Source: https://aul.org/2010/04/23/why-the-states-did-not-prosecute-women-for-abortion-before-roe-v-wade/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 18:46:36+00:00

Document:
The political claim—that women were or will be prosecuted or jailed under abortion laws—has been made so frequently by Planned Parenthood, NARAL, and NOW over the past 40 years that it has become an urban legend. It shows the astonishing power of contemporary media to make a complete falsehood into a truism.
For 30 years, abortion advocates have claimed—without any evidence and contrary to the well-documented practice of ALL 50 states—that women were jailed before Roe and would be jailed if Roe falls (or if state abortion prohibitions are reinstated).
First, the almost uniform state policy before Roe was that abortion laws targeted abortionists, not women. Abortion laws targeted those who performed abortion, not women. In fact, the states expressly treated women as the second “victim” of abortion; state courts expressly called the woman a second “victim.” Abortionists were the exclusive target of the law.
Second, the myth that women will be jailed relies, however, on the myth that “overturning” Roe will result in the immediate re-criminalization of abortion. If Roe was overturned today, abortion would be legal in at least 42-43 states tomorrow, and likely all 50 states, for the simple reason that nearly all of the state abortion prohibitions have been either repealed or are blocked by state versions of Roe adopted by state courts. The issue is entirely academic. The legislatures of the states would have to enact new abortion laws—and these would almost certainly continue the uniform state policy before Roe that abortion laws targeted abortionists and treated women as the second victim of abortion. There will be no prosecutions of abortionists unless the states pass new laws after Roe is overturned.
This political claim is not an abstract question that is left to speculation—there is a long record of states treating women as the second victim of abortion in the law that can be found and read. To state the policy in legal terms, the states prosecuted the principal (the abortionist) and did not prosecute someone who might be considered an accomplice (the woman) in order to more effectively enforce the law against the principal. And that will most certainly be the state policy if the abortion issue is returned to the states.
Why did the states target abortionists and treat women as a victim of the abortionist?
It was based on three policy judgments: the point of abortion law is effective enforcement against abortionists, the woman is the second victim of the abortionist, and prosecuting women is counterproductive to the goal of effective enforcement of the law against abortionists.
The irony is that, instead of states prosecuting women, the exact opposite is true. To protect their own hide, it was abortionists (like the cult hero and abortionist Ruth Barnett when Oregon last prosecuted her in 1968), who, when they were prosecuted, sought to haul the women they aborted into court. As a matter of criminal evidentiary law, if the court treated the woman as an accomplice, she could not testify against the abortionist, and the case against the abortionist would be thrown out.
There are “only two cases in which a woman was charged in any State with participating in her own abortion”: from Pennsylvania in 19111 and from Texas in 1922.2 There is no documented case since 1922 in which a woman has been charged in an abortion in the United States.
Based on this record—spanning 50 states over the century before Roe v. Wade—it is even more certain that the political claim that any woman might be questioned or prosecuted for a spontaneous miscarriage has no record in history and will certainly not be the policy of any state in the future.
How was abortion law enforced?
Going back as far as English and colonial law, the criminal law classified those involved in crimes as principals and accomplices. A principal is “the person whose acts directly brought about the criminal result.” An accomplice aids or abets the crime.
With the exception of [four] state cases, the vast majority of the states with reported cases that discussed this issue determined that states could not prosecute women under any theory of criminal liability.
Based on the fact that abortion was dangerous and often fatal up to the 19th century, women were seen as victims.
In addition, another main reason for the non-prosecution of women is that relieving women from criminal liability provided states with a better chance of achieving convictions against abortionists—the principal.
While the reported cases in a minority of the states arrived at an opposite conclusion—as a matter of technical legal principle—even these states never took advantage of the opportunity they allotted to themselves to actually prosecute women.
This was expressly affirmed by the Maryland Supreme Court and by the Minnesota Supreme Court in almost identical terms.
The target of abortion law was the abortionist—the principal in the crime.
Are there any known cases of a woman being indicted or tried for having an abortion in the U.S.?
There is no documented case since 1922 in which a woman was even charged in an abortion in the United States.
Were women ever prosecuted for self-abortion?
Those states with statutes on the books that prohibited women from aborting [self-abortion] did not prosecute.
Which States treated women as victims?
At least: California, the District of Columbia, Iowa, Maryland, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas.
Delaware: Zutz v. State, 52 Del. 492, 160 A.2d 727 (1960).
Idaho: State v. Rose, 75 Idaho 59, 267 P.2d 109 (1954).
Kentucky: Richmond v. Commonwealth, 370 S.W.2d 399 (KY 1963).
Which states did not treat women as an accomplice?
At least 30: Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia.
See Thompson v. United States, 30 App. D.C. 352, 362-363 (1908) at 364 (“As the victim of an unlawfully procured miscarriage was not an accessory before the fact, she is not indictable as a principal offender…”).
Which states did treat a woman as an accomplice?
There were 20 states in which statutes technically made it a crime for the woman to participate in her own abortion: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Indiana, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. However, these were not enforced or applied against women. There is no record of any prosecution of a woman as an accomplice even in these states.
Some states did treat the woman as a conspirator.
Technically, courts in a handful of states treated the woman as a possible conspirator: Colorado, Iowa, New York, North Dakota,27 and Wisconsin.
Even in these states, however, the issue in the recorded cases was not the woman’s guilt—no woman was charged or was a co-defendant in the cases—but the admissibility of evidence against the abortionist. No woman was prosecuted.
Other states rejected treating the woman as a conspirator: California, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
But statutes in these states have been repealed, and the legislatures would have to enact wholly new legislation to address abortion.
Some states had statutes prohibiting solicitation of abortion—under the general rule that solicitation of any crime is a crime—but these were evenhandedly applied to men and women.
At least Arizona, California, Connecticut, Idaho, South Dakota, and Utah.
For example, South Dakota had an anti-solicitation law for abortion. S.D. Compiled Laws Ann. 22-17-2 (1967).
However, there’s no record of any woman being prosecuted under this law, let alone convicted.
Even pro-abortion historians admit this record.
The pro-abortion historian Leslie Reagan, in her 1997 book When Abortion Was A Crime, admits that states did not prosecute women for their abortions and that women did not face criminal liability as principals, accomplices, conspirators, solicitors, or murderers, and concedes that the purpose behind that law was not to degrade women but to protect them.
The wisdom of not prosecuting women was based on extensive practical law enforcement experience in many states, over many years.
It will certainly be influential with prosecutors and state policy makers when Roe is overturned, and that should be the policy of legislators who are interested in the effective enforcement of abortion law.
Prolife legislators and pro-life leaders do not support the prosecution of women and will not push for such a policy when Roe is overturned. This is demonstrated by abortion regulations enacted in the past 20 years—like the federal partial birth abortion ban—in which women are expressly excluded from any possible prosecution. Instead, pro-life legislators are advocating laws that defend the unborn and protect women from the negative impact of abortion.
1. Commonwealth v. Weible, 45 Pa. Super. 207 (1911).
2. Crissman v. State, 93 Tex. Crim. 15, 245 S.W. 438 (Tex. Crim. App. 1922).
3. State v. Barnett, 249 Or. 226, 228, 437 P.2d 821, 822 (1968).
5. Thompson v. United States, 30 App. D.C. 352, 362-363 (1908).
6. Basoff v. State, 208 Md. at 654, 119 A. 2d at 923.
7. State v. Pearce, 56 Minn. 226, 231 57 N.W. 652, 653.
8. Heath v. State, 249 Ark. 217, 219, 459 S.W. 2d 420, 422 (1970) (citing Ark. Stat. Ann. §41-303 (Supp. 1969), cert. denied, 404 U.S. 910 (1971).
9. State v. Barnett, 249 Or. 226, 229, 437 P. 2d 821, 822 (1968) (emphasis added).
10. Commonwealth v. Weible, 45 Pa. Super. 207 (1911).
11. Crissman v. State, 93 Tex. Crim. 15, 245 S.W. 438 (Tex. Crim. App. 1922).
12. Hatfield v. Gano, 15 Iowa 177 (1863).
13. Petition of Vickers, 371 Mich. 114, 115, 123 N.W.2d 253, 254 (1963).
14. Paul Benjamin Linton, The Legal Status of Abortion in the States if Roe v. Wade is Overruled, 23 Issues in Law & Medicine 3, 6 n.15 (2007).
15. Paul Benjamin Linton, The Legal Status of Abortion in the States if Roe v. Wade is Overruled, 23 Issues in Law & Medicine 3, 6 n.15 (2007).
16. Watson v. State, 9 Tex. Ct. App. 237, 244 (1880).
17. People v. Reinard, 33 Cal.Rptr. 908, 912, 220 Cal.App.2d 720, 724 (1963). See also People v. Gibson, 33 Cal.App. 459, 166 P. 585 (1917).
18. Thompson v. United States, 30 App.D.C. 352, 363 (1908).
19. Basoff v. State, 208 Md. 643, 654, 118 A.2d 917, 923 (1956). This was the policy of Maryland as early as 1912. Meno v.
20. State, 117 Md. 435, 83 A. 759 (1912).
21. State v. Pearce, 56 Minn. 226, 230, 57 N.W. 652, 653 (1894).
22. State v. Burlingame, 47 S.D. 332, 198 N.W. 824 (1924).
23. Gray v. State, 77 Tex. Crim. 221, 229, 178 S.W. 337, 341 (1915).
24. Zutz v. State, 52 Del. 492, 496-497, 160 A. 2d 727, 729 (1960).
25. Meno v. State, 117 Md. 435, 83 A. 759 (1912).
26. Trent v. State, 15 Ala.App. 485, 73 So. 834 (1916).
27. State v. Mattson, 53 N.D. 486, 206 N.W. 778 (1925); State v. Reilly, 25 N.D. 339, 141 N.W. 720 (1913).

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