Quickening

In Medical Jurisprudence. The sensation a mother has of the motion of the child she has conceived. The period when quickening is first experienced varies from the tenth to the twenty-fifth, but is usually about the sixteenth week from conception; Denman, Midw. 129. It was ‘formerly supposed that either the child was not alive until the time of quickening, or that it had acquired some new kind of existence that it did not possess before: hence the presumption of law that dates the life of the child from that time. The child Is, in truth, alive from the first moment of conception, and, according to its portion of the period of gestation, by its motion. By the growth of the embryo, the womb is enlarged until it becomes of too great a size to be contained in the pelvis, it then rises to the abdomen, when the motion of the foetus is for the first time felt. Quickening as indicating a distinct point In the existence of the foetus has no foundation in physiology; for it arises merely from the relation which the organs of gestation bear to the parts that surround them; it may take place early or late, according to the condition of these different parts, but not from any inherent vitality for the first time manifested by the foetus. As life, by law, is said to commence when a woman first becomes quick with child, so procuring an abortion after that period is a misdemeanor. Before this time, formerly the law did not interfere to prevent a pregnant' woman convicted of a capital offence from being executed; 2 Hale, PI.

Cr. 413.

If, however, the humanity of the law of the present day would not allow a woman to be executed who is, as Blackstone terms it, priv&ncnt enceinte, Com. 129, i. e. pregnant, although not quick, it would be but carrying out the same desire to interfere with longestablished rules, to hold that the penalty for procuring abortion should also extend to the whole period of pregnancy. “Quick with child is having conceived; Evans v. People, 49 N. Y. 86; with quick child is where the child has quickened.”

8 C. & P. 265; 2 Whar. & St. Med. Jur., 4th ed.