Beyond the ruling classes in England and America, there is also evidence of abortion among Indigenous American peoples and the enslaved, according to John Riddle in "Eve's Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West." Enslaved Black people likely brought this knowledge with them from Africa. A drink made of a certain type of cotton root native to Africa was used to induce abortion throughout the South.

Unlike many antiabortion activists today, most religious and legal scholars at the time did not think "ensoulment" began at the moment of conception but at the time of "quickening" - when a pregnant person can feel fetal movement, generally between 16 and 22 weeks.

England passed its first law officially banning post-quickening abortion in 1800. The United States didn't follow until 1821, when the Connecticut legislature banned giving a noxious substance to a woman "quick with child."

This is one reason critics of originalism say the historical understanding doesn't, or at least shouldn't, matter. The legal scholars Alito quoted lived in a world where women were property, babies could be "monsters" and abortion was dangerous.

When the SCOTUS appears to overturn a half century's legal right of women to control their own body's autonomy based on the specious and mendacious assertions contained in the leaked majority opinion, the very spirit and point of constitutional law vis-a-vis stare decisis and unenumerated rights will be turned upon its head in open service of a religious agenda that gives primacy to one specific faith's view at the expense of many other opposing religion's commands and dictates upon the same subject.