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18  DOBBS v. JACKSON WOMEN’S HEALTH ORGANIZATION 

Opinion of the Court 

of Abortion History 126, and n. 16, 134–142, 188–194, and 
nn. 84–86 (2006) (Dellapenna); J. Keown, Abortion, Doctors 
and  the  Law  3–12  (1988)  (Keown).  In  1732,  for  example,
Eleanor  Beare  was  convicted  of  “destroying  the  Foetus  in 
the Womb” of another woman and “thereby causing her to
miscarry.”26   For  that  crime  and  another  “misdemeanor,” 
Beare  was  sentenced  to  two  days  in  the  pillory  and  three
years’ imprisonment.27 

Although a pre-quickening abortion was not itself consid-
ered homicide, it does not follow that abortion was permis-
sible at common law—much less that abortion was a legal 
right.  Cf. Glucksberg, 521 U. S., at 713 (removal of “com-
mon law’s harsh sanctions did not represent an acceptance 
of suicide”).  Quite to the contrary, in the 1732 case men-
tioned above, the judge said of the charge of abortion (with 
no  mention  of  quickening)  that  he  had  “never  met  with  a 
case  so  barbarous  and  unnatural.”28   Similarly,  an  indict-
ment from 1602, which did not distinguish between a pre-
quickening  and  post-quickening  abortion,  described  abor-
tion as “pernicious” and “against the peace of our Lady the 
Queen, her crown and dignity.”  Keown 7 (discussing R. v. 
Webb, Calendar of Assize Records, Surrey Indictments 512
(1980)).

That  the  common  law  did  not  condone  even  pre-
quickening abortions is confirmed by what one might call a
proto-felony-murder rule.  Hale and Blackstone explained a 
way  in  which  a  pre-quickening  abortion  could  rise  to  the 
level of a homicide.  Hale wrote that if a physician gave a 
woman “with child” a “potion” to cause an abortion, and the 
woman died, it was “murder” because the potion was given 
“unlawfully to destroy her child within her.”  1 Hale 429– 
430  (emphasis  added).  As  Blackstone  explained,  to  be 

—————— 

26 2 Gentleman’s Magazine 931 (Aug. 1732). 
27 Id., at 932. 
28 Ibid.