The issue of abortion in Ancient Greece was multifaceted, intersecting with law, ethics, medicine, social ideology, and family structure. Contemporary debates add further layers, involving considerations such as individual rights, state regulation, the fetus’ personhood, household authority, and the continuity of civic life as central organizing principles.
In her 2013 paper Abortion in Ancient Greece, historian Laura Pepe explores this topic with particular attention to the Greek city-states, especially Athens, framing abortion not merely as a medical or ethical issue but as a social and legal phenomenon closely linked to fatherhood, property rights, and the political autonomy of the Athenian male citizen.
Terminology
Understanding how the people of Ancient Greece conceptualized abortion is crucial. The most common term in Ancient Greek for abortion is (ex)amblōsis (εξ άμβλωσις), which appears in legal and rhetorical texts. Notably, this concept did not correspond neatly to modern medical or moral categories of abortion, miscarriage, or fetal status. In fact, many surviving sources use the same language for both induced abortion and spontaneous miscarriage, suggesting that the ancient Greeks did not sharply distinguish between voluntary and involuntary termination of pregnancy.
Scholars situate the ancient discussion of abortion within broader debates about fetal status, reproductive decision-making, and the relationship between private households (oikos) and public law. These inquiries reveal that the Greek understanding of abortion cannot be fully grasped through the lens of individual autonomy. Instead, it was framed as a relational practice embedded within patriarchal structures and civic norms.
Abortion in Ancient Greek culture
In Ancient Greek society, reproduction was more than a biological process; it was a central aspect of sustaining both the oikos (household) and the polis (city-state). The birth of legitimate male offspring was crucial for perpetuating family lines, inheriting property, and fulfilling civic responsibilities. As a result, reproductive practices, including abortion, were evaluated primarily in terms of their impact on family continuity and societal stability.
Medical texts from antiquity, including those attributed to Hippocrates and later gynecological treatises, provide evidence that abortion was a recognized practice long before it became a subject of philosophical reflection. These sources describe methods such as abortive herbs, physical manipulations, and other techniques intended to terminate pregnancy. Historians note that midwives and experienced women in local communities often acted as the primary agents of reproductive healthcare, including pregnancy termination. While these practices were widely known and socially embedded, their safety and effectiveness varied considerably.
Yet social familiarity did not imply unconditional approval. Abortion carried ritual and cultural significance, including concerns about miasma, or moral pollution. Certain religious regulations, such as those recorded in Cyrene, treated women differently depending on the developmental stage of the fetus. Termination of an “unformed” embryo was treated similarly to childbirth, whereas expulsion of a “formed” fetus was regarded ritually as equivalent to the death of a person. These distinctions reflect broader ancient cosmologies in which bodily development and life-cycle stages were deeply intertwined with religious conceptions of purity.
Importance of custom in relation to abortion in Ancient Greece
A key finding of Laura Pepe’s research is that Ancient Athens did not have a formal law criminalizing abortion in the way modern states enact statutory prohibitions or permissions. Instead of being treated as a distinct public offense, abortion was primarily understood as an internal matter of the oikos. In ordinary circumstances, if a woman underwent an abortion, any repercussions were addressed within the household, typically by the husband or male head of the family.
The absence of a specific public statute should not be taken as tacit approval of a woman’s individual choice. On the contrary, the legal significance of abortion was closely tied to patriarchal authority: the “right” to decide whether a pregnancy would be carried to term rested with the husband (kyrios) rather than the woman. In extreme cases, if a pregnancy was terminated without the husband’s knowledge or consent, he could exercise the power to repudiate his wife.
This framing of abortion within paternal authority reflects broader Ancient Greek legal and moral traditions, which strictly subordinated women’s legal status to that of their male guardians—first fathers and then husbands. Female autonomy over reproductive decisions did not exist in the manner contemporary feminist frameworks imagine. Rather, reproductive decision-making was embedded within the patriarchal hierarchy of the oikos and regulated by norms designed to safeguard male economic and social interests.
Philosophical and medical discourses
While common practice and household custom are central to understanding abortion in Ancient Greece, philosophical and medical discourses also shaped how Greeks conceptualized the beginning of life and the ethical dimensions of terminating it.
In philosophical texts, thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle discussed abortion within broader theoretical frameworks, often framing it as a matter of family planning or population management rather than an ethical violation of an unborn person’s rights. For example, Aristotle famously argued in Politics that abortion, alongside infanticide, could be justified to maintain an ideal population size, provided it occurred before the fetus had “feeling” or was fully formed. For Aristotle, personhood and moral status were contingent upon stages of biological development and the presence of sensation—a view consistent with his broader teleological understanding of nature.
Even as later Greek thought increasingly recognized the fetus as a “living being,” this recognition did not translate into a concept of a “right to life” comparable to that of citizens or fully socialized persons. Ancient sources rarely express sympathy for aborted fetuses or assert fetal personhood. Instead, debates about fetal life were framed in terms of biological emergence and the timing of moral consideration.
Medical traditions also shaped ideas about abortion. Although the Hippocratic Oath was later interpreted by some classical and early modern physicians as a categorical prohibition against abortion, the original text specifically prohibits abortive practices within a broader ethical code against harming patients with lethal substances. This suggests that Hippocratic ethics focused more on professional conduct and the responsibilities of male physicians. Many ancient medical writers, including Soranus of Ephesus, described abortion techniques and acknowledged therapeutic abortion when the life or health of the woman was at risk.
Abortion in public rhetoric
Although abortion was seldom addressed by formal law in Ancient Greece, it did appear in public rhetoric and legal fragments that reveal how the issue could gain political significance. One key source is the fragmentary Lysian speech “Against Antigenes for Abortion.” These fragments demonstrate that abortion could be prosecuted as a form of harm when it intersected with property or inheritance disputes, particularly in cases where the unborn child stood to inherit.
Even in such courtroom settings, the focus was not on the moral status of the fetus but on the protection of family property and social order. In this way, abortion became a matter of public litigation only when it threatened normative economic or civic expectations, highlighting how reproduction was deeply intertwined with the social and legal fabric of classical Athens.
Religious perceptions
Ancient Greek religious thought added another layer to understanding abortion. Although the Greeks did not codify abortion as a theological crime, religious notions of purity and pollution influenced societal attitudes. As noted earlier, sacred laws could treat ritual pollution differently depending on the stage of fetal development, and participation in civic religious life could be affected by practices related to conception and childbirth.
However, religious frameworks did not assign the same moral weight to abortion as later Christian or Judaic traditions would. Greek religious thought did not uniformly frame abortion as an offense against the gods, nor was there a shared doctrine asserting the presence of a soul at conception. Instead, beliefs about ensoulment, life, and purity varied across local cultic practices and philosophical schools, reflecting the cultural diversity of the Greek world.
Within this broader context, Laura Pepe’s research demonstrates that abortion in Ancient Greece was neither universally condemned nor legislated as a distinct criminal offense. Rather, it was understood and regulated through household authority, reproductive labor, philosophical reflection on the origins of life, and medical practice. Women’s reproductive agency existed within constraints shaped by male guardianship, and legal discourse treated abortion primarily as a question of family property and social order.