Abortion in the Ancient World (review)

Konstantinos Kapparis's topics in this book include methods of abortion, the beginning of human life, the doctor's role, the points of view of women and men, and the law. Appendices give a translation of Pseudo-Galen, Whether What Is Carried in the Womb Is a Living Being, and a discussion of the sacred ordinances of the Philadelphia inscription (LSA 20, second/first century bce). Kapparis's sources range from the standard ancient texts to modern novels, anthropological studies of modern Greece, the 1978 Abortion Act in Britain, and two women he knew personally who had abortions for no apparent reason. He says that his aim is to "bring wisdom to the modern world . . . from an era with a different view of life, one that removed ultimate moral authority from Heaven and brought it to Earth" (p. 6).

Although Kapparis claims that he treats abortion within its ancient cultural contexts, his discussion of when human life begins suggests the inspiration of current abortion debate. While it was an intellectual topic, the identification of the beginning of life was not a question associated with abortion in antiquity, at least in classical Greece. There, the issue was rather when an infant became a "person," protected by the laws against homicide; this was not at conception, fetal movement, or birth, but ten days after birth when the kyrios (guardian, usually the father) accepted the child into the family (in the case of a freeborn). If the kyrios refused to accept the infant, it could be exposed without penalty (there is no evidence that unwanted infants were actively killed, as Kapparis claims on p. 69, except in Sparta, where the magistrates could order a weak or deformed infant to be cast into a ravine).

Kapparis's argument that the Hippocratic oath prohibited all abortions is questionable. The oath forbids the giving of lethal poisons, the use of abortive pessaries, and cutting for the stone; orally administered abortifacients were not forbidden, nor was the "Lacedemonian leap" prescribed by the doctor/author in Hippocrates, On the Nature of the Child. Abortive pessaries, although they could be harmful, were not poisonous; when effective, they caused the body to expel the fetus. Yet Kapparis claims that the oath "compels us to consider the ban on abortion as an extension of the ban on lethal poisons," and thus an absolute prohibition, concluding that "the motive can be none other than respect for human life" (p. 74). He calls this a mainstream opinion in antiquity, explaining the frequent resort to abortion by doctors as a human response to women's distress (p. 199).

A careful reader may find information of interest, particularly the translations in the two appendices (no texts are provided, and I have not checked the translations). On the other hand, documentation is sometimes missing, and statements are at times carelessly made. References to my book (Birth, Death and Motherhood in Classical Greece, 1994) naturally struck me. Thus, in discussing abortion among the Romans, Kapparis attributes to me the opinion that abortion would have been illegal only if it happened without the husband's consent (p. 183), while the cited passages (my pp. 55-57, 103-7) deal not with the legality of abortion in Rome, but with the Wandering Womb in Greece. Again, on p. 177, I am listed among those treating Lysias, On the Abortion, as "undoubtedly a very important source," while in my book I state that "its authenticity was questioned even in antiquity; it appears to be a schoolroom exercise" (p. 203 n. 59).

If one reads only one book on abortion in antiquity, I would recommend John Riddle's Contraception and Abortion in the Ancient World (1992).