The sorcery that one woman was accused of was teaching two young women how "not to get pregnant". In Hamburg a woman was burned to death because she taught young women how to use abortifacients, and at Zwickau, another female was burned with her books and instruments because she aborted the fruit of the womb “durch ihre falsche Art” (through her treacherous method). Midwives were taunted, “How many children have you destroyed? How many pregnant women? How many mothers lying-in?” At Wurzburg, where several hundred people were put to death in two years (1627-29), a midwife was blamed for the entire disorder.
This attack on birth control and abortion might be seen as a protection of the fetus, if the authorities had shown a corresponding respect for pregnancy, birth, or infancy. They did not. When Alison Legrand was arrested for witchcraft, although she protested that she was pregnant, she was twice submitted to the ordeal of water (“ducking”). Although proven innocent, she miscarried. Though courts sometimes let a pregnant prisoner go, often they did not, forcing the gravid woman to give birth under harsh conditions. Sometimes the infant died, as did Sarah Goode’s newborn in Salem jail; in other cases, the new mother was tortured and executed anyway (Jehanne de Monchecourt in northern France, 1610); in a few cases the pregnant woman, denied a stay, was executed with the fetus (for example, Elizabeth Lowys, England). Children were pressured to give evidence against their parents and to witness their parents’ execution. Children as young as three were imprisoned and as young as eight were executed as witches. The society that hunted witches could not claim to be pro-fetus or pro-child.
And humans consider themselves enlightened...
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