Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

92 Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks
Child’s potty. Courtesy akgimages,
London.
have been mainly concerned with the risk of increased pollution
that a later abortion would cause (The Politics 1335b 24 –26).
The only evidence to suggest that Athenians regarded abortion
as a criminal act is provided by a fragment from a speech by Lysias,
which prohibits it on the grounds that an unborn child could have
survived to claim its father’s estate in cases where the father died
during pregnancy. Not until around c.e. 211, however, did the
ancient world, in the reign of the emperors Septimius Severus and
Caracalla, make abortion illegal—but only as a crime against the
rights of the parents. Medical scruples, fear of pollution, and legal
prohibitions notwithstanding, it is likely that many Greek women
did resort to abortion, particularly victims of rape, unmarried girls,
and hetairai.
The other solution to an unwanted pregnancy was exposure or
abandonment (ekthesis or apothesis ). Though the Greeks had certain
reservations about terminating an unwanted pregnancy, they
showed little concern for the rights, as we would phrase it, of the
newborn child. They did not, however, go so far as to kill unwanted
babies, for the simple reason that to do so would cause pollution
and involve the murderer in blood guilt. Instead, the unwanted
infant was carried outside the city and left to its fate. The legend of
Oedipus tells of an infant who was abandoned because of a prophecy
that he would kill his father and marry his mother. To reduce