The procedures are termed _induced abortion_, _induced premature labor_ and _accouchement forcé_. The effects of these operations, _per se_, when skillfully performed, for therapeutic purposes, are not usually considered more serious for the mother than a normal delivery, since they can be performed with deliberate care and cleanliness and can be followed by adequate aftercare. When the reverse conditions prevail, as in criminal abortions, the patient’s subsequent suffering or ill health are more likely to be due to the poor obstetrics and unclean work which is characteristic of practitioners who are willing to do illegal operations, than to the termination of pregnancy itself. It is important that the nurse fully appreciate this and be as scrupulously careful in her preparations for, and assistance with these operations as for a major operation or a normal delivery. =Induced abortion= applies to the termination of pregnancy before the child is viable, or before the end of the twenty-eighth week, and is performed solely in the interests of the mother, as the fetus is always lost. It is resorted to in those cases where the mother is suffering from some condition, which may or may not be inherent to pregnancy, which threatens her life or health but which it is believed may be cured or arrested if uncomplicated by pregnancy. Such conditions may be toxemic vomiting; nephritis, particularly with evidences of increasing renal insufficiency; bleeding, due to an incomplete abortion; a dead fetus; infection following an attempt at criminal abortion. Contracted pelves and pulmonary tuberculosis are sometimes taken as indications for inducing abortions, but with the development and improvement of obstetrical operations, more and more women are able to go nearly, or quite, to term and be delivered of live babies; while increasing medical knowledge concerning the care of patients with tuberculosis, and also with some heart lesions, is applied so successfully during the prenatal period that some pregnancies which formerly would have been terminated, are now allowed to continue, and with happy results.