“the very high rates of abortion in the Greco-Roman world can only be fully understood if we recognize that in perhaps the majority of instances it was men, rather than women, who made the decision to abort. Roman law accorded the male head of family the literal power of life and death over his household, including the right to order a female in the household to abort… It is hardly surprising that a world which gave husbands the right to order the exposure of their infant daughters would give them the right to order their wives and mistresses to abort. Thus the emperor Domitian, having impregnated his niece Julia, ordered her to have an abortion—from which she died (Gorman 1982).”

Stark, Rodney. The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History (p. 121).