John Irving: Forced birth is religious persecution

"In the time of the Puritans, abortion was allowed until the fetus was “quick” — meaning, when the woman could feel the fetus move. Abortion was permissible beyond the first trimester, up to four or five months.

Our Founding Fathers got this right — the choice to have an abortion or a child belonged to the woman who was pregnant. With the help of midwives, women were having babies and abortions at home since colonial times.

Beginning in the 1840s, and continuing over decades, abortion was outlawed state by state, becoming illegal everywhere in the United States by 1900 — until 1973, when the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision held that a woman had a constitutional right to an abortion. For more than two centuries — beginning when the Pilgrims landed in Plymouth, Mass. — abortion was largely permitted. Please remember, abortion was prohibited for scarcely a century. What’s happened now is religious backwardness..."

https://www.freethoughttoday.com/free/john-irving-forced-birth-is-religious-persecution/