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Abortion was criminal in the nineteenth and twentieth century: Morality, sexuality and social control through the judicial archives of Seine Inférieure Volume 14, issue 2, Février 2018

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Authors
1 Médecin généraliste, Elbeuf ; Département de Médecine Générale, UFR Santé, Université Rouen Normandie, 22, boulevard Gambetta 76183 Rouen
2 Dysolab (Dynamiques sociales contemporaines) - EA 7476 - Université Rouen Normandie
* Tirés à part

In the nineteenth century, abortion was registered in the penal code as a crime. The French authorities were introducing repressive social control in a plan to revive the birth rate. The prohibition of abortive behavior was, however, ineffective. Women build concealment strategies and aborted clandestinely despite major health risks. Abortion practice became more professional with the advent of intrauterine injection, which was supplanting traditional methods. During the inter-war period, in the midst of a hygienist movement, the intrauterine injection was democratized in private practice. Prohibition was a failure despite legal developments increasing repression. Abortion was part of a liberalization of morals and a desire for an increasingly popular free maternity despite the judicial repression which was at its peak in 1940. Nowadays, unsafe abortion is still common, especially in Africa and in South America. Despite the indisputable ineffectiveness of the prohibition of abortion, the debate on its legitimacy still persists in France and in Europe.

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