Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf
Page Number: 27.0

Cite as:  597 U. S. ____ (2022) 

19 

Opinion of the Court 

“murder”  a  killing  had  to  be  done  with  “malice  afore-
thought, . . . either express or implied.”  4 Blackstone 198 
(emphasis  deleted).  In  the  case  of  an  abortionist,  Black-
stone wrote, “the law will imply [malice]” for the same rea-
son that it would imply malice if a person who intended to 
kill one person accidentally killed a different person: 

“[I]f one shoots at A and misses him, but kills B, this is 
murder; because of the previous felonious intent, which
the law transfers from one to the other.  The same is 
the case, where one lays poison for A; and B, against 
whom  the  prisoner  had  no  malicious  intent,  takes  it, 
and it kills him; this is likewise murder.  So also, if one 
gives a woman with child a medicine to procure abor-
tion, and it operates so violently as to kill the woman, 
this is murder in the person who gave it.”  Id., at 200– 
201 (emphasis added; footnote omitted).29 

Notably,  Blackstone,  like  Hale,  did  not  state  that  this 
proto-felony-murder rule required that the woman be “with
quick child”—only that she be “with child.”  Id., at 201.  And 
it is revealing that Hale and Blackstone treated abortion-
ists  differently  from  other  physicians  or  surgeons  who
caused the death of a patient “without any intent of doing 
[the patient] any bodily hurt.”  Hale 429; see 4 Blackstone 
197.  These other physicians—even if “unlicensed”—would
not be “guilty of murder or manslaughter.”  Hale 429.  But 
a  physician  performing  an  abortion  would,  precisely  be-
cause his aim was an “unlawful” one. 

In sum, although common-law authorities differed on the 
severity of punishment for abortions committed at different 

—————— 

29 Other  treatises  restated  the  same  rule.   See  1  W.  Russell  &  C. 
Greaves, Crimes and Misdemeanors 540 (5th ed. 1845) (“So where a per-
son gave medicine to a woman to procure an abortion, and where a per-
son put skewers into the woman for the same purpose, by which in both 
cases the women were killed, these acts were clearly held to be murder”
(footnotes omitted)); 1 E. East, Pleas of the Crown 230 (1803) (similar).