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The Plymouth Law and Criminal Justice Review

Kate Gleeson

Document Type

Article

Abstract

Contemporary English abortion law is now typically thought to be a development of the twentieth century, and little academic attention has been paid to its development before the 1938 case of R v Bourne or the Abortion Act 1967. Sir James Fitzjames Stephen's nineteenth century perspectives on pregnancy, abortion and the doctrine of necessity informing the basis of contemporary governance of abortion, child destruction, and infanticide as distinct from homicide, are often overlooked. Stephen understood abortion, child destruction and infanticide as distinct crimes with a common motivation and intention. The desperation of women to conceal or remedy the 'miserable' and emotionally destabilising condition of unplanned pregnancy typically defined each crime; the exception being cases of medical emergency during pregnancy which sometimes defined abortion and child destruction. Stephen argued that punishment required public assent and support in order to deter crime, and severe punishment in these cases rarely had either. In the twentieth century Stephen's radical Victorian arguments to conceptualise abortion as a legitimate medical procedure (in the case of necessity), and to characterise child-killing as distinct from homicide, were finally effective: his model for law therefore informs contemporary English law in these areas.

Publication Date

2016-01-01

Publication Title

The Plymouth Law & Criminal Justice Review

Volume

8

Issue

1

First Page

48

Last Page

67

ISSN

2054-149X

Deposit Date

April 2011

Embargo Period

2024-11-04

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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