a play on abortion

This Soviet poster warns that illegal abortions could kill and that those who participate in these abortions would be prosecuted

Dr. E. B. Demidovich wrote a play called "Trial of Sexual Depravity" in 1925 with the purpose to educate the Soviet public on various medical issues, one of them being abortion. Some lines from the play:

Prosecutor: Do you understand that a fetus is a future human being, that in it life has already begun, that you have killed a future person, a citizen who might have been useful for society?

Accused: I was sorry that I had to have an abortion. After all it was of my own blood. I wanted a little child, but my husband was not happy, he began to despise me. I was so upset: what would have happened if my husband had stopped loving me? My life would have been finished.

Prosecutor: Did you realize that each person belongs not only to himself, but to society, that a person does not have the right to injure himself in any way that might decrease his capacity for work, that abortion often leads to disease and to a work disability?

Accused: No, I didn't know that. I thought that my body was my property, that I could do with it what I wanted and that my fetus belonged only to me.

And it sounds so contemporary!

photo via russophilia