Quick with child


Also found in: Legal.
pregnant with a living child.

See also: Quick

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, published 1913 by G. & C. Merriam Co.
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However it was, this they all agree in, that my mother pleaded her belly, and being found quick with child, she was respited for about seven months; in which time having brought me into the world, and being about again, she was called down, as they term it, to her former judgment, but obtained the favour of being transported to the plantations, and left me about half a year old; and in bad hands, you may be sure.
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(52) When he gave the common law rule for executing a woman who was found guilty of a capital offense and who claimed to be pregnant, he said 'the judge must direct a jury of twelve matrons or discreet women to inquire the fact; and if they bring in their verdict quick with child (for barely with child, unless it be alive in the womb, is not sufficient), execution shall be stayed generally till the next session.' (53) His reference to 'barely with child' was clearly a reference to the time prior to quickening--and his statement 'unless it be alive in the womb' clearly shows that if it was possible to show the child alive in that prior stage, it would be protected.
A conversation about abortion between Justice Blackmun and the Founding Fathers
At the legislature's request, three legal scholars drafted a groundbreaking law: Every person who shall willfully and maliciously, administer to, or cause to be administered to, or taken by, any person or persons, any deadly poison, or other noxious and destructive substance, with an intention him, her or them, thereby to murder, or thereby to cause or procure the miscarriage of any woman, then being quick with child ...
Before Roe v. Wade: attitudes against abortion developed slowly in America, but by 1900, every state in the Union had anti-abortion laws. it took a liberal onslaught (and Roe v. Wade) to reverse this

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