Page:Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.pdf/31

Rh a crime at all stages of pregnancy and authorized the imposition of severe punishment. See Lord Ellenborough’s Act, 43 Geo. 3, c. 58 (1803). One scholar has suggested that Parliament’s decision “may partly have been attributable to the medical man’s concern that fetal life should be protected by the law at all stages of gestation.” Keown 22.

In this country during the 19th century, the vast majority of the States enacted statutes criminalizing abortion at all stages of pregnancy. See, infra (listing state statutory provisions in chronological order). By 1868, the year when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, three-quarters of the States, 28 out of 37, had enacted statutes making abortion a crime even if it was performed before quickening. See ibid. Of the nine States that had not yet