The Criminalization of Abortion in the West: Its Origins in Medieval Law

Contents

Contents Acknowledgments vii Abbreviations ix Introduction 1 1. The Earliest Proponents of Criminalization 20 The Scholastic Origins of Criminal Abortion 22 Forms of Sentencing in Medieval Jurisprudence 30 Crimen in “An Age without Lawyers” (500–1050) 34 2. Early Venues of Criminalization 45 Crimen in Sacramental Confession 47 Judicial Crimen in the Ecclesiastical Courts 53 Public Penitential Crimen 59 Royal Jurisdiction in Thirteenth-Century England 66 3. Chief Agents of Criminalization 76 Legislation versus Juristic Communis Opinio 79 Communis Opinio and Peer Dissent 88 Systematic Law before the Rise of the Modern State 95 4. Principal Arguments in Favor of Criminalization 100 Successive Animation and Creatianism 102 vi CONTENTS Legal and Theological Assessments of Therapeutic Abortion 110 The Demise of Late Medieval Embryology 116 5. Objections to Criminalization 123 Customary Indifference North and East of the River Rhine 125 Rejection in the Royal Courts of England (1327–1557) 134 6. Abortion Experts and Expertise 149 Evidence of Midwifery 152 Medical Embryology and Abortion Discourse 158 Abortifacient Prescriptions 162 7. Abortion in the Criminal Courts of the Ius Commune 171 Criminal Accusationes and Inquisitiones 173 The Rules and Safeguards of Ordinary Inquisitiones 177 Extraordinary Inquisitiones 186 8. Forms of Punishment in the Criminal Courts of the Ius Commune 198 Statutory and Customary Specifications 201 Substitute Penalties 207 Adjustment Out of Court 214 9. The Frequency of Criminal Prosecutions 220 Viable Statistical Queries 221 Geography and Patterns of Record Keeping 227 A Triad of Typical Cases 233 Bibliography 241 Index 259 ...