Historian discusses abortion in ancient world

John Riddle spent decades looking into how women terminated pregnancies, controlled fertility

It surprised historian John Riddle how common abortion and birth control were in the ancient world up to the Renaissance. He looked into that era to learn more about how women controlled their fertility.

“It was how widespread it was, and how historians around us have noted it but didn't make much of it,” Riddle said of what made him want to learn more. 

Riddle published Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance in 1994. He still researches the issue though he retired as a professor at North Carolina State University. Most of the birth control and abortion methods from the ancient world were passed down orally from one generation to the next. Riddle found some medical writings pertaining to it. The challenge of learning about the ancient world about any topic is that so much of the record was destroyed by barbarian conquest. 

Riddle said that it wasn’t until the middle of the 19th century that the Catholic Church began changing its position on abortion. Previously, it had not said much on the topic at all. In 1869, Pope Pius said anyone who had or gave abortions would be excommunicated. Up to that point, the church held the position that ensoulment, or when the soul enters the body, didn’t start until the quickening, or the point of fetal movement. 

The development of embryology and the study of pregnancy shifted some people’s stances on the topic as they learned more about human development. It was seen more as a continuous process instead of “formed” and “unformed” fetuses. 

“People need to know if they’re Christians that the Christian faith did not have the views of the severity of abortion and abortion’s definition was not quoting conception,” Riddle said.

Currently, he is researching herbs and plants that served as abortifacients. 

“It was normal and regular,” Riddle said. “That was part of women's culture.”