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Art as entertainment. Art may seek to bring about a particular emotion or mood, for the purpose of relaxing or entertaining the viewer. This is often the function of the art industries of Motion Pictures and Video Games.
The AvantGarde. Art for political change. One of the defining functions of early 20thcentury art has been to use visual images to bring about political change. Art movements that had this goalDadaism, Surrealism, Russian constructivism, and Abstract Expressionism, among othersare collectively referred to as the avantgarde arts.By contrast, the realistic attitude, inspired by positivism, from Saint Thomas Aquinas to Anatole France, clearly seems to me to be hostile to any intellectual or moral advancement. I loathe it, for it is made up of mediocrity, hate, and dull conceit. It is this attitude which today gives birth to these ridiculous books, these insulting plays. It constantly feeds on and derives strength from the newspapers and stultifies both science and art by assiduously flatteri |
ng the lowest of tastes; clarity bordering on stupidity, a dog's life. Andr Breton Surrealism
Art as a "free zone", removed from the action of the social censure. Unlike the avantgarde movements, which wanted to erase cultural differences in order to produce new universal values, contemporary art has enhanced its tolerance towards cultural differences as well as its critical and liberating functions social inquiry, activism, subversion, deconstruction ..., becoming a more open place for research and experimentation.
Art for social inquiry, subversion or anarchy. While similar to art for political change, subversive or deconstructivist art may seek to question aspects of society without any specific political goal. In this case, the function of art may be simply to criticize some aspect of society. Graffiti art and other types of street art are graphics and images that are spraypainted or stencilled on publicly viewable walls, buildings, buses, trains, and bridges, usually without permission. Certain art fo |
rms, such as graffiti, may also be illegal when they break laws in this case vandalism.
Art for social causes. Art can be used to raise awareness for a large variety of causes. A number of art activities were aimed at raising awareness of autism, cancer, human trafficking, and a variety of other topics, such as ocean conservation, human rights in Darfur, murdered and missing Aboriginal women, elder abuse, and pollution. Trashion, using trash to make fashion, practiced by artists such as Marina DeBris is one example of using art to raise awareness about pollution.
Art for psychological and healing purposes. Art is also used by art therapists, psychotherapists and clinical psychologists as art therapy. The Diagnostic Drawing Series, for example, is used to determine the personality and emotional functioning of a patient. The end product is not the principal goal in this case, but rather a process of healing, through creative acts, is sought. The resultant piece of artwork may also offer insight into the troub |
les experienced by the subject and may suggest suitable approaches to be used in more conventional forms of psychiatric therapy.
Art for propaganda, or commercialism. Art is often utilized as a form of propaganda, and thus can be used to subtly influence popular conceptions or mood. In a similar way, art that tries to sell a product also influences mood and emotion. In both cases, the purpose of art here is to subtly manipulate the viewer into a particular emotional or psychological response toward a particular idea or object.
Art as a fitness indicator. It has been argued that the ability of the human brain by far exceeds what was needed for survival in the ancestral environment. One evolutionary psychology explanation for this is that the human brain and associated traits such as artistic ability and creativity are the human equivalent of the peacock's tail. The purpose of the male peacock's extravagant tail has been argued to be to attract females see also Fisherian runaway and handicap principle. Accord |
ing to this theory superior execution of art was evolutionarily important because it attracted mates.
The functions of art described above are not mutually exclusive, as many of them may overlap. For example, art for the purpose of entertainment may also seek to sell a product, i.e. the movie or video game.
Public access
Since ancient times, much of the finest art has represented a deliberate display of wealth or power, often achieved by using massive scale and expensive materials. Much art has been commissioned by political rulers or religious establishments, with more modest versions only available to the most wealthy in society.
Nevertheless, there have been many periods where art of very high quality was available, in terms of ownership, across large parts of society, above all in cheap media such as pottery, which persists in the ground, and perishable media such as textiles and wood. In many different cultures, the ceramics of indigenous peoples of the Americas are found in such a wide range of grav |
es that they were clearly not restricted to a social elite, though other forms of art may have been. Reproductive methods such as moulds made massproduction easier, and were used to bring highquality Ancient Roman pottery and Greek Tanagra figurines to a very wide market. Cylinder seals were both artistic and practical, and very widely used by what can be loosely called the middle class in the Ancient Near East. Once coins were widely used, these also became an art form that reached the widest range of society.
Another important innovation came in the 15th century in Europe, when printmaking began with small woodcuts, mostly religious, that were often very small and handcolored, and affordable even by peasants who glued them to the walls of their homes. Printed books were initially very expensive, but fell steadily in price until by the 19th century even the poorest could afford some with printed illustrations. Popular prints of many different sorts have decorated homes and other places for centuries.
In 16 |
61, the city of Basel, in Switzerland, opened the first public museum of art in the world, the Kunstmuseum Basel. Today, its collection is distinguished by an impressively wide historic span, from the early 15th century up to the immediate present. Its various areas of emphasis give it international standing as one of the most significant museums of its kind. These encompass paintings and drawings by artists active in the Upper Rhine region between 1400 and 1600, and on the art of the 19th to 21st centuries.
Public buildings and monuments, secular and religious, by their nature normally address the whole of society, and visitors as viewers, and display to the general public has long been an important factor in their design. Egyptian temples are typical in that the most largest and most lavish decoration was placed on the parts that could be seen by the general public, rather than the areas seen only by the priests. Many areas of royal palaces, castles and the houses of the social elite were often generally a |
ccessible, and large parts of the art collections of such people could often be seen, either by anybody, or by those able to pay a small price, or those wearing the correct clothes, regardless of who they were, as at the Palace of Versailles, where the appropriate extra accessories silver shoe buckles and a sword could be hired from shops outside.
Special arrangements were made to allow the public to see many royal or private collections placed in galleries, as with the Orleans Collection mostly housed in a wing of the Palais Royal in Paris, which could be visited for most of the 18th century. In Italy the art tourism of the Grand Tour became a major industry from the Renaissance onwards, and governments and cities made efforts to make their key works accessible. The British Royal Collection remains distinct, but large donations such as the Old Royal Library were made from it to the British Museum, established in 1753. The Uffizi in Florence opened entirely as a gallery in 1765, though this function had been |
gradually taking the building over from the original civil servants' offices for a long time before. The building now occupied by the Prado in Madrid was built before the French Revolution for the public display of parts of the royal art collection, and similar royal galleries open to the public existed in Vienna, Munich and other capitals. The opening of the Muse du Louvre during the French Revolution in 1793 as a public museum for much of the former French royal collection certainly marked an important stage in the development of public access to art, transferring ownership to a republican state, but was a continuation of trends already well established.
Most modern public museums and art education programs for children in schools can be traced back to this impulse to have art available to everyone. However, museums do not only provide availability to art, but do also influence the way art is being perceived by the audience, as studies found. Thus, the museum itself is not only a blunt stage for the prese |
ntation of art, but plays an active and vital role in the overall perception of art in modern society.
Museums in the United States tend to be gifts from the very rich to the masses. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, for example, was created by John Taylor Johnston, a railroad executive whose personal art collection seeded the museum. But despite all this, at least one of the important functions of art in the 21st century remains as a marker of wealth and social status.
There have been attempts by artists to create art that can not be bought by the wealthy as a status object. One of the prime original motivators of much of the art of the late 1960s and 1970s was to create art that could not be bought and sold. It is "necessary to present something more than mere objects" said the major post war German artist Joseph Beuys. This time period saw the rise of such things as performance art, video art, and conceptual art. The idea was that if the artwork was a performance that would leave nothing b |
ehind, or was simply an idea, it could not be bought and sold. "Democratic precepts revolving around the idea that a work of art is a commodity impelled the aesthetic innovation which germinated in the mid1960s and was reaped throughout the 1970s. Artists broadly identified under the heading of Conceptual art ... substituting performance and publishing activities for engagement with both the material and materialistic concerns of painted or sculptural form ... have endeavored to undermine the art object qua object."
In the decades since, these ideas have been somewhat lost as the art market has learned to sell limited edition DVDs of video works, invitations to exclusive performance art pieces, and the objects left over from conceptual pieces. Many of these performances create works that are only understood by the elite who have been educated as to why an idea or video or piece of apparent garbage may be considered art. The marker of status becomes understanding the work instead of necessarily owning it, and |
the artwork remains an upperclass activity. "With the widespread use of DVD recording technology in the early 2000s, artists, and the gallery system that derives its profits from the sale of artworks, gained an important means of controlling the sale of video and computer artworks in limited editions to collectors."
Controversies
Art has long been controversial, that is to say disliked by some viewers, for a wide variety of reasons, though most premodern controversies are dimly recorded, or completely lost to a modern view. Iconoclasm is the destruction of art that is disliked for a variety of reasons, including religious ones. Aniconism is a general dislike of either all figurative images, or often just religious ones, and has been a thread in many major religions. It has been a crucial factor in the history of Islamic art, where depictions of Muhammad remain especially controversial. Much art has been disliked purely because it depicted or otherwise stood for unpopular rulers, parties or other groups. Art |
istic conventions have often been conservative and taken very seriously by art critics, though often much less so by a wider public. The iconographic content of art could cause controversy, as with late medieval depictions of the new motif of the Swoon of the Virgin in scenes of the Crucifixion of Jesus. The Last Judgment by Michelangelo was controversial for various reasons, including breaches of decorum through nudity and the Apollolike pose of Christ.
The content of much formal art through history was dictated by the patron or commissioner rather than just the artist, but with the advent of Romanticism, and economic changes in the production of art, the artists' vision became the usual determinant of the content of his art, increasing the incidence of controversies, though often reducing their significance. Strong incentives for perceived originality and publicity also encouraged artists to court controversy. Thodore Gricault's Raft of the Medusa c. 1820, was in part a political commentary on a recent eve |
nt. douard Manet's Le Djeuner sur l'Herbe 1863, was considered scandalous not because of the nude woman, but because she is seated next to men fully dressed in the clothing of the time, rather than in robes of the antique world. John Singer Sargent's Madame Pierre Gautreau Madam X 1884, caused a controversy over the reddish pink used to color the woman's ear lobe, considered far too suggestive and supposedly ruining the highsociety model's reputation.
The gradual abandonment of naturalism and the depiction of realistic representations of the visual appearance of subjects in the 19th and 20th centuries led to a rolling controversy lasting for over a century.
In the 20th century, Pablo Picasso's Guernica 1937 used arresting cubist techniques and stark monochromatic oils, to depict the harrowing consequences of a contemporary bombing of a small, ancient Basque town. Leon Golub's Interrogation III 1981, depicts a female nude, hooded detainee strapped to a chair, her legs open to reveal her sexual organs, surroun |
ded by two tormentors dressed in everyday clothing. Andres Serrano's Piss Christ 1989 is a photograph of a crucifix, sacred to the Christian religion and representing Christ's sacrifice and final suffering, submerged in a glass of the artist's own urine. The resulting uproar led to comments in the United States Senate about public funding of the arts.
Theory
Before Modernism, aesthetics in Western art was greatly concerned with achieving the appropriate balance between different aspects of realism or truth to nature and the ideal; ideas as to what the appropriate balance is have shifted to and fro over the centuries. This concern is largely absent in other traditions of art. The aesthetic theorist John Ruskin, who championed what he saw as the naturalism of J. M. W. Turner, saw art's role as the communication by artifice of an essential truth that could only be found in nature.
The definition and evaluation of art has become especially problematic since the 20th century. Richard Wollheim distinguishes th |
ree approaches to assessing the aesthetic value of art the Realist, whereby aesthetic quality is an absolute value independent of any human view; the Objectivist, whereby it is also an absolute value, but is dependent on general human experience; and the Relativist position, whereby it is not an absolute value, but depends on, and varies with, the human experience of different humans.
Arrival of Modernism
The arrival of Modernism in the late 19th century lead to a radical break in the conception of the function of art, and then again in the late 20th century with the advent of postmodernism. Clement Greenberg's 1960 article "Modernist Painting" defines modern art as "the use of characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself". Greenberg originally applied this idea to the Abstract Expressionist movement and used it as a way to understand and justify flat nonillusionistic abstract painting
After Greenberg, several important art theorists emerged, such as Michael Fried, T. J. Clark, |
Rosalind Krauss, Linda Nochlin and Griselda Pollock among others. Though only originally intended as a way of understanding a specific set of artists, Greenberg's definition of modern art is important to many of the ideas of art within the various art movements of the 20th century and early 21st century.
Pop artists like Andy Warhol became both noteworthy and influential through work including and possibly critiquing popular culture, as well as the art world. Artists of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s expanded this technique of selfcriticism beyond high art to all cultural imagemaking, including fashion images, comics, billboards and pornography.
Duchamp once proposed that art is any activity of any kindeverything. However, the way that only certain activities are classified today as art is a social construction. There is evidence that there may be an element of truth to this. In The Invention of Art A Cultural History, Larry Shiner examines the construction of the modern system of the arts, i.e. fine art. He |
finds evidence that the older system of the arts before our modern system fine art held art to be any skilled human activity; for example, Ancient Greek society did not possess the term art, but techne. Techne can be understood neither as art or craft, the reason being that the distinctions of art and craft are historical products that came later on in human history. Techne included painting, sculpting and music, but also cooking, medicine, horsemanship, geometry, carpentry, prophecy, and farming, etc.
New Criticism and the "intentional fallacy"
Following Duchamp during the first half of the 20th century, a significant shift to general aesthetic theory took place which attempted to apply aesthetic theory between various forms of art, including the literary arts and the visual arts, to each other. This resulted in the rise of the New Criticism school and debate concerning the intentional fallacy. At issue was the question of whether the aesthetic intentions of the artist in creating the work of art, whatever |
its specific form, should be associated with the criticism and evaluation of the final product of the work of art, or, if the work of art should be evaluated on its own merits independent of the intentions of the artist.
In 1946, William K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley published a classic and controversial New Critical essay entitled "The Intentional Fallacy", in which they argued strongly against the relevance of an author's intention, or "intended meaning" in the analysis of a literary work. For Wimsatt and Beardsley, the words on the page were all that mattered; importation of meanings from outside the text was considered irrelevant, and potentially distracting.
In another essay, "The Affective Fallacy", which served as a kind of sister essay to "The Intentional Fallacy" Wimsatt and Beardsley also discounted the reader's personalemotional reaction to a literary work as a valid means of analyzing a text. This fallacy would later be repudiated by theorists from the readerresponse school of literary theory. |
Ironically, one of the leading theorists from this school, Stanley Fish, was himself trained by New Critics. Fish criticizes Wimsatt and Beardsley in his 1970 essay "Literature in the Reader".
As summarized by Gaut and Livingston in their essay "The Creation of Art" "Structuralist and poststructuralists theorists and critics were sharply critical of many aspects of New Criticism, beginning with the emphasis on aesthetic appreciation and the socalled autonomy of art, but they reiterated the attack on biographical criticisms' assumption that the artist's activities and experience were a privileged critical topic." These authors contend that "Antiintentionalists, such as formalists, hold that the intentions involved in the making of art are irrelevant or peripheral to correctly interpreting art. So details of the act of creating a work, though possibly of interest in themselves, have no bearing on the correct interpretation of the work."
Gaut and Livingston define the intentionalists as distinct from formalis |
ts stating that "Intentionalists, unlike formalists, hold that reference to intentions is essential in fixing the correct interpretation of works." They quote Richard Wollheim as stating that, "The task of criticism is the reconstruction of the creative process, where the creative process must in turn be thought of as something not stopping short of, but terminating on, the work of art itself."
"Linguistic turn" and its debate
The end of the 20th century fostered an extensive debate known as the linguistic turn controversy, or the "innocent eye debate" in the philosophy of art. This debate discussed the encounter of the work of art as being determined by the relative extent to which the conceptual encounter with the work of art dominates over the perceptual encounter with the work of art.
Decisive for the linguistic turn debate in art history and the humanities were the works of yet another tradition, namely the structuralism of Ferdinand de Saussure and the ensuing movement of poststructuralism. In 1981, t |
he artist Mark Tansey created a work of art titled "The Innocent Eye" as a criticism of the prevailing climate of disagreement in the philosophy of art during the closing decades of the 20th century. Influential theorists include Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. The power of language, more specifically of certain rhetorical tropes, in art history and historical discourse was explored by Hayden White. The fact that language is not a transparent medium of thought had been stressed by a very different form of philosophy of language which originated in the works of Johann Georg Hamann and Wilhelm von Humboldt. Ernst Gombrich and Nelson Goodman in his book Languages of Art An Approach to a Theory of Symbols came to hold that the conceptual encounter with the work of art predominated exclusively over the perceptual and visual encounter with the work of art during the 1960s and 1970s. He was challenged on the basis of research done by the Nobel prize winning psycholo |
gist Roger Sperry who maintained that the human visual encounter was not limited to concepts represented in language alone the linguistic turn and that other forms of psychological representations of the work of art were equally defensible and demonstrable. Sperry's view eventually prevailed by the end of the 20th century with aesthetic philosophers such as Nick Zangwill strongly defending a return to moderate aesthetic formalism among other alternatives.
Classification disputes
Disputes as to whether or not to classify something as a work of art are referred to as classificatory disputes about art. Classificatory disputes in the 20th century have included cubist and impressionist paintings, Duchamp's Fountain, the movies, superlative imitations of banknotes, conceptual art, and video games. Philosopher David Novitz has argued that disagreement about the definition of art are rarely the heart of the problem. Rather, "the passionate concerns and interests that humans vest in their social life" are "so much |
a part of all classificatory disputes about art." According to Novitz, classificatory disputes are more often disputes about societal values and where society is trying to go than they are about theory proper. For example, when the Daily Mail criticized Hirst's and Emin's work by arguing "For 1,000 years art has been one of our great civilising forces. Today, pickled sheep and soiled beds threaten to make barbarians of us all" they are not advancing a definition or theory about art, but questioning the value of Hirst's and Emin's work. In 1998, Arthur Danto, suggested a thought experiment showing that "the status of an artifact as work of art results from the ideas a culture applies to it, rather than its inherent physical or perceptible qualities. Cultural interpretation an art theory of some kind is therefore constitutive of an object's arthood."
Antiart is a label for art that intentionally challenges the established parameters and values of art; it is term associated with Dadaism and attributed to Marcel |
Duchamp just before World War I, when he was making art from found objects. One of these, Fountain 1917, an ordinary urinal, has achieved considerable prominence and influence on art. Antiart is a feature of work by Situationist International, the lofi Mail art movement, and the Young British Artists, though it is a form still rejected by the Stuckists, who describe themselves as antiantiart.
Architecture is often included as one of the visual arts; however, like the decorative arts, or advertising, it involves the creation of objects where the practical considerations of use are essential in a way that they usually are not in a painting, for example.
Value judgment
Somewhat in relation to the above, the word art is also used to apply judgments of value, as in such expressions as "that meal was a work of art" the cook is an artist, or "the art of deception" the highly attained level of skill of the deceiver is praised. It is this use of the word as a measure of high quality and high value that gives the |
term its flavor of subjectivity. Making judgments of value requires a basis for criticism. At the simplest level, a way to determine whether the impact of the object on the senses meets the criteria to be considered art is whether it is perceived to be attractive or repulsive. Though perception is always colored by experience, and is necessarily subjective, it is commonly understood that what is not somehow aesthetically satisfying cannot be art. However, "good" art is not always or even regularly aesthetically appealing to a majority of viewers. In other words, an artist's prime motivation need not be the pursuit of the aesthetic. Also, art often depicts terrible images made for social, moral, or thoughtprovoking reasons. For example, Francisco Goya's painting depicting the Spanish shootings of 3 May 1808 is a graphic depiction of a firing squad executing several pleading civilians. Yet at the same time, the horrific imagery demonstrates Goya's keen artistic ability in composition and execution and produces |
fitting social and political outrage. Thus, the debate continues as to what mode of aesthetic satisfaction, if any, is required to define 'art'.
The assumption of new values or the rebellion against accepted notions of what is aesthetically superior need not occur concurrently with a complete abandonment of the pursuit of what is aesthetically appealing. Indeed, the reverse is often true, that the revision of what is popularly conceived of as being aesthetically appealing allows for a reinvigoration of aesthetic sensibility, and a new appreciation for the standards of art itself. Countless schools have proposed their own ways to define quality, yet they all seem to agree in at least one point once their aesthetic choices are accepted, the value of the work of art is determined by its capacity to transcend the limits of its chosen medium to strike some universal chord by the rarity of the skill of the artist or in its accurate reflection in what is termed the zeitgeist. Art is often intended to appeal to and |
connect with human emotion. It can arouse aesthetic or moral feelings, and can be understood as a way of communicating these feelings. Artists express something so that their audience is aroused to some extent, but they do not have to do so consciously. Art may be considered an exploration of the human condition; that is, what it is to be human. By extension, it has been argued by Emily L. Spratt that the development of artificial intelligence, especially in regard to its uses with images, necessitates a reevaluation of aesthetic theory in art history today and a reconsideration of the limits of human creativity.
Art and law
An essential legal issue are art forgeries, plagiarism, replicas and works that are strongly based on other works of art.
The trade in works of art or the export from a country may be subject to legal regulations. Internationally there are also extensive efforts to protect the works of art created. The UN, UNESCO and Blue Shield International try to ensure effective protection at the na |
tional level and to intervene directly in the event of armed conflicts or disasters. This can particularly affect museums, archives,
art collections and excavation sites. This should also secure the economic basis of a country, especially because works of art are often of tourist importance. The founding president of Blue Shield International, Karl von Habsburg, explained an additional connection between the destruction of cultural property and the cause of flight during a mission in Lebanon in April 2019 Cultural goods are part of the identity of the people who live in a certain place. If you destroy their culture, you also destroy their identity. Many people are uprooted, often no longer have any prospects and as a result flee from their homeland.
See also
Applied arts
Art movement
Artist in residence
Artistic freedom
Cultural tourism
Craftivism
Formal analysis
History of art
List of artistic media
List of art techniques
Mathematics and art
Street art or "independent public art"
Outline of t |
he visual arts, a guide to the subject of art presented as a tree structured list of its subtopics.
Visual impairment in art
Notes
Bibliography
Oscar Wilde, Intentions, 1891
Stephen Davies, Definitions of Art, 1991
Nina Felshin, ed. But is it Art?, 1995
Catherine de Zegher ed.. Inside the Visible. MIT Press, 1996
Evelyn Hatcher, ed. Art as Culture An Introduction to the Anthropology of Art, 1999
Noel Carroll, Theories of Art Today, 2000
John Whitehead. Grasping for the Wind, 2001
Michael Ann Holly and Keith Moxey eds. Art History Aesthetics Visual Studies. New Haven Yale University Press, 2002.
Shiner, Larry. The Invention of Art A Cultural History. Chicago University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Arthur Danto, The Abuse of Beauty Aesthetics and the Concept of Art. 2003
Dana Arnold and Margaret Iverson, eds. Art and Thought. London Blackwell, 2003.
Jean Robertson and Craig McDaniel, Themes of Contemporary Art, Visual Art after 1980, 2005
Further reading
Antony Briant and Griselda Pollock, eds. Di |
gital and Other Virtualities Renegotiating the image. London and NY I.B.Tauris, 2010.
Augros, Robert M., Stanciu, George N. The New Story of Science mind and the universe, Lake Bluff, Ill. Regnery Gateway, 1984. this book has significant material on art and science
Benedetto Croce. Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic, 2002
Botar, Oliver A.I. Technical Detours The Early MoholyNagy Reconsidered. Art Gallery of The Graduate Center, The City University of New York and The Salgo Trust for Education, 2006.
Burguete, Maria, and Lam, Lui, eds. 2011. Arts A Science Matter. World Scientific Singapore.
Carol Armstrong and Catherine de Zegher, eds. Women Artists at the Millennium. Massachusetts October BooksThe MIT Press, 2006.
Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols. London Pan Books, 1978.
E.H. Gombrich, The Story of Art. London Phaidon Press, 1995.
Florian Dombois, Ute Meta Bauer, Claudia Mareis and Michael Schwab, eds. Intellectual Birdhouse. Artistic Practice as Research. London Koening B |
ooks, 2012.
Katharine Everett Gilbert and Helmut Kuhn, A History of Esthetics. Edition 2, revised. Indiana Indiana University Press, 1953.
Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz, eds. Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art. Berkeley University of California Press, 1986
Kleiner, Gardner, Mamiya and Tansey. Art Through the Ages, Twelfth Edition 2 volumes Wadsworth, 2004. vol 1 and vol 2
Richard Wollheim, Art and its Objects An introduction to aesthetics. New York Harper Row, 1968.
Will Gompertz. What Are You Looking At? 150 Years of Modern Art in the Blink of an Eye. New York Viking, 2012.
Wadysaw Tatarkiewicz, A History of Six Ideas an Essay in Aesthetics, translated from the Polish by Christopher Kasparek, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1980
External links
Art and Play from the Dictionary of the History of ideas
Indepth directory of art
Art and Artist Files in the Smithsonian Libraries Collection 2005 Smithsonian Digital Libraries
Visual Arts Data Service VADS online collections from UK museums, |
galleries, universities
RevolutionArt Art magazines with worldwide exhibitions, callings and competitions
Aesthetics
Visual arts |
Agnostida is an order of arthropod which first developed near the end of the Early Cambrian period and thrived during the Middle Cambrian. They are present in the Lower Cambrian fossil record along with trilobites from the Redlichiida, Corynexochida, and Ptychopariida orders. The last agnostids went extinct in the Late Ordovician.
Systematics
The Agnostida are divided into two suborders Agnostina and Eodiscina which are then subdivided into a number of families. As a group, agnostids are isopygous, meaning their pygidium is similar in size and shape to their cephalon. Most agnostid species were eyeless.
The systematic position of the order Agnostida within the class Trilobita remains uncertain, and there has been continuing debate whether they are trilobites or a stem group. The challenge to the status has focused on Agnostina partly due to the juveniles of one genus have been found with legs differing dramatically from those of adult trilobites, suggesting they are not members of the lamellipedian clade, |
of which trilobites are a part. Instead, the limbs of agnostids closely resemble those of stem group crustaceans, although they lack the proximal endite, which defines that group. They are likely the sister taxon to the crustacean stem lineage, and, as such, part of the clade, Crustaceomorpha. Other researchers have suggested, based on a cladistic analyses of dorsal exoskeletal features, that Eodiscina and Agnostida are closely united, and the Eodiscina descended from the trilobite order Ptychopariida.
Ecology
Scientists have long debated whether the agnostids lived a pelagic or a benthic lifestyle. Their lack of eyes, a morphology not wellsuited for swimming, and their fossils found in association with other benthic trilobites suggest a benthic bottomdwelling mode of life. They are likely to have lived on areas of the ocean floor which received little or no light and fed on detritus which descended from upper layers of the sea to the bottom. Their wide geographic dispersion in the fossil record is uncharac |
teristic of benthic animals, suggesting a pelagic existence. The thoracic segment appears to form a hinge between the head and pygidium allowing for a bivalved ostracodantype lifestyle. The orientation of the thoracic appendages appears illsuited for benthic living. Recent work suggests that some agnostids were benthic predators, engaging in cannibalism and possibly packhunting behavior.
They are sometimes preserved within the voids of other organisms, for instance within empty hyolith conchs, within sponges, worm tubes and under the carapaces of bivalved arthropods, presumably in order to hide from predators or strong storm currents; or maybe whilst scavenging for food. In the case of the tapering worm tubes Selkirkia, trilobites are always found with their heads directed towards the opening of the tube, suggesting that they reversed in; the absence of any moulted carapaces suggests that moulting was not their primary reason for seeking shelter.
References
External links
Order Agnostida by Sam Gon III.
|
The Virtual Fossil Museum Trilobite Order Agnostida
Agnostida fact sheet by Sam Gon III.
"Earth's Early Cannibals Caught in the Act", by Larry O'Hanlon, news.discovery.com.
Trilobite orders
Cambrian trilobites
Ordovician trilobites
Fossil taxa described in 1864
Cambrian first appearances
Late Ordovician extinctions
Taxa named by John William Salter |
Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus. An abortion that occurs without intervention is known as a miscarriage or "spontaneous abortion" and occurs in approximately 30 to 40 of pregnancies. When deliberate steps are taken to end a pregnancy, it is called an induced abortion, or less frequently "induced miscarriage". The unmodified word abortion generally refers to an induced abortion. Although it prevents the birth of a child, abortion is not generally considered birth control another term for contraception.
When properly done, abortion is one of the safest procedures in medicine, but unsafe abortion is a major cause of maternal death, especially in the developing world, while making safe abortion legal and accessible reduces maternal deaths. It is safer than childbirth, which has a 14 times higher risk of death in the United States.
Modern methods use medication or surgery for abortions. The drug mifepristone in combination with prostaglandin appears to be |
as safe and effective as surgery during the first and second trimester of pregnancy. The most common surgical technique involves dilating the cervix and using a suction device. Birth control, such as the pill or intrauterine devices, can be used immediately following abortion. When performed legally and safely on a woman who desires it, induced abortions do not increase the risk of longterm mental or physical problems. In contrast, unsafe abortions those performed by unskilled individuals, with hazardous equipment, or in unsanitary facilities cause 47,000 deaths and 5 million hospital admissions each year. The World Health Organization states that "access to legal, safe and comprehensive abortion care, including postabortion care, is essential for the attainment of the highest possible level of sexual and reproductive health".
Around 56 million abortions are performed each year in the world, with about 45 done unsafely. Abortion rates changed little between 2003 and 2008, before which they decreased for at |
least two decades as access to family planning and birth control increased. , 37 of the world's women had access to legal abortions without limits as to reason. Countries that permit abortions have different limits on how late in pregnancy abortion is allowed. Abortion rates are similar between countries that ban abortion and countries that allow it.
Historically, abortions have been attempted using herbal medicines, sharp tools, forceful massage, or through other traditional methods. Abortion laws and cultural or religious views of abortions are different around the world. In some areas, abortion is legal only in specific cases such as rape, fetal defects, poverty, risk to a woman's health, or incest. There is debate over the moral, ethical, and legal issues of abortion. Those who oppose abortion often argue that an embryo or fetus is a person with a right to life, and thus equate abortion with murder. Those who support the legality of abortion often argue that it is part of a woman's right to make decision |
s about her own body. Others favor legal and accessible abortion as a public health measure.
Types
Induced
Approximately 205 million pregnancies occur each year worldwide. Over a third are unintended and about a fifth end in induced abortion. Most abortions result from unintended pregnancies. In the United Kingdom, 1 to 2 of abortions are done due to genetic problems in the fetus. A pregnancy can be intentionally aborted in several ways. The manner selected often depends upon the gestational age of the embryo or fetus, which increases in size as the pregnancy progresses. Specific procedures may also be selected due to legality, regional availability, and doctor or a woman's personal preference.
Reasons for procuring induced abortions are typically characterized as either therapeutic or elective. An abortion is medically referred to as a therapeutic abortion when it is performed to save the life of the pregnant woman; to prevent harm to the woman's physical or mental health; to terminate a pregnancy where i |
ndications are that the child will have a significantly increased chance of mortality or morbidity; or to selectively reduce the number of fetuses to lessen health risks associated with multiple pregnancy. An abortion is referred to as an elective or voluntary abortion when it is performed at the request of the woman for nonmedical reasons. Confusion sometimes arises over the term "elective" because "elective surgery" generally refers to all scheduled surgery, whether medically necessary or not.
Spontaneous
Miscarriage, also known as spontaneous abortion, is the unintentional expulsion of an embryo or fetus before the 24th week of gestation. A pregnancy that ends before 37 weeks of gestation resulting in a liveborn infant is a "premature birth" or a "preterm birth". When a fetus dies in utero after viability, or during delivery, it is usually termed "stillborn". Premature births and stillbirths are generally not considered to be miscarriages, although usage of these terms can sometimes overlap.
Only 30 to |
50 of conceptions progress past the first trimester. The vast majority of those that do not progress are lost before the woman is aware of the conception, and many pregnancies are lost before medical practitioners can detect an embryo. Between 15 and 30 of known pregnancies end in clinically apparent miscarriage, depending upon the age and health of the pregnant woman. 80 of these spontaneous abortions happen in the first trimester.
The most common cause of spontaneous abortion during the first trimester is chromosomal abnormalities of the embryo or fetus, accounting for at least 50 of sampled early pregnancy losses. Other causes include vascular disease such as lupus, diabetes, other hormonal problems, infection, and abnormalities of the uterus. Advancing maternal age and a woman's history of previous spontaneous abortions are the two leading factors associated with a greater risk of spontaneous abortion. A spontaneous abortion can also be caused by accidental trauma; intentional trauma or stress to cause m |
iscarriage is considered induced abortion or feticide.
Methods
Medical
Medical abortions are those induced by abortifacient pharmaceuticals. Medical abortion became an alternative method of abortion with the availability of prostaglandin analogs in the 1970s and the antiprogestogen mifepristone also known as RU486 in the 1980s.
The most common early firsttrimester medical abortion regimens use mifepristone in combination with misoprostol or sometimes another prostaglandin analog, gemeprost up to 10 weeks 70 days gestational age, methotrexate in combination with a prostaglandin analog up to 7 weeks gestation, or a prostaglandin analog alone. Mifepristonemisoprostol combination regimens work faster and are more effective at later gestational ages than methotrexatemisoprostol combination regimens, and combination regimens are more effective than misoprostol alone. This regimen is effective in the second trimester. Medical abortion regimens involving mifepristone followed by misoprostol in the cheek between 2 |
4 and 48 hours later are effective when performed before 70 days' gestation.
In very early abortions, up to 7 weeks gestation, medical abortion using a mifepristonemisoprostol combination regimen is considered to be more effective than surgical abortion vacuum aspiration, especially when clinical practice does not include detailed inspection of aspirated tissue. Early medical abortion regimens using mifepristone, followed 2448 hours later by buccal or vaginal misoprostol are 98 effective up to 9 weeks gestational age; from 9 to 10 weeks efficacy decreases modestly to 94. If medical abortion fails, surgical abortion must be used to complete the procedure.
Early medical abortions account for the majority of abortions before 9 weeks gestation in Britain, France, Switzerland, United States, and the Nordic countries.
Medical abortion regimens using mifepristone in combination with a prostaglandin analog are the most common methods used for secondtrimester abortions in Canada, most of Europe, China and India, in |
contrast to the United States where 96 of secondtrimester abortions are performed surgically by dilation and evacuation.
A 2020 Cochrane Systematic Review concluded that providing women with medications to take home to complete the second stage of the procedure for an early medical abortion results in an effective abortion. Further research is required to determine if selfadministered medical abortion is as safe as provideradministered medical abortion, where a health care professional is present to help manage the medical abortion. Safely permitting women to selfadminister abortion medication has the potential to improve access to abortion. Other research gaps that were identified include how to best support women who choose to take the medication home for a selfadministered abortion.
Surgical
Up to 15 weeks' gestation, suctionaspiration or vacuum aspiration are the most common surgical methods of induced abortion. Manual vacuum aspiration MVA consists of removing the fetus or embryo, placenta, and membr |
anes by suction using a manual syringe, while electric vacuum aspiration EVA uses an electric pump. These techniques can both be used very early in pregnancy. MVA can be used up to 14 weeks but is more often used earlier in the U.S. EVA can be used later.
MVA, also known as "minisuction" and "menstrual extraction" or EVA can be used in very early pregnancy when cervical dilation may not be required. Dilation and curettage DC refers to opening the cervix dilation and removing tissue curettage via suction or sharp instruments. DC is a standard gynecological procedure performed for a variety of reasons, including examination of the uterine lining for possible malignancy, investigation of abnormal bleeding, and abortion. The World Health Organization recommends sharp curettage only when suction aspiration is unavailable.
Dilation and evacuation DE, used after 12 to 16 weeks, consists of opening the cervix and emptying the uterus using surgical instruments and suction. DE is performed vaginally and does not requ |
ire an incision. Intact dilation and extraction DX refers to a variant of DE sometimes used after 18 to 20 weeks when removal of an intact fetus improves surgical safety or for other reasons.
Abortion may also be performed surgically by hysterotomy or gravid hysterectomy. Hysterotomy abortion is a procedure similar to a caesarean section and is performed under general anesthesia. It requires a smaller incision than a caesarean section and can be used during later stages of pregnancy. Gravid hysterectomy refers to removal of the whole uterus while still containing the pregnancy. Hysterotomy and hysterectomy are associated with much higher rates of maternal morbidity and mortality than DE or induction abortion.
Firsttrimester procedures can generally be performed using local anesthesia, while secondtrimester methods may require deep sedation or general anesthesia.
Labor induction abortion
In places lacking the necessary medical skill for dilation and extraction, or where preferred by practitioners, an abort |
ion can be induced by first inducing labor and then inducing fetal demise if necessary. This is sometimes called "induced miscarriage". This procedure may be performed from 13 weeks gestation to the third trimester. Although it is very uncommon in the United States, more than 80 of induced abortions throughout the second trimester are laborinduced abortions in Sweden and other nearby countries.
Only limited data are available comparing this method with dilation and extraction. Unlike DE, laborinduced abortions after 18 weeks may be complicated by the occurrence of brief fetal survival, which may be legally characterized as live birth. For this reason, laborinduced abortion is legally risky in the United States.
Other methods
Historically, a number of herbs reputed to possess abortifacient properties have been used in folk medicine. Among these are tansy, pennyroyal, black cohosh, and the nowextinct silphium.
In 1978, one woman in Colorado died and another developed organ damage when they attempted to termi |
nate their pregnancies by taking pennyroyal oil.
Because the indiscriminant use of herbs as abortifacients can cause seriouseven lethalside effects, such as multiple organ failure, such use is not recommended by physicians.
Abortion is sometimes attempted by causing trauma to the abdomen. The degree of force, if severe, can cause serious internal injuries without necessarily succeeding in inducing miscarriage. In Southeast Asia, there is an ancient tradition of attempting abortion through forceful abdominal massage. One of the bas reliefs decorating the temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia depicts a demon performing such an abortion upon a woman who has been sent to the underworld.
Reported methods of unsafe, selfinduced abortion include misuse of misoprostol and insertion of nonsurgical implements such as knitting needles and clothes hangers into the uterus. These and other methods to terminate pregnancy may be called "induced miscarriage". Such methods are rarely used in countries where surgical abortion is |
legal and available.
Safety
The health risks of abortion depend principally upon whether the procedure is performed safely or unsafely. The World Health Organization WHO defines unsafe abortions as those performed by unskilled individuals, with hazardous equipment, or in unsanitary facilities. Legal abortions performed in the developed world are among the safest procedures in medicine. In the United States as of 2012, abortion was estimated to be about 14 times safer for women than childbirth. CDC estimated in 2019 that US pregnancyrelated mortality was 17.2 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, while the US abortion mortality rate is 0.7 maternal deaths per 100,000 procedures. In the UK, guidelines of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists state that "Women should be advised that abortion is generally safer than continuing a pregnancy to term." Worldwide, on average, abortion is safer than carrying a pregnancy to term. A 2007 study reported that "26 of all pregnancies worldwide are termin |
ated by induced abortion," whereas "deaths from improperly performed abortion procedures constitute 13 of maternal mortality globally." In Indonesia in 2000 it was estimated that 2 million pregnancies ended in abortion, 4.5 million pregnancies were carried to term, and 1416 percent of maternal deaths resulted from abortion.
In the US from 2000 to 2009, abortion had a mortality rate lower than plastic surgery, lower or similar to running a marathon, and about equivalent to traveling 760 miles in a passenger car. Five years after seeking abortion services, women who gave birth after being denied an abortion reported worse health than women who had either first or second trimester abortions. The risk of abortionrelated mortality increases with gestational age, but remains lower than that of childbirth. Outpatient abortion is as safe from 64 to 70 days' gestation as it before 63 days.
There is little difference in terms of safety and efficacy between medical abortion using a combined regimen of mifepristone and |
misoprostol and surgical abortion vacuum aspiration in early first trimester abortions up to 10 weeks gestation. Medical abortion using the prostaglandin analog misoprostol alone is less effective and more painful than medical abortion using a combined regimen of mifepristone and misoprostol or surgical abortion.
Vacuum aspiration in the first trimester is the safest method of surgical abortion, and can be performed in a primary care office, abortion clinic, or hospital. Complications, which are rare, can include uterine perforation, pelvic infection, and retained products of conception requiring a second procedure to evacuate. Infections account for onethird of abortionrelated deaths in the United States. The rate of complications of vacuum aspiration abortion in the first trimester is similar regardless of whether the procedure is performed in a hospital, surgical center, or office. Preventive antibiotics such as doxycycline or metronidazole are typically given before abortion procedures, as they are beli |
eved to substantially reduce the risk of postoperative uterine infection; however, antibiotics are not routinely given with abortion pills. The rate of failed procedures does not appear to vary significantly depending on whether the abortion is performed by a doctor or a midlevel practitioner.
Complications after secondtrimester abortion are similar to those after firsttrimester abortion, and depend somewhat on the method chosen. The risk of death from abortion approaches roughly half the risk of death from childbirth the farther along a woman is in pregnancy; from one in a million before 9 weeks gestation to nearly one in ten thousand at 21 weeks or more as measured from the last menstrual period. It appears that having had a prior surgical uterine evacuation whether because of induced abortion or treatment of miscarriage correlates with a small increase in the risk of preterm birth in future pregnancies. The studies supporting this did not control for factors not related to abortion or miscarriage, and hen |
ce the causes of this correlation have not been determined, although multiple possibilities have been suggested.
Some purported risks of abortion are promoted primarily by antiabortion groups,
but lack scientific support. For example, the question of a link between induced abortion and breast cancer has been investigated extensively. Major medical and scientific bodies including the WHO, National Cancer Institute, American Cancer Society, Royal College of OBGYN and American Congress of OBGYN have concluded that abortion does not cause breast cancer.
In the past even illegality has not automatically meant that the abortions were unsafe. Referring to the U.S., historian Linda Gordon states "In fact, illegal abortions in this country have an impressive safety record." According to Rickie Solinger,
Authors Jerome Bates and Edward Zawadzki describe the case of an illegal abortionist in the eastern U.S. in the early 20th century who was proud of having successfully completed 13,844 abortions without any fatality |
.
In 1870s New York City the famous abortionistmidwife Madame Restell Anna Trow Lohman appears to have lost very few women among her more than 100,000 patientsa lower mortality rate than the childbirth mortality rate at the time. In 1936, the prominent professor of obstetrics and gynecology Frederick J. Taussig wrote that a cause of increasing mortality during the years of illegality in the U.S. was that
Mental health
Current evidence finds no relationship between most induced abortions and mental health problems other than those expected for any unwanted pregnancy. A report by the American Psychological Association concluded that a woman's first abortion is not a threat to mental health when carried out in the first trimester, with such women no more likely to have mentalhealth problems than those carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term; the mentalhealth outcome of a woman's second or greater abortion is less certain. Some older reviews concluded that abortion was associated with an increased risk of psycho |
logical problems; however, they did not use an appropriate control group.
Although some studies show negative mentalhealth outcomes in women who choose abortions after the first trimester because of fetal abnormalities, more rigorous research would be needed to show this conclusively. Some proposed negative psychological effects of abortion have been referred to by antiabortion advocates as a separate condition called "postabortion syndrome", but this is not recognized by medical or psychological professionals in the United States.
A long termstudy among US women found that about 99 of women felt that they made the right decision five years after they had an abortion. Relief was the primary emotion with few women feeling sadness or guilt. Social stigma was a main factor predicting negative emotions and regret years later.
Unsafe abortion
Women seeking an abortion may use unsafe methods, especially when it is legally restricted. They may attempt selfinduced abortion or seek the help of a person without pr |
oper medical training or facilities. This can lead to severe complications, such as incomplete abortion, sepsis, hemorrhage, and damage to internal organs.
Unsafe abortions are a major cause of injury and death among women worldwide. Although data are imprecise, it is estimated that approximately 20 million unsafe abortions are performed annually, with 97 taking place in developing countries. Unsafe abortions are believed to result in millions of injuries. Estimates of deaths vary according to methodology, and have ranged from 37,000 to 70,000 in the past decade; deaths from unsafe abortion account for around 13 of all maternal deaths. The World Health Organization believes that mortality has fallen since the 1990s. To reduce the number of unsafe abortions, public health organizations have generally advocated emphasizing the legalization of abortion, training of medical personnel, and ensuring access to reproductivehealth services. In response, opponents of abortion point out that abortion bans in no way aff |
ect prenatal care for women who choose to carry their fetus to term. The Dublin Declaration on Maternal Health, signed in 2012, notes, "the prohibition of abortion does not affect, in any way, the availability of optimal care to pregnant women."
A major factor in whether abortions are performed safely or not is the legal standing of abortion. Countries with restrictive abortion laws have higher rates of unsafe abortion and similar overall abortion rates compared to those where abortion is legal and available. For example, the 1996 legalization of abortion in South Africa had an immediate positive impact on the frequency of abortionrelated complications, with abortionrelated deaths dropping by more than 90. Similar reductions in maternal mortality have been observed after other countries have liberalized their abortion laws, such as Romania and Nepal. A 2011 study concluded that in the United States, some statelevel antiabortion laws are correlated with lower rates of abortion in that state. The analysis, how |
ever, did not take into account travel to other states without such laws to obtain an abortion. In addition, a lack of access to effective contraception contributes to unsafe abortion. It has been estimated that the incidence of unsafe abortion could be reduced by up to 75 from 20 million to 5 million annually if modern family planning and maternal health services were readily available globally. Rates of such abortions may be difficult to measure because they can be reported variously as miscarriage, "induced miscarriage", "menstrual regulation", "miniabortion", and "regulation of a delayedsuspended menstruation".
Forty percent of the world's women are able to access therapeutic and elective abortions within gestational limits, while an additional 35 percent have access to legal abortion if they meet certain physical, mental, or socioeconomic criteria. While maternal mortality seldom results from safe abortions, unsafe abortions result in 70,000 deaths and 5 million disabilities per year. Complications of u |
nsafe abortion account for approximately an eighth of maternal mortalities worldwide, though this varies by region. Secondary infertility caused by an unsafe abortion affects an estimated 24 million women. The rate of unsafe abortions has increased from 44 to 49 between 1995 and 2008. Health education, access to family planning, and improvements in health care during and after abortion have been proposed to address this phenomenon.
Incidence
There are two commonly used methods of measuring the incidence of abortion
Abortion rate number of abortions annually per 1000 women between 15 and 44 years of age some sources use a range of 1549
Abortion percentage number of abortions out of 100 known pregnancies pregnancies include live births, abortions and miscarriages
In many places, where abortion is illegal or carries a heavy social stigma, medical reporting of abortion is not reliable. For this reason, estimates of the incidence of abortion must be made without determining certainty related to standard erro |
r.
The number of abortions performed worldwide seems to have remained stable in recent years, with 41.6 million having been performed in 2003 and 43.8 million having been performed in 2008. The abortion rate worldwide was 28 per 1000 women per year, though it was 24 per 1000 women per year for developed countries and 29 per 1000 women per year for developing countries. The same 2012 study indicated that in 2008, the estimated abortion percentage of known pregnancies was at 21 worldwide, with 26 in developed countries and 20 in developing countries.
On average, the incidence of abortion is similar in countries with restrictive abortion laws and those with more liberal access to abortion. However, restrictive abortion laws are associated with increases in the percentage of abortions performed unsafely. The unsafe abortion rate in developing countries is partly attributable to lack of access to modern contraceptives; according to the Guttmacher Institute, providing access to contraceptives would result in abou |
t 14.5 million fewer unsafe abortions and 38,000 fewer deaths from unsafe abortion annually worldwide.
The rate of legal, induced abortion varies extensively worldwide. According to the report of employees of Guttmacher Institute it ranged from 7 per 1000 women per year Germany and Switzerland to 30 per 1000 women per year Estonia in countries with complete statistics in 2008. The proportion of pregnancies that ended in induced abortion ranged from about 10 Israel, the Netherlands and Switzerland to 30 Estonia in the same group, though it might be as high as 36 in Hungary and Romania, whose statistics were deemed incomplete.
An American study in 2002 concluded that about half of women having abortions were using a form of contraception at the time of becoming pregnant. Inconsistent use was reported by half of those using condoms and threequarters of those using the birth control pill; 42 of those using condoms reported failure through slipping or breakage. The Guttmacher Institute estimated that "most abort |
ions in the United States are obtained by minority women" because minority women "have much higher rates of unintended pregnancy". In 2022, while people of color comprise 44 of the population in Mississippi, 59 of the population in Texas, 42 of the population in Louisiana, and 35 of the population in Alabama, they comprise 80, 74, 72, and 70 of those receiving abortions.
The abortion rate may also be expressed as the average number of abortions a woman has during her reproductive years; this is referred to as total abortion rate TAR.
Gestational age and method
Abortion rates also vary depending on the stage of pregnancy and the method practiced. In 2003, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention CDC reported that 26 of reported legal induced abortions in the United States were known to have been obtained at less than 6 weeks' gestation, 18 at 7 weeks, 15 at 8 weeks, 18 at 9 through 10 weeks, 10 at 11 through 12 weeks, 6 at 13 through 15 weeks, 4 at 16 through 20 weeks and 1 at more than 21 weeks. 91 o |
f these were classified as having been done by "curettage" suctionaspiration, dilation and curettage, dilation and evacuation, 8 by "medical" means mifepristone, 1 by "intrauterine instillation" saline or prostaglandin, and 1 by "other" including hysterotomy and hysterectomy. According to the CDC, due to data collection difficulties the data must be viewed as tentative and some fetal deaths reported beyond 20 weeks may be natural deaths erroneously classified as abortions if the removal of the dead fetus is accomplished by the same procedure as an induced abortion.
The Guttmacher Institute estimated there were 2,200 intact dilation and extraction procedures in the US during 2000; this accounts for 0.2 of the total number of abortions performed that year. Similarly, in England and Wales in 2006, 89 of terminations occurred at or under 12 weeks, 9 between 13 and 19 weeks, and 2 at or over 20 weeks. 64 of those reported were by vacuum aspiration, 6 by DE, and 30 were medical. There are more second trimester abo |
rtions in developing countries such as China, India and Vietnam than in developed countries.
Motivation
Personal
The reasons why women have abortions are diverse and vary across the world. Some of the reasons may include an inability to afford a child, domestic violence, lack of support, feeling they are too young, and the wish to complete education or advance a career. Additional reasons include not being able or willing to raise a child conceived as a result of rape or incest
Societal
Some abortions are undergone as the result of societal pressures. These might include the preference for children of a specific sex or race, disapproval of single or early motherhood, stigmatization of people with disabilities, insufficient economic support for families, lack of access to or rejection of contraceptive methods, or efforts toward population control such as China's onechild policy. These factors can sometimes result in compulsory abortion or sexselective abortion.
Maternal and fetal health
An additional fact |
or is maternal health which was listed as the main reason by about a third of women in 3 of 27 countries and about 7 of women in a further 7 of these 27 countries.
In the U.S., the Supreme Court decisions in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton "ruled that the state's interest in the life of the fetus became compelling only at the point of viability, defined as the point at which the fetus can survive independently of its mother. Even after the point of viability, the state cannot favor the life of the fetus over the life or health of the pregnant woman. Under the right of privacy, physicians must be free to use their "medical judgment for the preservation of the life or health of the mother." On the same day that the Court decided Roe, it also decided Doe v. Bolton, in which the Court defined health very broadly "The medical judgment may be exercised in the light of all factorsphysical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman's agerelevant to the wellbeing of the patient. All these factors may relate to |
health. This allows the attending physician the room he needs to make his best medical judgment."
Public opinion shifted in America following television personality Sherri Finkbine's discovery during her fifth month of pregnancy that she had been exposed to thalidomide. Unable to obtain a legal abortion in the United States, she traveled to Sweden. From 1962 to 1965, an outbreak of German measles left 15,000 babies with severe birth defects. In 1967, the American Medical Association publicly supported liberalization of abortion laws. A National Opinion Research Center poll in 1965 showed 73 supported abortion when the mother's life was at risk, 57 when birth defects were present and 59 for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest.
Cancer
The rate of cancer during pregnancy is 0.021, and in many cases, cancer of the mother leads to consideration of abortion to protect the life of the mother, or in response to the potential damage that may occur to the fetus during treatment. This is particularly true for c |
ervical cancer, the most common type of which occurs in 1 of every 2,00013,000 pregnancies, for which initiation of treatment "cannot coexist with preservation of fetal life unless neoadjuvant chemotherapy is chosen". Very early stage cervical cancers I and IIa may be treated by radical hysterectomy and pelvic lymph node dissection, radiation therapy, or both, while later stages are treated by radiotherapy. Chemotherapy may be used simultaneously. Treatment of breast cancer during pregnancy also involves fetal considerations, because lumpectomy is discouraged in favor of modified radical mastectomy unless lateterm pregnancy allows followup radiation therapy to be administered after the birth.
Exposure to a single chemotherapy drug is estimated to cause a 7.517 risk of teratogenic effects on the fetus, with higher risks for multiple drug treatments. Treatment with more than 40 Gy of radiation usually causes spontaneous abortion. Exposure to much lower doses during the first trimester, especially 8 to 15 weeks |
of development, can cause intellectual disability or microcephaly, and exposure at this or subsequent stages can cause reduced intrauterine growth and birth weight. Exposures above 0.0050.025 Gy cause a dosedependent reduction in IQ. It is possible to greatly reduce exposure to radiation with abdominal shielding, depending on how far the area to be irradiated is from the fetus.
The process of birth itself may also put the mother at risk. "Vaginal delivery may result in dissemination of neoplastic cells into lymphovascular channels, haemorrhage, cervical laceration and implantation of malignant cells in the episiotomy site, while abdominal delivery may delay the initiation of nonsurgical treatment."
History and religion
Since ancient times abortions have been done using a number of methods, including herbal medicines, sharp tools, with force, or through other traditional methods. Induced abortion has a long history and can be traced back to civilizations as varied as ancient China abortifacient knowledge |
is often attributed to the mythological ruler Shennong, ancient India since its Vedic age, ancient Egypt with its Ebers Papyrus c. 1550 BCE, and the Roman Empire in the time of Juvenal c. 200 CE. One of the earliest known artistic representations of abortion is in a bas relief at Angkor Wat c. 1150. Found in a series of friezes that represent judgment after death in Hindu and Buddhist culture, it depicts the technique of abdominal abortion.
Some medical scholars and abortion opponents have suggested that the Hippocratic Oath forbade Ancient Greek physicians from performing abortions; other scholars disagree with this interpretation, and state that the medical texts of Hippocratic Corpus contain descriptions of abortive techniques right alongside the Oath. The physician Scribonius Largus wrote in 43 CE that the Hippocratic Oath prohibits abortion, as did Soranus, although apparently not all doctors adhered to it strictly at the time. According to Soranus' 1st or 2nd century CE work Gynaecology, one party of |
medical practitioners banished all abortives as required by the Hippocratic Oath; the other partyto which he belongedwas willing to prescribe abortions, but only for the sake of the mother's health. Aristotle, in his treatise on government Politics 350 BCE, condemns infanticide as a means of population control. He preferred abortion in such cases, with the restriction "that it must be practised on it before it has developed sensation and life; for the line between lawful and unlawful abortion will be marked by the fact of having sensation and being alive".
In Christianity, Pope Sixtus V 158590 was the first Pope before 1869 to declare that abortion is homicide regardless of the stage of pregnancy; and his pronouncement of 1588 was reversed three years later by Pope Gregory XIV. Through most of its history the Catholic Church was divided on whether it believed that early abortion was murder, and it did not begin vigorously opposing abortion until the 19th century. Several historians have written that prior to |
the 19th century most Catholic authors did not regard termination of pregnancy before "quickening" or "ensoulment" as an abortion. From 1750, excommunication became the punishment for abortions. Statements made in 1992 in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the codified summary of the Church's teachings, opposed abortion.
A 2014 Guttmacher survey of US abortion patients found that many reported a religious affiliation24 were Catholic while 30 were Protestant.
A 1995 survey reported that Catholic women are as likely as the general population to terminate a pregnancy, Protestants are less likely to do so, and Evangelical Christians are the least likely to do so. Islamic tradition has traditionally permitted abortion until a point in time when Muslims believe the soul enters the fetus, considered by various theologians to be at conception, 40 days after conception, 120 days after conception, or quickening. However, abortion is largely heavily restricted or forbidden in areas of high Islamic faith such as the |
Middle East and North Africa.
In Europe and North America, abortion techniques advanced starting in the 17th century. However, the conservatism of most in the medical profession with regards to sexual matters prevented the wide expansion of abortion techniques. Other medical practitioners in addition to some physicians advertised their services, and they were not widely regulated until the 19th century, when the practice sometimes called restellism was banned in both the United States and the United Kingdom. Church groups as well as physicians were highly influential in antiabortion movements. In the US, according to some sources, abortion was more dangerous than childbirth until about 1930 when incremental improvements in abortion procedures relative to childbirth made abortion safer. However, other sources maintain that in the 19th century early abortions under the hygienic conditions in which midwives usually worked were relatively safe.
In addition, some commentators have written that, despite improved |
medical procedures, the period from the 1930s until legalization also saw more zealous enforcement of antiabortion laws, and concomitantly an increasing control of abortion providers by organized crime.
Soviet Russia 1919, Iceland 1935, and Sweden 1938 were among the first countries to legalize certain or all forms of abortion. In 1935, Nazi Germany, a law was passed permitting abortions for those deemed "hereditarily ill", while women considered of German stock were specifically prohibited from having abortions. Beginning in the second half of the twentieth century, abortion was legalized in a greater number of countries.
Society and culture
Abortion debate
Induced abortion has long been the source of considerable debate. Ethical, moral, philosophical, biological, religious and legal issues surrounding abortion are related to value systems. Opinions of abortion may be about fetal rights, governmental authority, and women's rights.
In both public and private debate, arguments presented in favor of or aga |
inst abortion access focus on either the moral permissibility of an induced abortion, or justification of laws permitting or restricting abortion. The World Medical Association Declaration on Therapeutic Abortion notes, "circumstances bringing the interests of a mother into conflict with the interests of her unborn child create a dilemma and raise the question as to whether or not the pregnancy should be deliberately terminated." Abortion debates, especially pertaining to abortion laws, are often spearheaded by groups advocating one of these two positions. Groups who favor greater legal restrictions on abortion, including complete prohibition, most often describe themselves as "prolife" while groups who are against such legal restrictions describe themselves as "prochoice". Generally, the former position argues that a human fetus is a human person with a right to live, making abortion morally the same as murder. The latter position argues that a woman has certain reproductive rights, especially the right to d |
ecide whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term.
Modern abortion law
Current laws pertaining to abortion are diverse. Religious, moral, and cultural factors continue to influence abortion laws throughout the world. The right to life, the right to liberty, the right to security of person, and the right to reproductive health are major issues of human rights that sometimes constitute the basis for the existence or absence of abortion laws.
In jurisdictions where abortion is legal, certain requirements must often be met before a woman may obtain a legal abortion an abortion performed without the woman's consent is considered feticide. These requirements usually depend on the age of the fetus, often using a trimesterbased system to regulate the window of legality, or as in the U.S., on a doctor's evaluation of the fetus' viability. Some jurisdictions require a waiting period before the procedure, prescribe the distribution of information on fetal development, or require that parents be contacted if their min |
or daughter requests an abortion. Other jurisdictions may require that a woman obtain the consent of the fetus' father before aborting the fetus, that abortion providers inform women of health risks of the proceduresometimes including "risks" not supported by the medical literatureand that multiple medical authorities certify that the abortion is either medically or socially necessary. Many restrictions are waived in emergency situations. China, which has ended their onechild policy, and now has a two child policy, has at times incorporated mandatory abortions as part of their population control strategy.
Other jurisdictions ban abortion almost entirely. Many, but not all, of these allow legal abortions in a variety of circumstances. These circumstances vary based on jurisdiction, but may include whether the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest, the fetus' development is impaired, the woman's physical or mental wellbeing is endangered, or socioeconomic considerations make childbirth a hardship. In countri |
es where abortion is banned entirely, such as Nicaragua, medical authorities have recorded rises in maternal death directly and indirectly due to pregnancy as well as deaths due to doctors' fears of prosecution if they treat other gynecological emergencies. Some countries, such as Bangladesh, that nominally ban abortion, may also support clinics that perform abortions under the guise of menstrual hygiene. This is also a terminology in traditional medicine. In places where abortion is illegal or carries heavy social stigma, pregnant women may engage in medical tourism and travel to countries where they can terminate their pregnancies. Women without the means to travel can resort to providers of illegal abortions or attempt to perform an abortion by themselves.
The organization Women on Waves has been providing education about medical abortions since 1999. The NGO created a mobile medical clinic inside a shipping container, which then travels on rented ships to countries with restrictive abortion laws. Because |
the ships are registered in the Netherlands, Dutch law prevails when the ship is in international waters. While in port, the organization provides free workshops and education; while in international waters, medical personnel are legally able to prescribe medical abortion drugs and counseling.
Sexselective abortion
Sonography and amniocentesis allow parents to determine sex before childbirth. The development of this technology has led to sexselective abortion, or the termination of a fetus based on its sex. The selective termination of a female fetus is most common.
Sexselective abortion is partially responsible for the noticeable disparities between the birth rates of male and female children in some countries. The preference for male children is reported in many areas of Asia, and abortion used to limit female births has been reported in Taiwan, South Korea, India, and China. This deviation from the standard birth rates of males and females occurs despite the fact that the country in question may have o |
fficially banned sexselective abortion or even sexscreening. In China, a historical preference for a male child has been exacerbated by the onechild policy, which was enacted in 1979.
Many countries have taken legislative steps to reduce the incidence of sexselective abortion. At the International Conference on Population and Development in 1994 over 180 states agreed to eliminate "all forms of discrimination against the girl child and the root causes of son preference", conditions also condemned by a PACE resolution in 2011. The World Health Organization and UNICEF, along with other United Nations agencies, have found that measures to reduce access to abortion are much less effective at reducing sexselective abortions than measures to reduce gender inequality.
Antiabortion violence
In a number of cases, abortion providers and these facilities have been subjected to various forms of violence, including murder, attempted murder, kidnapping, stalking, assault, arson, and bombing. Antiabortion violence is cla |
ssified by both governmental and scholarly sources as terrorism. In the U.S. and Canada, over 8,000 incidents of violence, trespassing, and death threats have been recorded by providers since 1977, including over 200 bombingsarsons and hundreds of assaults. The majority of abortion opponents have not been involved in violent acts.
In the United States, four physicians who performed abortions have been murdered David Gunn 1993, John Britton 1994, Barnett Slepian 1998, and George Tiller 2009. Also murdered, in the U.S. and Australia, have been other personnel at abortion clinics, including receptionists and security guards such as James Barrett, Shannon Lowney, Lee Ann Nichols, and Robert Sanderson. Woundings e.g., Garson Romalis and attempted murders have also taken place in the United States and Canada. Hundreds of bombings, arsons, acid attacks, invasions, and incidents of vandalism against abortion providers have occurred. Notable perpetrators of antiabortion violence include Eric Robert Rudolph, Scott Roe |
der, Shelley Shannon, and Paul Jennings Hill, the first person to be executed in the United States for murdering an abortion provider.
Legal protection of access to abortion has been brought into some countries where abortion is legal. These laws typically seek to protect abortion clinics from obstruction, vandalism, picketing, and other actions, or to protect women and employees of such facilities from threats and harassment.
Far more common than physical violence is psychological pressure. In 2003, Chris Danze organized antiabortion organizations throughout Texas to prevent the construction of a Planned Parenthood facility in Austin. The organizations released the personal information online, of those involved with construction, sending them up to 1200 phone calls a day and contacting their churches. Some protestors record women entering clinics on camera.
Nonhuman examples
Spontaneous abortion occurs in various animals. For example, in sheep it may be caused by stress or physical exertion, such as crow |
ding through doors or being chased by dogs. In cows, abortion may be caused by contagious disease, such as brucellosis or Campylobacter, but can often be controlled by vaccination. Eating pine needles can also induce abortions in cows.
Several plants, including broomweed, skunk cabbage, poison hemlock, and tree tobacco, are known to cause fetal deformities and abortion in cattle and in sheep and goats. In horses, a fetus may be aborted or resorbed if it has lethal white syndrome congenital intestinal aganglionosis. Foal embryos that are homozygous for the dominant white gene WW are theorized to also be aborted or resorbed before birth. In many species of sharks and rays, stressinduced abortions occur frequently on capture.
Viral infection can cause abortion in dogs. Cats can experience spontaneous abortion for many reasons, including hormonal imbalance. A combined abortion and spaying is performed on pregnant cats, especially in trapneuterreturn programs, to prevent unwanted kittens from being born.
Female r |
odents may terminate a pregnancy when exposed to the smell of a male not responsible for the pregnancy, known as the Bruce effect.
Abortion may also be induced in animals, in the context of animal husbandry. For example, abortion may be induced in mares that have been mated improperly, or that have been purchased by owners who did not realize the mares were pregnant, or that are pregnant with twin foals. Feticide can occur in horses and zebras due to male harassment of pregnant mares or forced copulation, although the frequency in the wild has been questioned. Male gray langur monkeys may attack females following male takeover, causing miscarriage.
Notes
References
Bibliography
External links
Firsttrimester abortion in women with medical conditions. US Department of Health and Human Services
Safe abortion Technical policy guidance for health systems, World Health Organization 2015
Human reproduction
Wikipedia medicine articles ready to translate
Wikipedia emergency medicine articles ready to trans |
late |
In law, an abstract is a brief statement that contains the most important points of a long legal document or of several related legal papers.
Abstract of title
The abstract of title, used in real estate transactions, is the more common form of abstract. An abstract of title lists all the owners of a piece of land, a house, or a building before it came into possession of the present owner. The abstract also records all deeds, wills, mortgages, and other documents that affect ownership of the property. An abstract describes a chain of transfers from owner to owner and any agreements by former owners that are binding on later owners.
Patent law
In the context of patent law and specifically in prior art searches, searching through abstracts is a common way to find relevant prior art document to question to novelty or inventive step or nonobviousness in United States patent law of an invention. Under United States patent law, the abstract may be called "Abstract of the Disclosure".
References
External links
|
, defining the requirements regarding the abstract in an international application filed under Patent Cooperation Treaty PCT
and previously , defining the abstractrelated requirements in a European patent application
Legal research |
The American Revolutionary War April 19, 1775 September 3, 1783, also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, secured a United States of America independent from Great Britain. Fighting began on April 19, 1775, followed by the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The American Patriots were supported by France and Spain, conflict taking place in North America, the Caribbean, and Atlantic Ocean. It ended on September 3, 1783 when Britain accepted American independence in the Treaty of Paris, while the Treaties of Versailles resolved separate conflicts with France and Spain.
Established by Royal charter in the 17th and 18th centuries, the American colonies were largely autonomous in domestic affairs and commercially prosperous, trading with Britain and its Caribbean colonies, as well as other European powers via their Caribbean entrepts. After British victory in the Seven Years' War in 1763, tensions arose over trade, colonial policy in the Northwest Territory and taxation mea |
sures, including the Stamp Act and Townshend Acts. Colonial opposition led to the 1770 Boston Massacre and 1773 Boston Tea Party, with Parliament responding by imposing the socalled Intolerable Acts.
Established on September 5, 1774, the First Continental Congress drafted a Petition to the King and organized a boycott of British goods. Despite attempts to achieve a peaceful solution, fighting began with the Battle of Lexington on April 19, 1775 and in June Congress authorized George Washington to create a Continental Army. Although the "coercion policy" advocated by the North ministry was opposed by a faction within Parliament, both sides increasingly viewed conflict as inevitable. The Olive Branch Petition sent by Congress to George III in July 1775 was rejected and in August Parliament declared the colonies to be in a state of rebellion.
Following the loss of Boston in March 1776, Sir William Howe, the new British commanderinchief, launched the New York and New Jersey campaign. He captured New York Ci |
ty in November, before Washington won small but significant victories at Trenton and Princeton, which restored Patriot confidence. In summer 1777, Howe succeeded in taking Philadelphia, but in October a separate force under John Burgoyne was forced to surrender at Saratoga. This victory was crucial in convincing powers like France and Spain an independent United States was a viable entity.
France provided the US informal economic and military support from the beginning of the rebellion, and after Saratoga the two countries signed a commercial agreement and a Treaty of Alliance in February 1778. In return for a guarantee of independence, Congress joined France in its global war with Britain and agreed to defend the French West Indies. Spain also allied with France against Britain in the Treaty of Aranjuez 1779, though it did not formally ally with the Americans. Nevertheless, access to ports in Spanish Louisiana allowed the Patriots to import arms and supplies, while the Spanish Gulf Coast campaign deprived |
the Royal Navy of key bases in the south.
This undermined the 1778 strategy devised by Howe's replacement, Sir Henry Clinton, which took the war into the Southern United States. Despite some initial success, by September 1781 Cornwallis was besieged by a FrancoAmerican force in Yorktown. After an attempt to resupply the garrison failed, Cornwallis surrendered in October, and although the British wars with France and Spain continued for another two years, this ended fighting in North America. In April 1782, the North ministry was replaced by a new British government which accepted American independence and began negotiating the Treaty of Paris, ratified on September 3, 1783.
Prelude to revolution
The French and Indian War, part of the wider global conflict known as the Seven Years' War, ended with the 1763 Peace of Paris, which expelled France from its possessions in New France. Acquisition of territories in Atlantic Canada and West Florida, inhabited largely by French or Spanishspeaking Catholics, led |
the British authorities to consolidate their hold by populating them with Englishspeaking settlers. Preventing conflict between settlers and Native American tribes west of the Appalachian Mountains would also avoid the cost of an expensive military occupation.
The Proclamation Line of 1763 was designed to achieve these aims by refocusing colonial expansion north into Nova Scotia and south into Florida, with the Mississippi River as the dividing line between British and Spanish possessions in the Americas. Settlement beyond the 1763 limits was tightly restricted, while claims by individual colonies west of this line were rescinded, most significantly Virginia and Massachusetts who argued their boundaries extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Ultimately the vast exchange of territory destabilized existing alliances and trade networks between settlers and Native Americans in the west, while it proved impossible to prevent encroachment beyond the Proclamation Line. With the exception of Virginia and oth |
ers "deprived" of their rights in the western lands, the colonial legislatures generally agreed on the principle of boundaries but disagreed on where to set them, while many settlers resented the restrictions. Since enforcement required permanent garrisons along the frontier, it led to increasingly bitter disputes over who should pay for them.
Taxation and legislation
Although directly administered by the Crown, acting through a local Governor, the colonies were largely governed by nativeborn property owners. While external affairs were managed by London, colonial militia were funded locally but with the ending of the French threat in 1763, the legislatures expected less taxation, not more. At the same time, the huge debt incurred by the Seven Years' War and demands from British taxpayers for cuts in government expenditure meant Parliament expected the colonies to fund their own defense.
The 1763 to 1765 Grenville ministry instructed the Royal Navy to stop the trade of smuggled goods and enforce customs d |
uties levied in American ports. The most important was the 1733 Molasses Act; routinely ignored prior to 1763, it had a significant economic impact since 85 of New England rum exports were manufactured from imported molasses. These measures were followed by the Sugar Act and Stamp Act, which imposed additional taxes on the colonies to pay for defending the western frontier. In July 1765, the Whigs formed the First Rockingham ministry, which repealed the Stamp Act and reduced tax on foreign molasses to help the New England economy, but reasserted Parliamentary authority in the Declaratory Act.
However, this did little to end the discontent; in 1768, a riot started in Boston when the authorities seized the sloop Liberty on suspicion of smuggling. Tensions escalated further in March 1770 when British troops fired on rockthrowing civilians, killing five in what became known as the Boston Massacre. The Massacre coincided with the partial repeal of the Townshend Acts by the Torybased North Ministry, which came to |
power in January 1770 and remained in office until 1781. North insisted on retaining duty on tea to enshrine Parliament's right to tax the colonies; the amount was minor, but ignored the fact it was that very principle Americans found objectionable.
Tensions escalated following the destruction of a customs vessel in the June 1772 Gaspee Affair, then came to a head in 1773. A banking crisis led to the nearcollapse of the East India Company, which dominated the British economy; to support it, Parliament passed the Tea Act, giving it a trading monopoly in the Thirteen Colonies. Since most American tea was smuggled by the Dutch, the Act was opposed by those who managed the illegal trade, while being seen as yet another attempt to impose the principle of taxation by Parliament. In December 1773, a group called the Sons of Liberty disguised as Mohawk natives dumped 342 crates of tea into Boston Harbor, an event later known as the Boston Tea Party. Parliament responded by passing the socalled Intolerable Acts, aime |
d specifically at Massachusetts, although many colonists and members of the Whig opposition considered them a threat to liberty in general. This led to increased sympathy for the Patriot cause locally, as well as in Parliament and the London press.
Break with the British Crown
Over the course of the 18th century, the elected lower houses in the colonial legislatures gradually wrested power from their Royal Governors. Dominated by smaller landowners and merchants, these Assemblies now established ad hoc provincial legislatures, variously called Congresses, Conventions, and Conferences, effectively replacing Royal control. With the exception of Georgia, twelve colonies sent representatives to the First Continental Congress to agree on a unified response to the crisis. Many of the delegates feared that an allout boycott would result in war and sent a Petition to the King calling for the repeal of the Intolerable Acts. However, after some debate, on September 17, 1774, Congress endorsed the Massachusetts Suffolk |
Resolves and on October 20 passed the Continental Association; based on a draft prepared by the First Virginia Convention in August, this instituted economic sanctions against Britain.
While denying its authority over internal American affairs, a faction led by James Duane and future Loyalist Joseph Galloway insisted Congress recognize Parliament's right to regulate colonial trade. Expecting concessions by the North administration, Congress authorized the extralegal committees and conventions of the colonial legislatures to enforce the boycott; this succeeded in reducing British imports by 97 from 1774 to 1775. However, on February 9 Parliament declared Massachusetts to be in a state of rebellion and instituted a blockade of the colony. In July, the Restraining Acts limited colonial trade with the British West Indies and Britain and barred New England ships from the Newfoundland cod fisheries. The increase in tension led to a scramble for control of militia stores, which each Assembly was legally obliged t |
o maintain for defense. On April 19, a British attempt to secure the Concord arsenal culminated in the Battles of Lexington and Concord which began the war.
Political reactions
After the Patriot victory at Concord, moderates in Congress led by John Dickinson drafted the Olive Branch Petition, offering to accept royal authority in return for George III mediating in the dispute. However, since it was immediately followed by the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, Colonial Secretary Dartmouth viewed the offer as insincere; he refused to present the petition to the king, which was therefore rejected in early September. Although constitutionally correct, since George could not oppose his own government, it disappointed those Americans who hoped he would mediate in the dispute, while the hostility of his language annoyed even Loyalist members of Congress. Combined with the Proclamation of Rebellion, issued on August 23 in response to the Battle at Bunker Hill, it ended hopes of a peaceful s |
ettlement.
Backed by the Whigs, Parliament initially rejected the imposition of coercive measures by 170 votes, fearing an aggressive policy would simply drive the Americans towards independence. However, by the end of 1774 the collapse of British authority meant both North and George III were convinced war was inevitable. After Boston, Gage halted operations and awaited reinforcements; the Irish Parliament approved the recruitment of new regiments, while allowing Catholics to enlist for the first time. Britain also signed a series of treaties with German states to supply additional troops. Within a year it had an army of over 32,000 men in America, the largest ever sent outside Europe at the time.
The employment of German mercenaries and Catholics against people viewed as British citizens was opposed by many in Parliament, as well as the colonial assemblies; combined with the lack of activity by Gage, it allowed the Patriots to take control of the legislatures. Support for independence was boosted by Thoma |
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