CRIMINAL ABORTION.--The destruction of a pregnancy, except when its continuance threatens the life of the patient, is forbidden by law. The important ethical and religious aspects of the act which the law thus stigmatizes as criminal we may properly neglect. Although various religions present a diversity of teaching relative to its moral nature, all agree in regarding it as sinful. Equally important, however, is the fact that no matter what opinion anyone may hold as to the morality of the act he is bound to obey the law. This is apparently not clearly understood by the laity, for many persons think that a physician may terminate pregnancy whenever he is so inclined. If the liability to criminal prosecution which a physician would assume should he comply with a request for the means of destroying pregnancy were clearly realized, patients would not beseech him to incur the risk of heavy find and long imprisonment merely to gratify their own convenience or to save them from disgrace. The Common Law, an inheritance from England, enriched with authoritative decisions by our own courts, is the groundwork of the law in all the States, and its principles are binding in the absence of express statutes. At Common Law, abortion is punishable as _homicide_ when the woman dies or when the operation results fatally to the infant after it has been born alive. If performed for the purpose of killing the child, the crime is _murder_; in the absence of such intent, it is _manslaughter_. _The woman who commits an abortion upon herself is likewise guilty of the crime._ The great majority of those who desire the interruption of pregnancy feel they have not assumed an illegal position so long as they avoid instrumental procedures. That is not correct, for even at Common Law it is a misdemeanor to bring about the death of an unborn child _by the use of drugs or by any other means_. At Common Law there was a difference of opinion as to whether all induced abortions were illegal. Many courts formerly held that quickening was a necessary prerequisite; but under the modern statutes, practically without exception, the law disregards the period of pregnancy at which the abortion is provoked. Since the time of conception determines the beginning of embryonic development, to prove that the act was committed before fetal movements were perceived is no longer a valid defense. This has been emphatically stated by Judge Coulter, of Pennsylvania, who said: "_It is not the murder of a living child which constitutes the offense, but the destruction of gestation by wicked means and against nature. The moment the womb is instinct with embryonic life and gestation has begun, the crime may be perpetrated._"