quickening

In his “Commentaries,” Blackstone argued that life “begins in contemplation of law as soon as an infant is able to stir in the mother's womb,” known as “quickening.”

Abortions before “quickening” — within roughly the first four or five months of pregnancy — were considered “the purview of women” rather than the law, according to the historian Sarah Handley-Cousins.

This law only banned abortion after what used to be called quickening, meaning when a pregnant person feels fetal movement.

The quickening tempo of this foreign outreach is in one sense unsurprising.

Movement, known as quickening, was the threshold because, in a time before pregnancy tests or ultrasounds, it was the clearest sign that a woman was pregnant.