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Introduction1
Two sets of prominent historians have argued-from very different kinds of evidence, and with very different goals-that abortion was routinely practiced in late imperial China. The first set consists of demographic historians, notably James Z. Lee, Li Bozhong, and Wang Feng.2 They claim that the Chinese demographic regime has long been characterized by systematic birth control, in which abortion played a significant role. Since Chinese people have practiced "rational" family planning for centuries, there was no need for China to undergo a modern demographic transition away from natural fertility like that experienced by the West; indeed, according to Lee and Wang, it was a simple and seamless process for Chinese people to adapt their own long-standing practice of birth control to the post-Mao state's new regime of population control.3
The second set consists of gender historians, notably Francesca Bray and Charlotte Furth.4 Their focus is the politics of reproduction within the polygynous elite household; and their claims are far more nuanced and limited in scope than those of the demographers. Specifically, Francesca Bray argues that elite women were able to use abortifacients (euphemized as emmenagogues) to terminate early pregnancies (euphemized as "menstrual blockage") because regular menstruation was deemed the foundation of women's health and fertility. This technology of reproductive control enabled elite wives to avoid childbearing and to displace the biological duties of the wife/mother role onto the concubines and maidservants of their households.
Despite their many differences, both sets of historians believe that at least some people in late imperial China used abortion for routine birth control. This belief would seem to presuppose that traditional methods of abortion (and in the case of the historical demographers, contraception as well) were safe, effective, and readily available to those who wished to use them; indeed, Li Bozhong makes this claim explicitly.5 If true, these claims would have terrific implications for a host of sub-fields of Chinese history, including demography, gender, and sexuality, but also law and medicine. Moreover, as Lee and Wang suggest, whether and how the Chinese practiced fertility control in the past should inform the way we understand population policy in the PRC today. For all of these reasons, the practice of abortion in late imperial China...