what this artical is tell us is that the law that defined and set punishment for the crime of abortion was first placed into the Missouri penal code in 1825, four years after the territory became a state. It was the second abortion law passed in the United States--Connecticut's was the first in 1821--and in its initial form, in what the historian James Mohr has suggested was a reaction to popular midwife- administered and folk abortifacients like the juniper oil called savin, the law prohibited only abortions induced by poisoning. In 1835 the wording was revised to prohibit instrumental abortions as well, and by the late 1800s every American state included in its criminal code an abortion law with provisions comparable to Missouri's.