Abortion brought changes in morality because it suppressed certain basic anthropological conditions. Female adultery had throughout history been a more serious trespass than male adultery, not because of any irrational sexism but out of a rational instinct for survival. When a man strays, he risks placing a child in some other household. When a woman strays, she risks introducing a creature with ulterior allegiances into the heart of her own. Such straying was the cause of a good deal of anguish and murder, and many of the best novels in the European tradition. But where contraception had
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