Closing the Door on Pilgrims and Abortion

Two years ago I wrote a short article on the Pilgrims’ position on abortion – responding to a professor who claimed the Pilgrims practiced abortion. I expressed my doubts that they did, and brought out some ancillary references which argued against her assertion. Today, after further research on the topic, I’m ready to move from doubting this story to rejecting it.

I’ve updated the article to include more context, but the critical reason I’m convinced that the story is not true comes down to passage from William Gouge’s Of Domestical Duties. This book was owned by William Bradford, and it contains a thorough Puritan theology of family life and responsibilities. Gouge warned women against being careless with their body during pregnancy lest they

cause any abortion of miscarriage … For if through their default, they themselves or their child miscarry, they make themselves guilty of that miscarriage, if both miscarry, they make themselves guilty of the blood of both; at least in the court of conscience before God. But they who purposely take things to make away their children in their womb, are in far higher degree guilty of blood; yea even of willful murder. For that which hath received a soul formed in it by God, if it be unjustly cast away, shall be revenged.¹

Of course Gouge was not a Pilgrim, and just owning his book does not prove that they agreed with him. But when you look at they way they wrote about closely related issues, and the complete lack of evidence that they favored abortion, there is every reason to believe that they strongly opposed abortion. When historians claim that the Pilgrims supported abortion, and do not present any firm evidence to prove the point, we are well justified in rejecting their statement as one of progressive wishful thinking rather than solid and factual history. 

1. William Gouge, Of Domestical Duties (Puritan Reprints, 2006), p. 368.