[436] Thus, Kisch, in his Sexual Life of Woman, after discussing fully the various methods of prevention, decides in favor of the condom.  Fuerbringer similarly (Senator and Kaminer, Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage, vol. i, pp. 232 et seq.) concludes that the condom is “relatively the most perfect anti-conceptual remedy.”  Forel (Die Sexuelle Frage, pp. 457 et seq.) also discusses the question at length; any aesthetic objection to the condom, Forel adds (p. 544), is due to the fact that we are not accustomed to it; “eye-glasses are not specially aesthetic, but the poetry of life does not suffer excessively from their use, which, in many cases, cannot be dispensed with.”

[437] L’Avortement, p. 43.

[438] There are some disputed points in Roman law and practice concerning abortion; they are discussed in Balestrini’s valuable book, Aborto, pp. 30 et seq.

[439] Augustine, De Civitate Dei, Bk.  XXII, Ch.  XIII.

[440] The development of opinion and law concerning abortion has been traced by Eugene Bausset, L’Avortement Criminel, These de Paris, 1907.  For a summary of the practices of different peoples regarding abortion, see W.G.  Sumner, Folkways, Ch.  VIII.

[441] Die Neue Generation, May, 1908, p. 192.  It may be added that in England the attachment of any penalty at all to abortion, practiced in the early months of pregnancy (before “quickening” has taken place), is merely a modern innovation.

[442] Even Balestrini, who is opposed to the punishment of abortion, is no advocate of it.  “Whenever abortion becomes a social custom,” he remarks (op. cit., p. 191), “it is the external manifestation of a people’s decadence, and far too deeply rooted to be cured by the mere attempt to suppress the external manifestation.”

[443] Cf.  Ellen Key, Century of the Child, Ch.  I. Hirth (Wege zur Heimat, p. 526) is likewise opposed to the encouragement of abortion, though he would not actually punish the pregnant woman who induces abortion.  I would especially call attention to an able and cogent article by Anna Pappritz ("Die Vernichtung des Keimenden Lebens,” Sexual-Probleme, July, 1909) who argues that the woman is not the sole guardian of the embryo she bears, and that it is not in the interests of society, nor even in her own interests, that she should be free to destroy it at will.  Anna Pappritz admits that the present barbarous laws in regard to abortion must be modified, but maintains that they should not be abolished.  She proposes (1) a greatly reduced punishment for abortion; (2) this punishment to be extended to the father, whether married or unmarried (a provision already carried out in Norway, both for abortion and infanticide); (3) permission to the physician to effect abortion when there is good reason to suspect hereditary degeneration, as well as when the woman has been impregnated by force.