The life of any complex organism, such as that of man, is in fact the aggregate of the vital activity of all its component parts, and each elementary part of the fabric has its own independent power of growth and development. If we contemplate the history of the life of a plant, we perceive that it grows from a germ or seed to a fabric, sometimes of gigantic size,—it multiplies its species, by the production of germs similar to that from which it originated. This it performs without feeling or thinking or any effort of its own. All the functions of which its life is composed are grouped together under the general designation of organic functions, or vegetative life. In the building up of the animal structure we have precisely the same operations taking place, one minute cell added to the other, like the stone mason running up a brick wall, each brick representing a cell, until the structure is completed. The question that we are particularly interested in is whether this “animal life” which stimulates the growth of the fetus from its first inception, can be any the less sacred at one time than at another? There is a general impression among a large portion of the community that the fetus first becomes endowed with life at the period of quickening, which is between the fourth and fifth month of pregnancy. The time when the mother first feels the motion is considered the period when the child becomes animated, that is, when it receives its spiritual nature into union with its human nature. The English law recognized the truth of this infamous doctrine, in varying the punishment of an attempt to procure abortion according to whether the woman be “quick with child or not,” and in delaying execution when a woman can be proved to be so, though the execution is made to proceed, if she be not “quick,” even if she be unquestionably pregnant. This was a most barbarous penal provision and hardly excusable in a savage nation, much less among a Christian people, because it is contrary to all fact, to all analogy, to reason, and at variance with biological science. If the embryo or fetus is simply an animal growing in the mother’s womb, until the period of quickening or birth, it would not be a crime to procure an abortion, at any time, before these events take place. No sacrifice of a human life would be involved, so that the act would be simply a “misdemeanor” regulated by the degree of injury which the mother sustained as a result of the operation. This was the prevailing opinion for many centuries, until, in the year 692, the Roman Empire so amended its law that the procuring of an abortion at any time during the period of gestation was _homicide_, murder, to be punished with death.