at Turin, his Aborto, Infanticidio ed Esposizione d’Infante, in which he argued that the penalty should be removed from abortion.  It was a very able and learned book, inspired by large ideas and a humanitarian spirit, but though its importance is now recognized, it cannot be said that it attracted much attention on publication.

It is especially in Germany that, during recent years, lawyers have followed women reformers, by advocating, more or less completely, the abolition of the punishment for abortion.  So distinguished an authority as Von Liszt, in a private letter to Camilla Jellinek (op. cit.), states that he regards the punishment of abortion as “very doubtful,” though he considers its complete abolition impracticable; he thinks abortion might be permitted during the early months of pregnancy, thus bringing about a return of the old view.  Hans Gross states his opinion (Archiv fuer Kriminal-Anthropologie, Bd.  XII, p. 345) that the time is not far distant when abortion will no longer be punished.  Radbruch and Von Lilienthal speak in the same sense.  Weinberg has advocated a change in the law (Mutterschutz, 1905, Heft 8), and Kurt Hiller (Die Neue Generation, April, 1909), also from the legal side, argues that abortion should only be punishable when effected by a married woman, without the knowledge and consent of her husband.

The medical profession, which took the first step in modern times in the authorization of abortion, has not at present taken any further step.  It has been content to lay down the principle that when the interests of the mother are opposed to those of the foetus, it is the latter which must be sacrificed.  It has hesitated to take the further step of placing abortion on the eugenic basis, and of claiming the right to insist on abortion whenever the medical and hygienic interests of society demand such a step.  This attitude is perfectly intelligible.  Medicine has in the past been chiefly identified with the saving of lives, even of worthless and worse than worthless lives; “Keep everything alive!  Keep everything alive!” nervously cried Sir James Paget.  Medicine has confined itself to the humble task of attempting to cure evils, and is only to-day beginning to undertake the larger and nobler task of preventing them.

“The step from killing the child in the womb to murdering a person when out of the womb, is a dangerously narrow one,” sagely remarks a recent medical author, probably speaking for many others, who somehow succeed in blinding themselves to the fact that this “dangerously narrow step” has been taken by mankind, only too freely, for thousands of years past, long before abortion was known in the world.

Here and there, however, medical authors of repute have advocated the further extension of abortion, with precautions, and under proper supervision, as an aid to eugenic progress.  Thus, Professor Max Flesch (Die Neue Generation,