“The Means–Blackmun narrative’s claim that protection of unborn children played no part in the enactment of increasingly restrictive 19th-century abortion laws blatantly defies a clear historical record. At its May 1859 meeting, for example, the American Medical Association (AMA) heard a report that rejected the “mistaken and exploded medical dogma” that the unborn child has no “independent and actual existence...as a living being.” The AMA unanimously adopted a resolution that condemned the “unwarrantable destruction of human life”38 and “the slaughter of countless children” and sought “the zealous co-operation of the various state Medical Societies” in pressing for laws prohibiting abortion, “at every period of gestation,” except when necessary to save the mother’s life.”
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