50s: Starting with a storage ring

Chapter 674 The Right to Be Born or Not

Hearing Sun Zhiwei say that the child's future would be better, Tong Jiajia finally felt relieved and soon fell into a deep sleep.

Afterwards, Sun Zhiwei specifically asked people to keep track of the progress of the investigation.

As expected, the police could not find the 'mother' who abandoned the child, nor could they find any information about the child's birth.

This child seemed to have fallen from the sky. In the end, the helpless police officers had no choice but to send her to an orphanage.

Unexpectedly, after spending less than a week at the orphanage, the child was adopted by a wealthy family.

It is foreseeable that, at least in terms of material and educational conditions, this child's future will definitely be much better than that of the original family.

Although this unexpected incident had come to an end, he knew that similar events would continue to occur in the world.

This is actually a contradictory debate that has lasted for thousands of years, and similar situations exist not only in the United States, but also in countries around the world.

The core of the debate revolves around abortion. From ancient times to the present, from China to the United States, the legitimacy of abortion has never been definitively established.

In ancient China, the attitude towards abortion was always one of opposition with room for compromise.

The later popular "Shuihudi Qin Bamboo Slips" contained specific cases of protecting fetuses.

The "Fengzhenshi: Chuzi" records in detail the process by which local officials handled a case of accidental abortion:

“In the sixth month, Jia was pregnant with a child. During the day, he fought with Bing, a young woman from the same village… Jia went to his room and his illness returned. He emerged from his room at night. Now Jia has come to me with his child and told Bing that he has ordered a certain clerk to go and arrest Bing.”

A pregnant woman, A, got into a fight with a woman, C, which resulted in A miscarriage. A complained to the authorities, and the officials immediately arrested and punished C. This shows how much importance ancient regimes attached to the right to life of the unborn child.

However, there are also many examples of abortion in ancient times.

Among them, the stories of the Zhao Feiyan sisters, empresses of the Western Han Dynasty, forcing concubines in the harem to have abortions, and the story of Consort Wang of the Eastern Han Dynasty having an abortion out of fear of Empress He, are widely circulated.

In fact, abortion was a fairly sophisticated technique in ancient China.

The Han Dynasty medical classic, Treatise on Febrile and Miscellaneous Diseases, contains records such as "abortion is the main cause of white medicine" and "leeches... promote urination and abortion."

As time goes by, the methods of abortion are becoming more and more diverse.

Tao Hongjing's "Collected Annotations on the Materia Medica" from the Southern Dynasties records as many as 41 kinds of abortifacient drugs, and many single-ingredient abortifacient prescriptions are also mentioned in medical works such as "Prescriptions Worth a Thousand Gold Pieces" and "Prescriptions for the Heart".

Furthermore, ancient Chinese medical experts even developed acupuncture as a method of abortion.

The Pulse Classic, written by Wang Shuhe of the Western Jin Dynasty, states: "Pregnant women should not be treated with moxibustion or acupuncture on their meridians, as this will inevitably lead to miscarriage."

Throughout history, government agencies have restricted or even prohibited abortion.

At the end of the fifth year of the Zhiyuan era, Kublai Khan, the Yuan emperor, issued an edict to regulate the medical industry. The edict clearly stated: "Those who practice acupuncture and moxibustion without understanding medical principles, or who cause women to have abortions and harm their lives, shall be punished more severely."

In modern times, the Qing Dynasty also issued similar regulations.

During the Guangxu era, "medicines such as abortion pills, spermatorrhea remedies, and aphrodisiacs were plastered all over the streets and alleys, just like the small advertisements on the streets today."

The "Rules of the Beijing Pharmaceutical Merchants Association" stipulated that "the association shall check whether it can report to the Ministry on its behalf, and shall open for business only after approval."

This shows that rulers throughout history have opposed abortion. However, the laws of each dynasty did not completely prohibit abortion; instead, they focused more on moral instruction.

In summary: it's neither encouraged nor prohibited. In other words, it's permissible to do it, but not to talk about it. This debate wasn't limited to ancient China; the West also had a long history of controversy surrounding abortion.

Ancient Greek philosophers debated extensively and intensely whether parents had the right to abortion.

Many well-known historical figures participated in the discussion; for example, Socrates supported abortion, and Plato held the same view.

Aristotle, however, strongly opposed this view, while Pythagoras fully supported Aristotle's opinion.

Hippocrates, the founder of Western medicine, included this clause in his oath: "I will not perform abortions on women."

On the one hand, this statement represents Hippocrates' view on abortion; but on the other hand, it also shows that ancient Europe already had specific methods of abortion.

This is quite interesting. This doctor Hippocrates, who opposed abortion, actually knew about abortion surgery. Did he actually perform it?

In summary, ancient Western societies were similar to ancient Chinese societies in that they discouraged abortion, but did not explicitly prohibit it.

Until 1869, Pope Pius IX issued a decree stating that a fetus is a "person" and that women who have abortions and doctors who perform abortions would be excommunicated from Christianity.

As is well known, the Western world after the Middle Ages was dominated by Christianity, and therefore Christianity's attitude toward abortion was equivalent to the official attitude of the Western world.

With this, the nature of the fetus was determined, and women's right to abortion was completely deprived.

Even with such a clear ban, it hasn't changed the reality that more and more people are getting abortions, and abortion technology is becoming more and more advanced.

In the 20th century, especially after World War II, the number of men who died in the war increased by 53%, and the proportion of women with higher education reached 15%.

Several large-scale feminist movements emerged one after another, and in these movements, fighting for the "right to abortion" naturally became one of their basic goals.

The first country to break the ban was the United Kingdom. In 1967, the UK passed the new Abortion Act, which put the right to abortion in the hands of British women.

The United States, on the other hand, has lagged far behind, and so far, the ban has only been partially implemented.

Current U.S. law allows for the determination of whether an abortion is possible for fetuses under three months of gestation, based on the attending physician's assessment.

For fetuses aged 3 to 7 months, states can regulate abortion based on the aim of protecting the health of pregnant women.

For fetuses older than 7 months, states may prohibit abortion if they deem it necessary.

Since 1973, thanks to Roe v. Wade, American women have been granted limited abortion rights.

As one of the world's major powers after World War II, any action taken by the United States would be imitated by Western countries. The influence of the Roe case quickly spread to Europe.

Subsequently, with the exception of Poland and a few small, religiously influential countries such as the Vatican and Liechtenstein, other countries repealed their anti-abortion laws.

The debates and changes surrounding abortion have not been fully resolved even in the 21st century, and some countries have even reneged on their existing laws.

But all of this should not be seen merely as a debate about abortion, but rather as a struggle over women's 'right to privacy' and 'right to choose'.

This is what feminists often say: "Whether to have a child or not should be decided by the mother."

Unfortunately, this law was overturned half a century later.

(End of this chapter)