✅ The verified answer to this question is available below. Our community-reviewed solutions help you understand the material better.
What does this paragraph do?
Abortion is not a new phenomenon. Evidence suggests that the practice occurred in the Ancient Civilizations of China, Greece, Egypt, and the Roman Empire, among others. Then, the procedure was performed by providing women with a concoction of herbs to induce abortion, by using sharp tools to remove the fetus, applying forceful abdominal pressure, or other traditional techniques. In the Ancient world, abortion was a commonly accepted practice as most early philosophers believed that that until the soul entered the fetus (which varied depending on interpretation, but generally believed to be around 40 days post-conception), the fetus was not considered human. Some believe that the writing of the Hippocratic Oath in the 5 century BCE, in which physicians pledged to do no harm, was a way of forbidding the physicians of Ancient Greek from performing abortions. Others disagreed, arguing that the Hippocratic Oath did not forbid abortions, but rather simply discouraged dangerous methods of performing abortions to limit harm to the mother. In general, in the Ancient world, abortions were not controversial and procuring an abortion was not cause for guilt or shame. It was not until the spread of Christianity throughout the world that these attitudes began to shift.