The consideration in detail of the various other causes to which I have alluded as accounting for the prevalence of abortion, together with that of the many special reasons offered in individual cases by way of excuse, I postpone for the present; merely premising that where ignorance is so evidently and so extensively its foundation, those who, possessing, yet withhold the knowledge which by any chance or in any way would tend to prevent it, themselves become, directly, and in a moral sense, responsibly accountable for the crime. III. ITS VICTIMS. We have hitherto discussed abortion in the abstract, as a crime, and in its relations to the community at large. We have seen its heinous nature, and its awful extent.[94] The division of the subject now to be examined naturally presents itself under a fourfold aspect, numerical, relational, social, and medical; representing respectively the multitude of the victims of abortion, their character as parent and child, their standing in the community, and the degree, whether unto death or otherwise, of their suffering. So far as statistics will at present allow, the numerical relations of the victims of abortion have already been fully discussed, the yearly thousands of fœtal and the frequent maternal deaths; one sacrifice at least, that of the child, being implied in every case. Various incidental questions suggest themselves in this connection, curious, and by some, though erroneously, thought to be of judicial importance. Two of them will be here adverted to; they are the age or the mother and that of the fœtus. It was formerly supposed, as in infanticide, that criminal abortion was seldom resorted to save for the concealment of shame; and as seductions, confessedly frequent in comparison with adultery, are most common in youth, it was laid down as probable that wilful abortions are most frequent between the years corresponding, from sixteen to twenty-five. Subsequent experience, however, has disproved this conclusion, and it is evident that the only real limit to its later occurrence is the menstrual climacteric. In many instances of marriage, abortions are resorted to at once, in others after the family has reached a certain point, and are thence regularly continued. The age of the fœtus is of much more interest; not, as will ultimately appear, for the same reason as in cases of infanticide, but as proving to a certain extent one of the facts we have already considered, the error prevalent regarding the commencement of fœtal life.