women in different stages of pregnancy, although most usually about the sixteenth or eighteenth week after conception.
Lawrence, J. said, this was the interpretation that must be put upon the words quick with child in the statute; and as the woman in this case had not felt the child alive within her before taking the medicine,—he directed an acquittal.
It cannot be necessary here to repeat that the popular idea of quick or not quick with child is founded in error;[1] yet as Acts of Parliament are not often drawn, and seldom even reviewed previous to their passing, by those whose profession, science, trade, or business, would best enable them to convey their meaning with distinctness; and as penal statutes must be construed strictly, and according to the ordinary and obvious meaning of the words, we must be content to recognise a distinction in law which does not exist in nature. There is, however, another peculiarity in the two sections which are founded on this distinction of quick or not quick, which calls for immediate attention; in the first of these, that which applies to women quick with child, and in which the offence is made a capital felony, there is no mention of using any instrument or other means whatever, but the crime is confined to administering any deadly poison, or other noxious and destructive substance or thing; while in the clause against the minor offence the use of instruments or other means whatsoever is expressly included. Now we shall have occasion hereafter to show that medicines internally administered can seldom produce abortion, but that the effect can be infallibly secured by instruments; the most probable
- ↑ On this subject see "Physiological Illustrations of Utero-gestation, vol. i, p. 239.
