On criminal abortion in America

We further, in the present investigation, set aside all cases where abortion is the result of accident, or from natural causes, or justified by the rules of medicine, whether to save the mother or her child. We shall have occasion, in the subsequent course of our inquiries, to discuss this latter question somewhat fully, and to set forth unpleasant truths. We now confine ourselves exclusively to those instances where the attempt at premature expulsion of the product of conception is artificially induced and intentional, and where, so far as can be judged, it is not necessitated and would not otherwise have occurred.