Pregnancy and Childbirth, or the Right of the Father : some Reflections on Motherhood and Fatherhood in ancient Greece

Also in her only politically relevant function – the reproductive one – the Greek woman, and particularly the Athenian woman, is strictly subordinate to the male authority: man is the sole holder both of the power to decide whether to rear the newborn baby inside the oikos as a legitimate son, and of the right to dispose of the pregnancy of the woman subject to his authority. Some references in the sources allow us to state that the unique purpose both of the medical and of the legal rules banning abortion was to protect fatherhood; hence the responsi-bility of the woman who caused an abortion without her husband’s consent.
Moreover, the popular and philosophical ideas on pregnancy and childbirth provide the basis, and at the same time the justification, for the rules that define the central importance of the father in the oikos both from a social and from a specific legal perspective.