It is not the murder of a living child which constitutes the offence, but the destruction of gestation by wicked means and against nature

Ey the well-settled and established doctrine of the common law, the civil rights of an infant en ventre sa mere are fully protected at all periods after conception.......

—this Court concluded that it was not necessary to aver quickening in the woman to establish a crime associated with abortion: "The moment the womb is instinct with embryo life, the gestation has begun, the crime may be perpetrated."

It is a flagrant crime at common law to attempt to procure the miscarriage or abortion of the woman.... It is a crime against nature which obstructs the fountain of life, and therefore it is punished

It is well established that jurisdiction of the subject matter cannot be given to courts by consent.

The Solicitor General suggests that history supports an abortion right because of the common law's failure to criminalize abortion before quickening, but the insistence on quickening was not universal

"It has long been the rule in Pennsylvania and in the federal courts that consistency in a verdict in a criminal case is not necessary."

"Jurisdiction in courts is the power and authority to declare the law. The very word in its origin imports as much; it is derived from juris and dico; I speak by the law. And that sentence ought to be inscribed in living light on every tribunal of criminal power. It is the right of administering justice through the laws by the means which the law has provided for that purpose..."

—p. 606 (rev. 4th ed. 1857)(footnotes omitted); see also J. Beck, Researches in Medicine and Medical Jurisprudence 26-28 (2d ed. 1835)(describing the quickening distinction as "absurd" and "injurious