The Founders on . . . Abortion

The FFs were not Victorians, as Maria Reynolds and Sally Hemings could have told you. Prostitution was common and was understood to be inevitable. There were lots of illegitimate children. Some women practiced rudimentary forms of birth control. It wasn’t ideal, but that was just the way it was, and few people thought it could be changed.

Based on this, you would have to think that the Founders would have been sympathetic to legislation authorizing abortion under some circumstances. But if you had asked them if the Constitution prohibited any legislative consideration of the issue, they would have snorted in derision. The Constitution was about the distribution of power, not the poisoned fruit of sin. Abortion never would have entered the minds of the FFs as they were arguing and drafting in 1787.