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Rh abortion a crime at all stages of pregnancy and authorized the imposition of severe punishment. See Lord Ellenborough's Act, 43 Geo. 3 c. 58. 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 Appendix A (listing state statutory provisions in chronological order). By 1868, 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 Appendix A. Of the nine States that had not yet criminalized abortion at all stages, all but one did so by 1910. Ibid.

The trend in the territories that would become the last 13 States was similar: all of them criminalized abortion at all stages of pregnancy between 1850 (the Kingdom of Hawaii) and 1919 (New Mexico). See Appendix B; see also Casey, 505 U. S., at 952 (Rehnquist, C. J., dissenting); Dellapenna 317–319. By the end of the 1950s, according to the Roe