The Criminalization of Abortion in the West -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Introduction -- 1. The Earliest Proponentsof Criminalization -- The Scholastic Origins of Criminal Abortion -- Forms of Sentencing in Medieval Jurisprudence -- Crimen in "An Age without Lawyers" (500-1050 -- 2. Early Venues of Criminalization -- Crimen in Sacramental Confession -- Judicial Crimen in the Ecclesiastical Courts -- Public Penitential Crimen -- Royal Jurisdiction in Thirteenth-Century England -- 3. Chief Agents of Criminalization -- Legislation versus Juristic Communis Opinio -- Communis Opinio and Peer Dissent -- Systematic Law before the Rise of the Modern State -- 4. Principal Arguments in Favorof Criminalization -- Successive Animation and Creatianism -- Legal and Theological Assessments of Therapeutic Abortion -- The Demise of Late Medieval Embryology -- 5. Objections to Criminalization -- Customary Indifference North and East of the River Rhine -- Rejection in the Royal Courts of England (1327-1557) -- 6. Abortion Experts and Expertise -- Evidence of Midwifery -- Medical Embryology and Abortion Discourse -- Abortifacient Prescriptions -- 7. Abortion in the Criminal Courtsof the Ius Commune -- Criminal Accusationes and Inquisitiones -- The Rules and Safeguards of Ordinary Inquisitiones -- Extraordinary Inquisitiones -- 8. Forms of Punishment in the CriminalCourts of the Ius Commune -- Statutory and Customary Specifications -- Substitute Penalties -- Adjustment Out of Court -- 9. The Frequency of CriminalProsecutions -- Viable Statistical Queries -- Geography and Patterns of Record Keeping -- A Triad of Typical Cases -- Bibliography -- Index.