The problems relating to criminal abortion are of utmost complexity from social, medical, and legal viewpoints. Airing these problems is deemed prerequisite to any attempt at solution, and clarifying therapeutic abortion laws, to bring them into conformity with responsible medical attitudes and practices, is a significant primary step in clearing the atmosphere of the extreme confusion surrounding the matter of abortion in general and of therapeutic abortion in particular. While the laws of abortion in the United States and most of the western world profess primarily to safeguard the prospective mother, by their uncompromising severity they drive large numbers of desperate women into the hands of the unskilled abortionist, the very person from whom society seeks to shield them. Abortion in the United States In our country, it is apparent that abortion is a definite part of our social mores, with society steadfastly refusing to acknowledge this to be so.