Reading “The Creation of Patriarchy” by Gerda Lerner, and she talks about the laws of the Middle Assyrian Empire (14th-10th century BCE). Like many ancient societies, Assyria gave fathers the right to kill their children and especially the right to commit infanticide, but at the same time there were brutally strict laws against abortion. If a married woman was found to have induced a miscarriage, she would be publicly executed and refused burial, this kind of punishment was only reserved otherwise for crimes of treason and assault on the king. A woman having an abortion was seen to be taking away her husband’s right to determine the life or death of his children and furthermore that this was a crime against social order and therefore the divinely ordained kings. The brutal control a state holds over a woman’s body through punishing abortion and the fear it has over her reproductive abilities is literally thousands of years old.












