Medicine, statistics, and the encounter of abortion and “depopulation” in France (1870-1920)

The anxiety about the population decline in France acquired at the end of the XIXth Century a great strength. Among the scholarship specialities involved in its analysis, the population studies developed by authors like Adolphe and Jacques Bertillon played a key role, but were limited by their lack of concern and/or precise data concerning the intimate behaviours. The growing implication of doctors in the issue of “depopulation”, and the concrete professional practices of some of them, led to an emerging focus on abortion. The obstetricians, who undertook in the “belle époque” personal statistics of abortions, permitted (despite the numerous limits of their works) to provide original data. They gave militants and politicians occasion to shape “mass abortion” as the principal “cause of denatality”. This paper examines the scientific, social and ideological genesis of this process, and enlightens the historical interest of these peculiar knowledges.