THE GENESIS OF ABORTION LEGISLATION IN ANCIENT TIMES AND ANTIQUITY: AT THE ORIGINS OF FORENSIC MEDICINE

The subject. The relevance of the topic chosen by the author of the article lies in its understudied nature in Russian historical and legal scholarship. While contemporaries may study the issue more broadly from a medical or forensic perspective, or delve deeper into legislation from the nineteenth century and Soviet periods, the author's article focuses on specific aspect of this topic that has not been extensively explored. The purpose of this article is to examine the development of abortion legislation in relation to changes in human ideas about the world and social order, the complex structure of society, and changes in the system of inheritance in society. The research methodology is based on the fundamental principles of historical and legal knowledge: historicism and objectivity. While working with historical legal documents, the specific characteristics of law and legal thinking in the studied time period and the national legal traditions of the country were taken into consideration. Comparative legal analysis, system analysis, and interdisciplinary research methods were also employed. Main results. The article provides examples of changing attitudes towards abortion through links to articles of legislation in antiquity and antiquity. The author illustrates this process by quoting the works of great thinkers and poets of the corresponding times. After conducting a systematic analysis, it was revealed how the interaction of civilizations and legal systems of Eurasia creates a complex chronotopic (time-spatial) picture of the development of ideas about abortion and infanticide from the syncretic mononormal concept-to the ownership rights of the head of the family-"the seed does not retain any qualities of the womb" to the idea that the head of the family has ownership rights over the fetus, and then to Roman law, "mothers of unworthy stealing citizens from the state" and the rights of fetuses in institutions such as "postumus" and "oeuvre postum". Conclusions. The author substantiates the importance of studying the genesis of abortion legislation in order to provide a complete historical context, within which the prerequisites appeared, and then forensic medicine began to form and become established at the legislative level. This is because the issue of live birth or stillbirth is closely linked to the question of succession to monarchical power and its legitimization.