The Talmud is unfavorable to coitus during pregnancy, and the Koran prohibits it during the whole of the period, as well as during suckling.  Among the Hindus, on the other hand, intercourse is continued up to the last fortnight of pregnancy, and it is even believed that the injected semen helps to nourish the embryo (W.D.  Sutherland, “Ueber das Alltagsleben und die Volksmedizin unter den Bauern Britischostindiens,” Muenchener Medizinische Wochenschrift, Nos. 12 and 13, 1906).  The great Indian physician Susruta, however, was opposed to coitus during pregnancy, and the Chinese are emphatically on the same side.

As men have emerged from barbarism in the direction of civilization, the animal instinct of refusal after impregnation has been completely lost in women, while at the same time both sexes tend to become indifferent to those ritual restraints which at an earlier period were almost as binding as instinct.  Sexual intercourse thus came to be practiced after impregnation, much the same as before, as part of ordinary “marital rights,” though sometimes there has remained a faint suspicion, reflected in the hesitating attitude of the Catholic Church already alluded to, that such intercourse may be a sinful indulgence.  Morality is, however, called in to fortify this indulgence.  If the husband is shut out from marital intercourse at this time, it is argued, he will seek extra-marital intercourse, as indeed in some parts of the world it is recognized that he legitimately may; therefore the interests of the wife, anxious to retain her husband’s fidelity, and the interests of Christian morality, anxious to uphold the institution of monogamy, combine to permit the continuation of coitus during pregnancy.  The custom has been furthered by the fact that, in civilized women at all events, coitus during pregnancy is usually not less agreeable than at other times and by some women is felt indeed to be even more agreeable.[13] There is also the further consideration, for those couples who have sought to prevent conception, that now intercourse may be enjoyed with impunity.  From a higher point of view such intercourse may also be justified, for if, as all the finer moralists of the sexual impulse now believe, love has its value not only in so far as it induces procreation but also in so far as it aids individual development and the mutual good and harmony of the united couple, it becomes morally right during pregnancy.

From an early period, however, great authorities have declared themselves in opposition to the custom of practicing coitus during pregnancy.  At the end of the first century, Soranus, the first of great gynaecologists, stated, in his treatise on the diseases of women, that sexual intercourse is injurious throughout pregnancy, because of the movement imparted to the uterus, and especially injurious during the latter months.  For more than sixteen hundred years the question, having fallen into the hands of the theologians, seems