also 6 abhorsion. [ad. L. abortiōn-em n. of action f. aborī-ri: see ABORT.]
1. The act of giving untimely birth to offspring, premature delivery, miscarriage; the procuring of premature delivery so as to destroy offspring. (In Med. abortion is limited to a delivery so premature that the offspring cannot live, i.e., in the case of the human fœtus before the sixth month.)
1547. Boorde, Brev. Health, iii. 8. Abhorsion is when a woman is delyvered of her chylde before her tyme.
1646. Sir T. Browne, Pseud. Ep., 67. Physitions … promise therein a vertue against abortion.
1778. Robertson, America, I. IV. 297. The women by the use of certain herbs procure frequent abortions.
1869. Lecky, Europ. Morals, II. i. 22. The practice of abortion was one to which few persons in antiquity attached any deep feeling of condemnation.
b. fig. Failure (of aim or promise).
1710. in Somers’s Tracts, I. 10. All the Fruit of his Labour ends in Sterility and Abortion.
1797. Godwin, Enquirer, I. v. 35. Genius [may] terminate in an abortion.
1814. Miss Burney, Wanderer, IV. 58. The abortion of my purpose may have made me appear a mere female mountebank.
2. Biol. Arrestment of development of any organ, so that it either remains a mere rudiment, or is entirely shriveled up or absorbed.
1842. Asa Gray, Struct. Bot. (1880), vi. § 3. 179. Non-appearance of some parts which are supposed in the type = Abortion or Suppression.
1859. Darwin, Orig. Spec. (1873), v. 116. The partial or complete abortion of the reproductive organs.
1870. Rolleston, An. Life, 25. The skull of the Common Fowl differs in the abortion of the posterior crus.
3. The imperfect offspring of an untimely birth, or any dwarfed and misshapen product of generation; hence fig. the nugatory or empty result of any action.
1640. Bp. Hall, Christ. Mod. (Ward), 15/1. Those bodily delights … alas! what poor abortions they are, dead in the very conception.
1765. F. Gentleman, A Trip to the Moon, 159. I never heard nor could imagine how such an Abortion [of a law] was conceived.
1858. Hawthorne, Fr. & It. Journ., I. 171. A little abortion of a man … hastened before us.
1872. O. W. Holmes, Poet. Breakf. Tab., x. 315. The doctrine of man’s being a blighted abortion, a miserable disappointment to his Creator.
1878. H. M. Stanley, Dark. Cont., II. iii. 74. His feet are monstrous abortions.
