout Asia it is generally
contrary both to law and religion. How far it was considered
a crime among the civilized nations of antiquity has long been
debated. Those who maintain the impunity of the practice rely
for their authority upon certain passages in the classical
authors, which, while bitterly lamenting the frequency of this
enormity, yet never allude to any laws by which it might be
suppressed. For example, in one of Plato's dialogues
(Theaet.), Socrates is made to speak of artificial
abortion as a practice, not only common but allowable;
and Plato himself authorizes it in his Republic (lib.
v.). Aristotle (Polit. 222hb. vii. c. 17) gives it as his
opinion that no child ought to be suffered to come into the
world, the mother being above forty or the father above
fifty-five years of age. Lysias maintained, in one of his
pleadings quoted by Harpocration, that forced abortion could
not be considered homicide, because a child in utero was
not an animal, and had no separate existence. Among the
Romans, Ovid (Amor. hb. ii.), Juvenal (Sat. vi. 594) and
Seneca Consol. ad Hel. 16) mention the frequency of the
offence, but maintain silence as to any laws for punishing
it. On the other hand, it is argued that the authority of
Galen and Cicero (pro Cluentio) place it beyond a doubt
that, so far from being allowed to pass with impunity, the
offence in question was sometimes punished by death; that the
authority of Lysias is of doubtful authenticity; and that the
speculative reasonings of Plato and Aristotle, in matters of
legislation, ought not to be confounded with the actual state
of the laws. Moreover, Stobaeus (Serm. 73) has preserved
a passage from Musonius, in which that philosopher expressly
states that the ancient law-givers inflicted punishments on
females who caused themselves to abort. After the spread of
Christianity among the Romans, however, foeticide became equally
criminal with the murder of an adult, and the barbarian hordes
which afterwards overran the empire also treated the offence
as a crime punishable Fith death. This severe penalty remained
in force in all the countries of Europe until the Middle
Ages. With the gradual disuse of the old barbarous punishments
so universal in medieval times came also a reversal of opinion as
to the magnitude of the crime involved in killing a child not yet
born. But the exact period of transition is not clearly marked.
In England the Anglo-Saxons seem to have regarded abortion only
as an ecclesiastical offence. Sir Matthew Hale (1609-1676)
tells us that if anything is done to ``a woman quick or great
with child, to make an abortion, or whereby the child within
her is killed, it is not murder or manslaughter by the law
of England, because it is not yet in rerum natura.'' But
the common law appears, nevertheless, to have treated as a
misdemeanour any attempt to effect the destruction of such an
infant, though unsuccessful. Blackstone (1723-1780), to be
sure, a hundred years later, says that, ``if a woman is quick
with child, and by poison or otherwise killeth it in her
womb, or if any one beat her, whereby the child dieth in her
body, and she is delivered of a dead child, this, though not
murder, was, by the ancient law, homicide or manslaughter.''
Whatever may have been the exact view taken by the common
law, the offence was made statutory by an act of 1803, making
the attempt to cause the miscarriage of a woman, not being, or
not being proved, to be quick with child, a felony, punishable
with fine, imprisonment, whipping or transportation for any
term not exceeding fourteen years. Should the woman have
proved to have quickened, the attempt was punishable with
death. The provisions of this statute were re-enacted in
1828. The English law on the subject is now governed by
the Offences against the Person Act 1861, which makes the
attempting to cause miscarriage by administering poison or
other noxious thing, or unlawfully using any instrument equally
a felony, whether the woman be, or be not, with child. No
distinction is now made as to whether the foetus is or is not
alive, legislation appearing to make the offence statutory
with the object of prohibiting any risk to the life of the
mother. If a woman administers to herself any poison or
other noxious thing, or unlawfully uses any instrument or
other means to procure her own miscarriage, she is guilty of
felony. The punishment for the offence is penal servitude
for life or not less than three years, or imprisonment
for not more than two years. If a child is born alive,
but in consequence of its premature birth, or of the means
employed, afterwards dies, the offence is murder; the
general law as to accessories applies to the offence.
In all the countries of Europe the causing of abortion is now
punishable with more or less lengthy terms of imprisonment.
Indeed, the tendency in continental Europe is to regard the
abortion as a crime against the unborn child, and several
codes (notably that of the German Empire) expressly recognize
the life of the foetus, while others make the penalty more
severe if abortion has been caused in the later stages of
pregnancy, or if the woman is married. According to the weight
of authority in the United States abortion was not regarded
as a punishable offence at common law, if the abortion was
produced with the consent of the mother prior to the time
when she became quick with child; but the Supreme Courts of
Pennsylvania and North Carolina held it a crime at common
law, which might be committed as soon as gestation had begun
(Mills v. Com. 13 Pa. St. 630; State v. Slagle, 83
N.C. 630). The attempt is a punishable offence in several
states, but not in Ohio. Nor was it ever murder at common
law to take the life of the child at any period of gestation,
even in the very act of delivery (Mitchell v. Com. 78 Ky.
204). If the death of the woman results it is murder at
common law (Com. v. Parker, 9 Met. [Mass.] 263). It is
now a statutory offence in all states of the Union, but the
woman must be actually pregnant. In most states not only is
the person who causes the abortion punishable, but also any
one who supplies any drug or instrument for the purpose. The
woman, however, is not an accomplice (except by statute as in
Ohio, State v. M`Coy, 39 N.E. 316), nor is she guilty
of any crime unless by statute as in New York (Penal Code,
sec. 295) and California (Penal Code, sec. 275) and Connecticut
(Gen. Stats. 1902, sec. 1156). She may be a witness, and her
testimony does not need corroboration. The attempt is also a
crime in New York (1905, People v. Conrad, 102 App. D. 566).
AUTHORITIES.---Ploncouet, Commentarius Medicus in processus
criminales super homicidie et infanticidio, &c. (1736);
Burao Ryan, Infanticide, its Law, Prevalence, Prevention
and History (1862); G. Greaves, Observations on the Laws
referring to Child-Murder and Criminal Abortion (1864);
Storer and Heard, Criminal Abortion, its Nature, Evidence
and Law (Boston, 1868); J. Cave Browne, Infanticide, its
Origin, Progress and Suppression (1857); T. R. Beck, Medical
Jurisprudence (1842); A. S. Taylor, Principles and Practice
of Medical Jurisprudence (1894); Sir J. Stephen, History
of the Criminal Law of England (1883); Sir W. O. Russell,
Crimes and Misdemeanours (3 vols., 1896); Archbold's
Pleading and Evidence in Criminal:Cases (1900); Roscoe's
Evidence in Criminall Cases (1898) Treub, van Oppenraag and
Vlaming, The Right to Life of the Unborn Child (New
York, 1903); L. Hochheimer, Crimes and Criminal Procedure
(York, 1897); A. A. Tardieu, Etude medico-legal sur
l'avortement (Paris, 1904); F. Berolzheimer, System der
Rechts- und Wissenschaftsphilosophie (Munich, 1904).
ABOUKIR, a village on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt, 14 1/2
m. N.E. of Alexandria by rail, containing a castle used
as a state prison by Mehemet Ali. Near the village are
many remains of ancient buildings, Egyptian, Greek and
Roman. About 2 m. S.E. of the village are ruins supposed to
mark the site of Canopus. A little farther east the Canopic
branch of the Nile (now dry) entered the Mediterranean.
Stretching eastward as far as the Rosetta mouth of the
Nile is the spacious bay of Aboukir, where on the 1st of
August 1798 Nelson fought the battle of the Nile, often
referred to as the battle of Aboukir. The latter title is
applied more properly to an engagement between the French
expeditionary army and the Turks fought on the 25th of July
1799. Near Aboukir, on the 8th of March 1801, the British
army commanded by Sir R. Abercromby landed from its transports
in the face of a strenuous opposition from a French force
entrenched on the beach. (See FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WARS.)
ABOUT, EDMOND FRANCOIS VALENTIN (1828-1885), French novelist,
publicist and journalist, was born on the 14th of February
1828, at Dieuze, in Lorraine. The boy's school career was
brilliant. In 1848 he entered the Ecole Normale, taking the
second place in the annual competition for admission, Taine being
first. Among his college contemporaries were Taine, Francisque,
Sarcey, Challemel-Lacour and the ill-starred Prevost-Paradol.
Of them all About was, according to Sarcey, the most highly
vitalized, exuberant, brilliant and ``undisciplined.'' At
the end of his college career he joined the French school in
Athens, but if we may believe his own account, it had never
been his intention to follow the professorial career, for
which the Ecole Normale was a preparation, and in 1853 he
returned to France and frankly gave himself to literature and
journalism. A book on Greece, La Grece contemporaine (1855),
which did not spare Greek susceptibilities, had an immediate
success. In Tolla (1855) About was charged with drawing too
freely on an earlier Italian novel, Vittoria Savelii (Paris,
1841). This caused a strong prejudice against him, and he
was the object of numerous attacks, to which he was ready
enough to retaliate. The Lettres d'un bon jeune homme,
written to the Figaro under the signature of Valentin de
Quevilly, provoked more animosities. During the next few
years, with indefatigable energy, and generally with full
public recognition, he wrote novels, stories, a play---which
failed,---a book-pamphlet on the Roman question, many
pamphlets on other subjects of the day, newspaper articles
innumerable, some art criticisms, rejoinders to the attacks
of his enemies, and popular manuals of political economy, L'A
B C du travailleur (1868), Le progres (1864). About's
attitude towards the empire was that of a candid friend. He
believed in its improvability, greeted the liberal ministry
of Emile Ollivier at the beginning of 1870 with delight and
welcomed the Franco-German War. That day of enthusiasm had a
