Abortion, Contraception, and Religion

Prior to the Second Great Awakening, the general view of the medical community was that life began at the quickening- the moment that the mother was able to feel the movement of the fetus. The American government held a similar view, adapted from English Common Law, and allowed abortion prior to quickening with the mother’s consent. However, this view of abortion was not to last in America. Among the Evangelical ideas spread during the Second Great Awakening was that of instantaneity- the beginning of life at the moment of conception. The logic behind the idea was that conversion, or rebirth, occurred in an instant, so it followed that the first birth also occurred instantaneously. The view soon spread throughout the Protestant communities involved in the Second Great Awakening, and from there into the popular consciousness and the halls of governance. In 1845 New York codified the first pre-quickening abortion restriction into law. By the 1850s, New York’s laws would become a model for the nation as a whole. [1]

[1] Geoffery R Stone, Sex and the Constitution: Sex, Religion, and Law from America's Origins to the Twenty-First Century. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2017)