March 13, 2017 • 41 mins
In colonial America, early-term abortion was a way of life for many women. But by 1900, it had become criminalized across the country -- but not for reasons you'd expect. In this two-part cultural and legal history of abortion, Cristen and Caroline time travel from ancient Greek herbal remedies to induce miscarriage to 19th-century abortionist Madame Restell at the center of America's first major abortion debate.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mob Never Told You. From House to
abortion dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, and today is part one of
a two parter that we are doing on abortion and
(00:23):
particularly abortion in the United States. And I think that
our our talk about abortion should just go ahead and
be prefaced with the clear statement that we aren't pro abortion.
I don't think anyone is pro abortion, but we are
pro choice absolutely. Yeah. We are in favor of letting
(00:48):
women decide whether to have children or not have children.
And honestly, Caroline, the more I learned about the history
of abortion, and particularly it's criminalization and subsequent legalization in
the United States, the more pro choice I have become,
the more deeply committed I am as a person and
(01:10):
have become to championing that right. Yeah, I agree, And
it seems like the deeper we went into abortion history,
the more it became clear to me that while abortion
has always happened throughout our history, and we'll always continue
to happen in one form or another, and while it
is always to some degree been a taboo, uh, it's
(01:34):
interesting to look at how the fight against women being
able to have abortion seems so tied to seemingly ancillary issues. UM.
Abortion seems to be caught up in the argument between uh,
for instance, the professionalization of medicine and the professionalization of
(01:55):
obstetrics versus those evil, sneaky low class midwives. UM. It
also seems to be caught up in conversations about population
growth and control, about wealth versus poverty, high class versus
low class Americans, race. I mean, abortion itself almost seems
(02:18):
like just another bullet point in all of these discussions
that have been going on since the dawn of our
country's history. And it's so often portrayed, especially in our
political landscape, as a black or and white issue, where
you're either pro choice or anti choice, where whereas, of course,
of course, as is often the case when you really
(02:40):
dig into what you're talking about, there are so many
different layers to it. And even though we've talked about
reproductive rights on the podcast before a long time ago, UH,
Molly and I did a podcast on the mechanics of abortion,
and we're not going to get into like how abortions
work in terms of surgically how they were today. UM.
(03:01):
And we've also talked about planned parenthood before but after
this year, and we're recording this listeners at the end
of we could not talk about abortion considering the reproductive
rights climate um in the US right now, and the
planned parenthood hearings with Cecile Richard's before Congress, the planned
(03:24):
parenthood shooting in Colorado Springs, and on and on and on,
and so many bills being presented at Congress's both within
the States and also nationally to restrict women's right to choose. Yeah,
And so what Kristen and I wanted to do is
really provide a context for the abortion discussion that's going
on today in this country. We didn't just want to
(03:47):
tick down the list of what happened in abortion history
year to year, decade to decade, century to century. We
really hope to illustrate the fact that, like I said,
abortion is something that's always happened and that women will
always find a way to achieve. And so we wanted
to shed a little light on the politics, the culture
(04:09):
that goes on around it, and what influences whether people
are for it or against it. Can we start off
now with a little bit of Gloria Steina. Of course
that might seem like a bit of a side note, UM,
but in reading up on abortion history for this episode,
it made me think of Gloria Steinham's new memoir, My
(04:31):
Life on the Road, and how she dedicated it to
the British doctor who performed an abortion for her, and
hearing her talk about that experience, UM, in interviews that
she was having, you know, in months past while she
was on that book tour, just made me think of
how recent a lot of this history is. You know, this,
this is a woman that you and I have had
(04:53):
the esteemed honor of meeting. And you know, she lived
in a time as so many of our mothers or
grandmothers did, when you would have to iss. She did
find a doctor who would do this thing he wasn't
supposed to do. And in the dedication to her memoir,
Gloria Steinham relays what this doctor Sharp made her promise
(05:16):
in order, but before he agreed to perform her abortion,
he said, you must promise me two things. First, you'll
not tell anyone my name. Second, you will do what
you want to do with your life. Dear doctor Sharp,
I believe you, who knew the law was unjust, would
not mind if I say this so long after your
death I've done the best I could with my life,
and this book is for you. Gosh, isn't that that
(05:38):
just always made me just cry? Yeah? I mean I
think that that's an excellent snapshot of the attitude that
many pro choice women and men have, which is, you
should be able to live the life that you want
to live, and to choose to live live at the
way that you want. And so with that, should we
give a little historical con text? Of course, that's the
(06:02):
whole point of this. This is a context too. So
let's sleep way back in time, way way way before
Gloria Steinem to ancient history, where we often begin, because
here's the thing. For most of history, there have been
permissible circumstances for early term abortions. Right the line in
(06:24):
the sand, so to speak, was something called the quickening,
which is basically when a woman would feel the fetus
move for the first time. This typically happened in the
about fourth month of pregnancy, and everybody pretty much assumed like,
there's no pregnancy before that. Um, it's more a lack
of a period, a lack of amensies, um. And so
(06:45):
when the quickening happened, that's when people got sort of
iffy about abortion happening now. In ancient Greece and Rome,
the only time that a pre quickening abortion would be
a big deal would be if the dad actually felt
entitled to which child. But even Aristotle advised abortion in
cases when couples have children in excess, partly because of
(07:08):
this whole idea that fetuses were not fully formed until
forty days after conception for boys and eighty days for girls.
It takes a little longer for girls to We've got
to get our makeup on, you know, and that takes forever,
and then like you've got to wait for the straightening
iron to heat up and do your hair. So I
mean it's a miracle we can even get out of
(07:28):
the womb. Yeah, I mean it takes me forty days
every morning to get ready, So it feels like it
for me. I don't know how I'm here, um. But
in fact, that forty day mark um was something that
for a long time the Catholic Church used as its
um sort of line in the sand as well, not
condemning abortion before that period, under the belief that the
(07:50):
soul hadn't yet entered the fetus, Although that policy would
certainly change and we should emphasize though, that abortion was
not morally ideal, but it certainly wasn't as unconscionable as
many people consider it today, as that early developing fetus
was really just considered a part of the mother. And
(08:12):
so a lot of this early focus on abortion up
into the nineteenth century, as we'll get to, UH, focused
all on the health of the mother and what was
up to her, what she felt in terms of the
quickening oh my god, something something being left up to
a woman, a medical decision being left up to a woman.
And that's sort of the point of this whole discussion
of early abortion, which is that with this idea of
(08:33):
the quickening and waiting until the mother says, oh, like
I felt it, kick, I've got a baby in me now, hooray,
we're going to be parents. Um, it was it was
really up to the mother's judgment um, and then only
then would other people except that she had a pregnancy.
And in the cases that women discovered that they were pregnant,
(08:56):
that their men's sees had stopped. Uh. There were all sorts,
especially herbal abortifactions, that women might seek out to induce miscarriages,
and Kathleen London at Yale describes all sorts of these
folk remedies, such as in Germany, things like marjorom time
(09:18):
parsley in lavender in t form were used, and that
just sounds like a pleasant to be honest. And also
in Germany and in France they used the root of
worm fern, which was very pleasantly nicknamed prostitute root. And
that actually the stretch back to ancient Greece. So that's
something that had been in continual use since then. And
then in more modern times, if you if your garden
(09:41):
wasn't growing so well, you could always reach for some
turpentine or cast royal, or maybe quinine water in which
a rusty nail had been soaked. Cocktails or speaking of cocktails,
Carolina Gin one of your faiths, Gin with some iron fillings. Well,
speaking of cocktails, I mean yeah, winine and jin there
you go to Gin and tonic ataf of women were doing.
(10:05):
Oh lord, Now, Germany and France weren't the only places
that had folk remedies. Of course, women in America use
these remedies as well, things like seven or got rude
tansy or penny royalty. They also used rosemary and lavender,
slave women would turn to cotton root. But ps y'all,
penny royalty wasn't really a pleasant way to induce a miscarriage.
(10:28):
You might experience possibly fatal symptoms including tingling fingers, nausea, dizziness,
and strange burning sensations. Yeah, I mean, because essentially what
these women were trying to do was poison their body
into inducing a miscarriage. So these herbal abortivations weren't necessarily
(10:49):
the safest or healthiest routes. Um. But it wasn't just
about going out and plucking some houbs and making some
tea and muddling some things. Well to do. Ladies and
their gents might also procure so called female pills, which
were meant to induce miscarriages as well. And there was
(11:09):
a euphemism actually, um that is found in a lot
of women's like letters and diaries for taking these quote
unquote female pills, which they called taking the trade. Yeah,
And in a lot of sources that we were reading
about this, they talk about how if a euphemism exists
for something that that typically reveals both an openness and
(11:31):
acceptance about the fact that this is happening, that women
are controlling their own fertility, but also the need for secrecy.
So like this is happening and we're writing letters to
each other or writing in our diaries about it, but
we can't just say I'm getting rid of my pregnancy.
We've got to call it something. Well, they might just
call it going horseback riding. And of course there are
(11:52):
also so called like external aboardi facians with things like
heavy lifting, climbing trees, jumping, also douching with lie This
is when we get into the far more dangerous types
of self induced abortion, or of course knitting needles and
coat hangers being inserted into the vagina to try to
(12:12):
pierce the uterus. That just sounds horrific. All of that
sounds horrific. Um and not making it any easier though,
is the rise of morality around abortion and how it
affected laws in the UK and the US. Yeah, what
what I was genuinely surprised to learn was just how
(12:36):
chill we were legally in the United States and under
like English common law regarding pre quickening abortions. Like we said,
while it wasn't like morally solid gold, it was not
the end of the world either. So pre eighteen hundreds
in the US there were no laws against pre quickening abortions.
(12:57):
Those kinds of um sort of home making colonial guides
that women would have would include commonly recipes for those
herbal abortivations well, usually under the euphemism of bringing on
the men's sees. So, oh, your mensies has stopped, here's
what to take to bring it on. Restore that men's sees. Um.
(13:18):
And Protestants and Catholics were mostly fine with it too,
although Christianity considered it taboo unless in the case of
preserving the mother's health, and a lot of our sources
noted that even through the nineteenth century, many women didn't
consider abortion a sin. Probably helped buy things like the
euphemisms of you know, I'm just bringing back my men
(13:39):
sees or taking the trade. It's no big deal. And
speaking of English common law, though in eighteen o three,
the English decreed that a post quickening abortion was a
crime punishable by death, so that escalated quickly. Yeah, but
it wasn't so much about preserving the developing life of
that fetus, as a lot of our abortion debates, at
(14:01):
least in the United States, are focused on today. Those
first statutes in the UK and also in the United
States outlawing abortion. We're far more concerned with preserving mother's lives.
I mean, essentially, these were poison control methods. Yeah. And
what's confusing there for me though, is so they're worried
about you poisoning yourself, and if you try to poison yourself,
(14:22):
they'll put you to death. Okay, Yeah, that is kind
of a mixed message. But as we move into the
middle of the nineteenth century, particularly in the eighteen forties,
abortion starts to be a profitable business. You see more
and more advertisements by uh quote unquote drug companies, not
like we would think of them today obviously, but people
(14:43):
creating those female pills. We see midwives, and we see
people like a Madame Restell, who advertised her birth control
and abortion services. Yeah. So Madame Rossell was the pseudonym
of Abor Shonist and Lowman, who was later dub the
Wickedest Woman of New York. And she essentially set up
(15:10):
an abortion service where she would sell her infamous monthly
pills that you could order by mail or if you
would go in and see her, she would give you
these pills that would possibly induce a miscarriage. But then
she would also rely on clients coming back because they
wouldn't work, and she would administer abortions for twenty dollars
if you were poor, or hundred dollars if you were rich.
(15:32):
And she was so successful that she opened branch offices
in Boston, in Philadelphia. Yeah, she even had traveling salespeople
going door to door in different big cities selling her tonics. Um.
And of course you know all of these ads. Again,
they were all very euphemistic, selling her services and selling
(15:53):
her tonics and potions and things of that nature. And
not surprisingly, she did face a lot of criticism, probably
for her notoriety. She wasn't a midwife who kept to
herself in her own little cottage. I mean, this is
a woman who was so successful that she was buying
real estate. She had a huge property built in New
York City. She would wear furs and jewels, and people
(16:17):
were just disgusted by this ostentatious show of wealth, especially
because of how she earned her money. Um. But the
thing is, the criticisms that she faced sound pretty familiar
if you're a person alive today reading the news. She
was accused of praying on the naive and poor, of
threatening the institution of marriage of helping women shirk the
(16:38):
duties of motherhood and even encouraging prostitution, and basically her
response to this was like, I don't understand why you
people think that all of the women in your lives
are just waiting for the chance to be vicious and awful.
Like women don't sit around being like, you know, I'm
going to get pregnant so I can go get an abortion.
I just think that that sounds like a gray idea
(17:00):
or you know what, I'm pregnant and all of a sudden,
I'm just bored. I'm just gonna go get this taken
care of. She basically was like, listen, your women aren't
less virtuous because they do this, and how dare you
assume that any of them in such a vicious way
want to go do this. She also though, and this
is sort of a topic that we will revisit in
(17:22):
greater detail later, she asserted that doctors and politicians wanted
people like her out of the way so they could
make more money because around this time you start seeing
the professionalization of medicine, uh medicalized abortion happening, with more
surgical options, more professional obstetricians performing these procedures, and so
(17:45):
that kind of left abortion open mostly to the wealthy,
whereas poor women still relied on those potions that women
like Madam Ristel sold, those uterine tonics or cathartic pills
as they were sometimes called. Um. Yeah, it's fascinating to
see how this is the period when this becomes a
socio economic issue as well. And we should mention too
(18:09):
that the majority of Madame Russell's clients, and also a
majority of women who seek abortions today were married. These
women were married with kids. Um. But also during this
time in the mid eighteen hundreds, when Madame Ristel is
getting yourself arrested a couple of times, people are really
(18:31):
you know, calling her wicked and all of these things,
the abortion debate intensifies along with moralizing in the US.
So it's in the mid nineteenth century that Massachusetts enacts
the first state law making an abortion or attempted abortion
at any point in pregnancy a criminal offense and a
(18:51):
really comprehensive papor we found from Ohio State University also
notes how there is a distinctly American shift toward abortion
being reframed as a moral issue and as a sin
at this time, whereas you see over in Europe, the
abortion debate starts to shift more toward focusing on how
(19:11):
a lot of these women are just in dire straits
and they lack resources, so let's let the government step
in and do something about it, rather than this moralistic
tone that it takes across the pond, where women who
are seeking abortions are obviously immoral, possibly prostitutes, They're irresponsible,
(19:32):
and they are you know, essentially making God cry. And
just a few decades later, in the eighteen seventies, despite
the increase in moralizing, there are two hundred full time
abortionists in New York alone who have a pretty okay
collective safety rate of of performing these procedures or handing
(19:52):
out these tonics and having women uh survive. But you know,
we can't just leave the moralizing behind. This is also
the time in the eighteen seventies when we get Anthony
Comstock and the Comstock Laws. He's the worst. Yeah, he's
the worst, but he doesn't he sounds completely modern to me, Kristen,
I've got to say, reading about this guy, he sounds
(20:14):
absolutely like somebody you'd read about in the news today.
Tell me more. I will so. In eighteen seventy three, Comstock,
who is an anti sex trade and pornography crusader, helped
push a bill through Congress that defined contraceptive and contraception
information at all period as obscene, saying that they promoted
(20:35):
lust and lewdness. So a little bit of context within
the context. Within the context, the diaphragm had been invented
in Europe in eighteen forty two, and the full length
rubber condom in the US in eighteen sixty nine. So
Comstock was seeing ads for birth control for people like
Madam Rastell, for those tonics to bring on your men
(20:57):
sees and things like that, and he's like, oh, sto gross,
this is awful. Uh. And similarly, though, it's also worth
noting that Comstock was one of the many, many, many,
many many people who did not distinguish between birth control
and abortion. So in his mind, it was just as
bad to advertise your abortion services as it was birth
(21:20):
control services. And by birth control services, at this time,
we're talking exclusively about those barrier methods, right, Okay, So
thanks to all Comstock can all squeaked out over some advertisements. Uh,
The Comstock laws passed and it becomes illegal to send
birth control through the mail or across state line. So
(21:41):
all those care packages with condoms that I send you
every every month, Carol, I love it, balloon animals all day, Yes, good,
and send them. Although I guess it's not across state line,
so comp Stock approved, I can keep doing it. Um.
Twenty four states, though, soon passed their own versions of
Comstock laws, with New England states instituting the toughest ones,
(22:05):
which is interesting to me. I mean, I I think
nowadays of New England being fairly blue on the political spectrum,
but they were definitely cracking down on any type of
uh funny business so to speak, and either trying to
make up for lost time. But by abortion had been
criminalized across the US, except in cases to save a
(22:29):
mother's life. Meanwhile, English law had been amended so that
it could take place when quote done in good faith
for the purpose only of preserving the life of the mother.
So you already start to see in the nineteen twenties
Britain starting to back pedal a little bit in terms
(22:49):
of its abortion criminalization, whereas in the United States it
is just continuing to dig in its heels. But what
happened during this time, Caroline I mean, how did we
go from, you know, especially during this period in the
nineteenth century, from prequickening abortion being pretty much like a
(23:13):
way of life. You might not talk about it openly,
but you've got some euphemisms. It's just gonna probably happen
to the turn of the century when it's completely illegal.
So the whole irony of this time period is that
it's called the Progressive Era. That is the backdrop that
(23:34):
we're really going to dig into. Two add a little
bit more nuanced to better understand why abortion became criminalized
in the United States, because you might think, listening to
political arguments today that it was because, oh, we we
just decided that we wanted to preserve the lives of
(23:54):
these fetuses. We needed more babies. It's all about the
potential babies, right, But no, actually, when it comes to criminalization,
it's sort of all about the dudes. If we look
in the Progressive era and what's going on. And Leslie
Jay Reagan has been an outstanding resource on the history
(24:14):
of abortion in the United States, and in her paper
Linking Midwives and Abortion in the Progressive Era, she wrote,
and I quote, the combined campaign to control abortion and
midwiffery took the form of a classic progressive era reform movement.
A coalition of private interest groups, doctors, female reformers, nurses,
(24:36):
and journalists of the native born, white middle class identified
a problem, investigated and documented its extent in objective reports,
and mobilized to promote a state sponsored solution. So you
had a bunch of people going, we know better than you.
Listen to us, We're going to fix your live And
a lot of Reagan's research focuses around Chicago being an
(24:59):
ink cubator for anti midwiffery and therefore anti abortion sentiment.
There were all of these fears during the progressive era,
and Kristen and I have talked about this many times
on the podcast before, around women's sexuality versus their innocence,
particularly in these urban centers where more and more young
(25:20):
women were moving away from the farms and moving into
towns to make money, to make a living, living on
their own, maybe living in boarding houses with other single women,
but essentially you have this wave of urban working women
making everybody a little nervous. Uh. There were all of
these concerns that these women were or would be victims
(25:43):
of male lust, but also they were blamed for being
harlots for liking it. So there was this duality of
judgment on a lot of these urban women, many of
whom these progressive era reformers assumed, we're going and getting
abortion like every week. Um. And so these anxieties helped
(26:06):
give rise to the attitude of yeah, yeah, let's take
the powers and abilities away from midwives and give all
of those powers and abilities two doctors. And it's interesting
it was not just male doctors who were against midwives.
There were a lot of female doctors who were just
(26:27):
as likely to slam midwives. During this time, doctor Eliza
root In three blamed midwives for infections and inducing abortions,
but bt dubs. She also blamed improperly trained doctors in general,
saying they were just as bad. And this was presented
at a conference at a medical gathering, and the result
(26:50):
was essentially, and I'm grossly over generalizing, but the result
was basically a lot of doctors going, look over there,
midwives are evil, Like we're fine, we're gonna keep doing this.
We've got tools and medical degrees, like they're just low
class women with herbs, with herbs, and this idea of
quickening that was one of the big things that these
(27:13):
uh fancy professionalized doctors wanted to scientifically debunk was the
idea of quickening, because they said that it was just
an emotional experience that women would have and therefore couldn't
be trusted. So that gets those pre quickening abortion sort
of off the table. So all this was happening on
(27:35):
the heels of the newly formed American Medical Association, which
got together in eighteen fifty seven, and soon after all
these dude doctors got together and we're like, hey, let's
professionalize this whole medicine thing. Oh, by the way, let's
launch an anti abortion campaign and target these midwives and homeopaths,
(27:58):
whom they termed a regulars. And that was a term
irregulars that even the media picked up on, so they
would that lamestream media. So you have the other ring
effect of these midwives and homeo paths. And from eighteen
eighty to nineteen twenty, there was this massive debate really
(28:21):
all around the turn of the century over midwives, because
by this point, midwives were considered almost synonymous with abortions,
and one of the big pitches that these doctors had
for pooh pooing midwives. Was it okay, they're performing all
(28:42):
of this hocus pocus and all of the abortions, and
you know what they're doing. They are depleting the white race.
And now we get to the pivot of eugenics. Yeah,
Eugenics emerges in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century,
first in England and then in the US before being
(29:04):
exported to Nazi Germany. And it was the idea that
certain physical, mental, and moral traits were genetics. So it
was very important to these people, these people being everyone
from the American President to presidents of universities to politicians
to your average Joe on the street. Um, it was
important to them to weed out bad traits like poverty, promiscuity, criminality,
(29:28):
mental disability. And I want to go back in my
time machine and have a talk about privilege basically with
with this whole eugenics thing and assuming that things like
poverty are genetic rather than the product of generations of oppression.
But any who, I think it's interesting to me that
in the time when abortion is becoming illegal across this
(29:52):
country and people are saying it's immoral and awful, eugenicists
were pushing legislation for forced sterilization of the poor and disabled.
Tens of thousands of poor women in this country were sterilized.
The movement ends up peaking in the twenties and thirties,
but it carries through and it's not until you know,
(30:13):
like after World War Two, the people are like, oh,
that Hitler guy kind of ruined that for us. But
I find it interesting that you can be against abortion
but for for sterilization of innocent women. And this goes
to what's also happening at the time, this white fright
that's a foot where these social scientists who are stoking
(30:33):
nationalistic and racist concerns over declining white birthrates and rising
immigrant populations. I mean, even Theodore Roosevelt in said women
of good stock who refused to have children were race criminals. Yeah,
there was an attitude that it was a sign of
(30:54):
moral disease if you chose to limit your family, and
that we need a growing population of healthy white workers essentially,
and the best way for that to happen is to
make sure that women can't go to these midwives and
get abortions or ABORTI factions. And part of that had
(31:16):
to do with how uh doctors in the professionalization of
medicine and obstetrics attempted to scientifically debunk midwiffery and also
establish the hospital rather than the home, as the place
where birth and any kind of a maternal related care
(31:39):
should take place. Yeah, and Reagan writes about this as
allowing doctors to adjudicate the legality of abortions. That's a
lot of words, but it essentially is talking about how
doctors and state politicians start working together to make sure
that women can only get abortions in hospitals, but then
only in the case of life threatening emergencies. But like
(32:02):
we mentioned earlier, what does this do. This essentially only
leaves the wiggle room for wealthier women to be able
to continue to access abortion. Yeah, they would be called
therapeutic abortions, and so some doctors would declare morning sickness
as reason enough to have a therapeutic abortion. So now
(32:24):
we have this, you know, abortion still existing, but something
that's really only accessible for the wealthiest women. And we
have so many layers going on so far, so we
have some racism of foot and some eugenics going on,
we have the professionalization of medicine and obstetrics. We we
have women being shoved at the side, basically being told
(32:47):
that their feelings about physical and emotional feelings about the
quickening are total bunk. We have concern about the women's
movement of foot and men having to be held to
a new sexual standard. And then of course we have religion.
We got some religion in the background not helping things
out either. In eighteen sixty nine, Pope Pious the Ninth
(33:09):
declared embryos human beings with us all at the time
of conception and declares that abortions lead to excommunication, and
then in a papal decree condemned therapeutic abortions as well. Yeah,
so no abortions under any circumstances at all in the
(33:30):
view of the Catholic Church. So it's thanks to this
combination of all of this factors that Christian was just
mentioning that led to abortion being redefined almost completely as immoral,
though it was still common. I mean, it's not like
it went away, and that's something that we need to
re emphasize, like abortion has never stopped. People will always
(33:52):
seek abortion. And it also didn't necessarily mean that women
felt yet a moral obligation to carry a pregnancy to
turn despite the fact that women, midwives, female doctors, you
name it, they were all under these basically character attacks
from so many male doctors who are essentially mounting a
backlash against, like Kristen said, the women's movement, against women
(34:16):
having power of any kind, against women relying on any
self knowledge of their bodies and their pregnancies and being
able to say what's what. And that's where we get
a lot of the modern argument that the professionalization of
medicine is anti feminist. That's where a lot of that
argument stems from, that women were no longer allowed a
(34:39):
voice in their own bodies, in their own healthcare well.
And it's such a stark example not only of the
professionalization of medicine and the impact that can have on
women's lives, but also the politicization of medicine as well, because,
as Leslie Reagan underscores, there couldn't be this oh like
(35:00):
huge impact of abortion ultimately being criminalized if you didn't
have alliances between doctors and the state, to the point
that you have judges like Chicago judge John P. Mcgourty
ruling in nineteen fifteen that a woman who would destroy
life in that manner a k and abortion is not
(35:23):
fit for decent society. So, I mean, you just have
all of these forces at work. I mean, it's it's
almost the perfect, most imperfect storm in the mid to
late nineteenth century that ended up criminalizing something that used
to very much be a way of life in the
(35:46):
days of the Founding Fathers. Yeah, and so by this point,
not only is abortion illegal, but the women who seek
them are officially breaking the law. Their immoral and their irresponsible.
And it's almost comedic if it weren't so sad that
men are lacking from this conversation, not in terms of
(36:08):
who's legislating things, obviously that's the dudes in this scenario,
but the men who are getting these women pregnant. Um.
But that just goes back to the whole discussion of
so many women in this era who were seeking abortions
were not necessarily the prostitutes that everyone was so worried
about on the street corners of Chicago, but rather mothers
(36:31):
who were already having so many children and whose bodies
were becoming destroyed, and who didn't have enough money to
feed these children that they were having. These are the
women who were more likely seeking these procedures, and so
as a result of making abortion illegal and of labeling
women who seek them as immoral and irresponsible. You have
(36:55):
so many women, especially poor women of color, going to
deadly links to obtain abortions, especially if they did not
have much money. And this really sets us up for
our next episode where we're going to lead you through
the conversation of how essentially UH women tried to help
other women achieve abortions achieve birth control, and that would
(37:18):
then lead us to the Row versus Way decision in
and in the meantime, of course, we want to hear
from you. What are your thoughts on abortion history, and
especially if you live outside the United States, what do
you know about your own countries abortion history. Mom's Stuff
(37:38):
at how stuff works dot com is our email address.
You can also tweet us at Mom's Stuff podcast or
messages on Facebook, and we've got a couple of messages
to share with you right now. Well, I have a
letter here from Abby about our Gilmore Girls episode. She says, Hello, ladies,
(37:59):
I'm nineteen and I grew up watching Gilmore Girls with
my mom and sister. We started watching at the very
beginning when I was about four, and since then we've
been watching and rewatching all of the episodes. At this point,
I think I've seen all of them at least five times.
There's something that's always been special about watching this tight
knit mom and daughter show with my mom and sister,
and we've assigned characters to just about all of our friends.
(38:21):
My mom is missus Kim, my sister is a mix
of Rory in Paris and I'm Laine. I loved hearing
you guys talk about something so near and dear to
my heart that's made me laugh and cry and everything
in between. Since it's been on Netflix, I've gotten the
chance to watch it with friends and argue about which
of Rory's boyfriend's is the best. The answer is none
of them, which is really amazing as well, especially when
it's their first time funny story too. There's a little
(38:43):
place in the tiny town where I went to college
called Luke's Joint that serves breakfast. I spent a few
homesick lunches eating breakfast there, which always helped, especially since
the owner was kind of grumpy like Luke Danes's. I'm
really looking forward to watching the reboot with my mom
and sister. We've already planned to watch it together no
matter where we end up in twenty sev and probably
watch all of the episodes again. Thanks for an amazing show.
(39:05):
Thank you, Abby, and I've got to let her here
from Amy. Also about our Gilmore Girls episode, she writes,
I watched the show since the beginning of season one,
and I loved it because it's very sweet, fun and funny.
I loved that Rory loved to read, although I certainly
didn't have a dean thinking my love of reading was sexy.
I have some points I wanted to make based on
(39:26):
whether or not the show is feminist, the amount of
minorities representative, etcetera. I'm also a big fan of Gilmore Guys,
and I'm listening to the latest episode as I type this.
It is a feminist show, and here are some examples. First,
Laura Lae names Rory after herself, and Roy uses Laura's
last name, not her father's last name. Two, lots of
women run businesses. The independence in the dragonfly In and
(39:48):
even the town Mechanic are all women. Miss Patty is
strongly independent, as is Paris three. Rory is more renowned
for her brain than just want anything else. Yes, Liddell
is attractive, but Dean likes her her smarts and whip.
That really is cool. Second, the show really does show
a wide range of people in types. Maybe I'm wrong,
but isn't Michelle a person of color? He was one
(40:10):
of the main characters on the show, and they mentioned
him being French and don't focus on this color. But
I always thought of him as a person of color.
To Lane, another major character that is way more than
the Asian girl. Yes, her mother has some quirks, but
if they were going for stereotypes, she would have been
super brainy like Rory, very good at math and shine, quiet,
and maybe good at the piano. Three look at the town.
(40:31):
Suki is a larger woman, but look at her. She's
not a fat chick obsessed with losing weight, being the
loser who doesn't have a boyfriend. She's the one who,
in my opinion, has the most solid relationship with a
man in the entire series. She's school, pretty funny, and
super talented. Miss Patty also not then was super sexy.
So yes, I've spent long periods of time thinking about
all these things. I love the show, and I feel
(40:53):
if they try to show in a bunch of types
just to fill of quota, it wouldn't have read as real,
So thanks me and thanks to everybody who's written into us.
Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com is our
email address and for links to all of our social
media as well as all of our blogs, videos, and
podcasts with our sources. So you can read more about
(41:13):
the history of abortion. Head on over to stuff mom
Never Told You dot com for moralness and thousands of
other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com
Welcome to stuff Mob Never Told You. From House to
abortion dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, and today is part one of
a two parter that we are doing on abortion and
(00:23):
particularly abortion in the United States. And I think that
our our talk about abortion should just go ahead and
be prefaced with the clear statement that we aren't pro abortion.
I don't think anyone is pro abortion, but we are
pro choice absolutely. Yeah. We are in favor of letting
(00:48):
women decide whether to have children or not have children.
And honestly, Caroline, the more I learned about the history
of abortion, and particularly it's criminalization and subsequent legalization in
the United States, the more pro choice I have become,
the more deeply committed I am as a person and
(01:10):
have become to championing that right. Yeah, I agree, And
it seems like the deeper we went into abortion history,
the more it became clear to me that while abortion
has always happened throughout our history, and we'll always continue
to happen in one form or another, and while it
is always to some degree been a taboo, uh, it's
(01:34):
interesting to look at how the fight against women being
able to have abortion seems so tied to seemingly ancillary issues. UM.
Abortion seems to be caught up in the argument between uh,
for instance, the professionalization of medicine and the professionalization of
(01:55):
obstetrics versus those evil, sneaky low class midwives. UM. It
also seems to be caught up in conversations about population
growth and control, about wealth versus poverty, high class versus
low class Americans, race. I mean, abortion itself almost seems
(02:18):
like just another bullet point in all of these discussions
that have been going on since the dawn of our
country's history. And it's so often portrayed, especially in our
political landscape, as a black or and white issue, where
you're either pro choice or anti choice, where whereas, of course,
of course, as is often the case when you really
(02:40):
dig into what you're talking about, there are so many
different layers to it. And even though we've talked about
reproductive rights on the podcast before a long time ago, UH,
Molly and I did a podcast on the mechanics of abortion,
and we're not going to get into like how abortions
work in terms of surgically how they were today. UM.
(03:01):
And we've also talked about planned parenthood before but after
this year, and we're recording this listeners at the end
of we could not talk about abortion considering the reproductive
rights climate um in the US right now, and the
planned parenthood hearings with Cecile Richard's before Congress, the planned
(03:24):
parenthood shooting in Colorado Springs, and on and on and on,
and so many bills being presented at Congress's both within
the States and also nationally to restrict women's right to choose. Yeah,
And so what Kristen and I wanted to do is
really provide a context for the abortion discussion that's going
on today in this country. We didn't just want to
(03:47):
tick down the list of what happened in abortion history
year to year, decade to decade, century to century. We
really hope to illustrate the fact that, like I said,
abortion is something that's always happened and that women will
always find a way to achieve. And so we wanted
to shed a little light on the politics, the culture
(04:09):
that goes on around it, and what influences whether people
are for it or against it. Can we start off
now with a little bit of Gloria Steina. Of course
that might seem like a bit of a side note, UM,
but in reading up on abortion history for this episode,
it made me think of Gloria Steinham's new memoir, My
(04:31):
Life on the Road, and how she dedicated it to
the British doctor who performed an abortion for her, and
hearing her talk about that experience, UM, in interviews that
she was having, you know, in months past while she
was on that book tour, just made me think of
how recent a lot of this history is. You know, this,
this is a woman that you and I have had
(04:53):
the esteemed honor of meeting. And you know, she lived
in a time as so many of our mothers or
grandmothers did, when you would have to iss. She did
find a doctor who would do this thing he wasn't
supposed to do. And in the dedication to her memoir,
Gloria Steinham relays what this doctor Sharp made her promise
(05:16):
in order, but before he agreed to perform her abortion,
he said, you must promise me two things. First, you'll
not tell anyone my name. Second, you will do what
you want to do with your life. Dear doctor Sharp,
I believe you, who knew the law was unjust, would
not mind if I say this so long after your
death I've done the best I could with my life,
and this book is for you. Gosh, isn't that that
(05:38):
just always made me just cry? Yeah? I mean I
think that that's an excellent snapshot of the attitude that
many pro choice women and men have, which is, you
should be able to live the life that you want
to live, and to choose to live live at the
way that you want. And so with that, should we
give a little historical con text? Of course, that's the
(06:02):
whole point of this. This is a context too. So
let's sleep way back in time, way way way before
Gloria Steinem to ancient history, where we often begin, because
here's the thing. For most of history, there have been
permissible circumstances for early term abortions. Right the line in
(06:24):
the sand, so to speak, was something called the quickening,
which is basically when a woman would feel the fetus
move for the first time. This typically happened in the
about fourth month of pregnancy, and everybody pretty much assumed like,
there's no pregnancy before that. Um, it's more a lack
of a period, a lack of amensies, um. And so
(06:45):
when the quickening happened, that's when people got sort of
iffy about abortion happening now. In ancient Greece and Rome,
the only time that a pre quickening abortion would be
a big deal would be if the dad actually felt
entitled to which child. But even Aristotle advised abortion in
cases when couples have children in excess, partly because of
(07:08):
this whole idea that fetuses were not fully formed until
forty days after conception for boys and eighty days for girls.
It takes a little longer for girls to We've got
to get our makeup on, you know, and that takes forever,
and then like you've got to wait for the straightening
iron to heat up and do your hair. So I
mean it's a miracle we can even get out of
(07:28):
the womb. Yeah, I mean it takes me forty days
every morning to get ready, So it feels like it
for me. I don't know how I'm here, um. But
in fact, that forty day mark um was something that
for a long time the Catholic Church used as its
um sort of line in the sand as well, not
condemning abortion before that period, under the belief that the
(07:50):
soul hadn't yet entered the fetus, Although that policy would
certainly change and we should emphasize though, that abortion was
not morally ideal, but it certainly wasn't as unconscionable as
many people consider it today, as that early developing fetus
was really just considered a part of the mother. And
(08:12):
so a lot of this early focus on abortion up
into the nineteenth century, as we'll get to, UH, focused
all on the health of the mother and what was
up to her, what she felt in terms of the
quickening oh my god, something something being left up to
a woman, a medical decision being left up to a woman.
And that's sort of the point of this whole discussion
of early abortion, which is that with this idea of
(08:33):
the quickening and waiting until the mother says, oh, like
I felt it, kick, I've got a baby in me now, hooray,
we're going to be parents. Um, it was it was
really up to the mother's judgment um, and then only
then would other people except that she had a pregnancy.
And in the cases that women discovered that they were pregnant,
(08:56):
that their men's sees had stopped. Uh. There were all sorts,
especially herbal abortifactions, that women might seek out to induce miscarriages,
and Kathleen London at Yale describes all sorts of these
folk remedies, such as in Germany, things like marjorom time
(09:18):
parsley in lavender in t form were used, and that
just sounds like a pleasant to be honest. And also
in Germany and in France they used the root of
worm fern, which was very pleasantly nicknamed prostitute root. And
that actually the stretch back to ancient Greece. So that's
something that had been in continual use since then. And
then in more modern times, if you if your garden
(09:41):
wasn't growing so well, you could always reach for some
turpentine or cast royal, or maybe quinine water in which
a rusty nail had been soaked. Cocktails or speaking of cocktails,
Carolina Gin one of your faiths, Gin with some iron fillings. Well,
speaking of cocktails, I mean yeah, winine and jin there
you go to Gin and tonic ataf of women were doing.
(10:05):
Oh lord, Now, Germany and France weren't the only places
that had folk remedies. Of course, women in America use
these remedies as well, things like seven or got rude
tansy or penny royalty. They also used rosemary and lavender,
slave women would turn to cotton root. But ps y'all,
penny royalty wasn't really a pleasant way to induce a miscarriage.
(10:28):
You might experience possibly fatal symptoms including tingling fingers, nausea, dizziness,
and strange burning sensations. Yeah, I mean, because essentially what
these women were trying to do was poison their body
into inducing a miscarriage. So these herbal abortivations weren't necessarily
(10:49):
the safest or healthiest routes. Um. But it wasn't just
about going out and plucking some houbs and making some
tea and muddling some things. Well to do. Ladies and
their gents might also procure so called female pills, which
were meant to induce miscarriages as well. And there was
(11:09):
a euphemism actually, um that is found in a lot
of women's like letters and diaries for taking these quote
unquote female pills, which they called taking the trade. Yeah,
And in a lot of sources that we were reading
about this, they talk about how if a euphemism exists
for something that that typically reveals both an openness and
(11:31):
acceptance about the fact that this is happening, that women
are controlling their own fertility, but also the need for secrecy.
So like this is happening and we're writing letters to
each other or writing in our diaries about it, but
we can't just say I'm getting rid of my pregnancy.
We've got to call it something. Well, they might just
call it going horseback riding. And of course there are
(11:52):
also so called like external aboardi facians with things like
heavy lifting, climbing trees, jumping, also douching with lie This
is when we get into the far more dangerous types
of self induced abortion, or of course knitting needles and
coat hangers being inserted into the vagina to try to
(12:12):
pierce the uterus. That just sounds horrific. All of that
sounds horrific. Um and not making it any easier though,
is the rise of morality around abortion and how it
affected laws in the UK and the US. Yeah, what
what I was genuinely surprised to learn was just how
(12:36):
chill we were legally in the United States and under
like English common law regarding pre quickening abortions. Like we said,
while it wasn't like morally solid gold, it was not
the end of the world either. So pre eighteen hundreds
in the US there were no laws against pre quickening abortions.
(12:57):
Those kinds of um sort of home making colonial guides
that women would have would include commonly recipes for those
herbal abortivations well, usually under the euphemism of bringing on
the men's sees. So, oh, your mensies has stopped, here's
what to take to bring it on. Restore that men's sees. Um.
(13:18):
And Protestants and Catholics were mostly fine with it too,
although Christianity considered it taboo unless in the case of
preserving the mother's health, and a lot of our sources
noted that even through the nineteenth century, many women didn't
consider abortion a sin. Probably helped buy things like the
euphemisms of you know, I'm just bringing back my men
(13:39):
sees or taking the trade. It's no big deal. And
speaking of English common law, though in eighteen o three,
the English decreed that a post quickening abortion was a
crime punishable by death, so that escalated quickly. Yeah, but
it wasn't so much about preserving the developing life of
that fetus, as a lot of our abortion debates, at
(14:01):
least in the United States, are focused on today. Those
first statutes in the UK and also in the United
States outlawing abortion. We're far more concerned with preserving mother's lives.
I mean, essentially, these were poison control methods. Yeah. And
what's confusing there for me though, is so they're worried
about you poisoning yourself, and if you try to poison yourself,
(14:22):
they'll put you to death. Okay, Yeah, that is kind
of a mixed message. But as we move into the
middle of the nineteenth century, particularly in the eighteen forties,
abortion starts to be a profitable business. You see more
and more advertisements by uh quote unquote drug companies, not
like we would think of them today obviously, but people
(14:43):
creating those female pills. We see midwives, and we see
people like a Madame Restell, who advertised her birth control
and abortion services. Yeah. So Madame Rossell was the pseudonym
of Abor Shonist and Lowman, who was later dub the
Wickedest Woman of New York. And she essentially set up
(15:10):
an abortion service where she would sell her infamous monthly
pills that you could order by mail or if you
would go in and see her, she would give you
these pills that would possibly induce a miscarriage. But then
she would also rely on clients coming back because they
wouldn't work, and she would administer abortions for twenty dollars
if you were poor, or hundred dollars if you were rich.
(15:32):
And she was so successful that she opened branch offices
in Boston, in Philadelphia. Yeah, she even had traveling salespeople
going door to door in different big cities selling her tonics. Um.
And of course you know all of these ads. Again,
they were all very euphemistic, selling her services and selling
(15:53):
her tonics and potions and things of that nature. And
not surprisingly, she did face a lot of criticism, probably
for her notoriety. She wasn't a midwife who kept to
herself in her own little cottage. I mean, this is
a woman who was so successful that she was buying
real estate. She had a huge property built in New
York City. She would wear furs and jewels, and people
(16:17):
were just disgusted by this ostentatious show of wealth, especially
because of how she earned her money. Um. But the
thing is, the criticisms that she faced sound pretty familiar
if you're a person alive today reading the news. She
was accused of praying on the naive and poor, of
threatening the institution of marriage of helping women shirk the
(16:38):
duties of motherhood and even encouraging prostitution, and basically her
response to this was like, I don't understand why you
people think that all of the women in your lives
are just waiting for the chance to be vicious and awful.
Like women don't sit around being like, you know, I'm
going to get pregnant so I can go get an abortion.
I just think that that sounds like a gray idea
(17:00):
or you know what, I'm pregnant and all of a sudden,
I'm just bored. I'm just gonna go get this taken
care of. She basically was like, listen, your women aren't
less virtuous because they do this, and how dare you
assume that any of them in such a vicious way
want to go do this. She also though, and this
is sort of a topic that we will revisit in
(17:22):
greater detail later, she asserted that doctors and politicians wanted
people like her out of the way so they could
make more money because around this time you start seeing
the professionalization of medicine, uh medicalized abortion happening, with more
surgical options, more professional obstetricians performing these procedures, and so
(17:45):
that kind of left abortion open mostly to the wealthy,
whereas poor women still relied on those potions that women
like Madam Ristel sold, those uterine tonics or cathartic pills
as they were sometimes called. Um. Yeah, it's fascinating to
see how this is the period when this becomes a
socio economic issue as well. And we should mention too
(18:09):
that the majority of Madame Russell's clients, and also a
majority of women who seek abortions today were married. These
women were married with kids. Um. But also during this
time in the mid eighteen hundreds, when Madame Ristel is
getting yourself arrested a couple of times, people are really
(18:31):
you know, calling her wicked and all of these things,
the abortion debate intensifies along with moralizing in the US.
So it's in the mid nineteenth century that Massachusetts enacts
the first state law making an abortion or attempted abortion
at any point in pregnancy a criminal offense and a
(18:51):
really comprehensive papor we found from Ohio State University also
notes how there is a distinctly American shift toward abortion
being reframed as a moral issue and as a sin
at this time, whereas you see over in Europe, the
abortion debate starts to shift more toward focusing on how
(19:11):
a lot of these women are just in dire straits
and they lack resources, so let's let the government step
in and do something about it, rather than this moralistic
tone that it takes across the pond, where women who
are seeking abortions are obviously immoral, possibly prostitutes, They're irresponsible,
(19:32):
and they are you know, essentially making God cry. And
just a few decades later, in the eighteen seventies, despite
the increase in moralizing, there are two hundred full time
abortionists in New York alone who have a pretty okay
collective safety rate of of performing these procedures or handing
(19:52):
out these tonics and having women uh survive. But you know,
we can't just leave the moralizing behind. This is also
the time in the eighteen seventies when we get Anthony
Comstock and the Comstock Laws. He's the worst. Yeah, he's
the worst, but he doesn't he sounds completely modern to me, Kristen,
I've got to say, reading about this guy, he sounds
(20:14):
absolutely like somebody you'd read about in the news today.
Tell me more. I will so. In eighteen seventy three, Comstock,
who is an anti sex trade and pornography crusader, helped
push a bill through Congress that defined contraceptive and contraception
information at all period as obscene, saying that they promoted
(20:35):
lust and lewdness. So a little bit of context within
the context. Within the context, the diaphragm had been invented
in Europe in eighteen forty two, and the full length
rubber condom in the US in eighteen sixty nine. So
Comstock was seeing ads for birth control for people like
Madam Rastell, for those tonics to bring on your men
(20:57):
sees and things like that, and he's like, oh, sto gross,
this is awful. Uh. And similarly, though, it's also worth
noting that Comstock was one of the many, many, many,
many many people who did not distinguish between birth control
and abortion. So in his mind, it was just as
bad to advertise your abortion services as it was birth
(21:20):
control services. And by birth control services, at this time,
we're talking exclusively about those barrier methods, right, Okay, So
thanks to all Comstock can all squeaked out over some advertisements. Uh,
The Comstock laws passed and it becomes illegal to send
birth control through the mail or across state line. So
(21:41):
all those care packages with condoms that I send you
every every month, Carol, I love it, balloon animals all day, Yes, good,
and send them. Although I guess it's not across state line,
so comp Stock approved, I can keep doing it. Um.
Twenty four states, though, soon passed their own versions of
Comstock laws, with New England states instituting the toughest ones,
(22:05):
which is interesting to me. I mean, I I think
nowadays of New England being fairly blue on the political spectrum,
but they were definitely cracking down on any type of
uh funny business so to speak, and either trying to
make up for lost time. But by abortion had been
criminalized across the US, except in cases to save a
(22:29):
mother's life. Meanwhile, English law had been amended so that
it could take place when quote done in good faith
for the purpose only of preserving the life of the mother.
So you already start to see in the nineteen twenties
Britain starting to back pedal a little bit in terms
(22:49):
of its abortion criminalization, whereas in the United States it
is just continuing to dig in its heels. But what
happened during this time, Caroline I mean, how did we
go from, you know, especially during this period in the
nineteenth century, from prequickening abortion being pretty much like a
(23:13):
way of life. You might not talk about it openly,
but you've got some euphemisms. It's just gonna probably happen
to the turn of the century when it's completely illegal.
So the whole irony of this time period is that
it's called the Progressive Era. That is the backdrop that
(23:34):
we're really going to dig into. Two add a little
bit more nuanced to better understand why abortion became criminalized
in the United States, because you might think, listening to
political arguments today that it was because, oh, we we
just decided that we wanted to preserve the lives of
(23:54):
these fetuses. We needed more babies. It's all about the
potential babies, right, But no, actually, when it comes to criminalization,
it's sort of all about the dudes. If we look
in the Progressive era and what's going on. And Leslie
Jay Reagan has been an outstanding resource on the history
(24:14):
of abortion in the United States, and in her paper
Linking Midwives and Abortion in the Progressive Era, she wrote,
and I quote, the combined campaign to control abortion and
midwiffery took the form of a classic progressive era reform movement.
A coalition of private interest groups, doctors, female reformers, nurses,
(24:36):
and journalists of the native born, white middle class identified
a problem, investigated and documented its extent in objective reports,
and mobilized to promote a state sponsored solution. So you
had a bunch of people going, we know better than you.
Listen to us, We're going to fix your live And
a lot of Reagan's research focuses around Chicago being an
(24:59):
ink cubator for anti midwiffery and therefore anti abortion sentiment.
There were all of these fears during the progressive era,
and Kristen and I have talked about this many times
on the podcast before, around women's sexuality versus their innocence,
particularly in these urban centers where more and more young
(25:20):
women were moving away from the farms and moving into
towns to make money, to make a living, living on
their own, maybe living in boarding houses with other single women,
but essentially you have this wave of urban working women
making everybody a little nervous. Uh. There were all of
these concerns that these women were or would be victims
(25:43):
of male lust, but also they were blamed for being
harlots for liking it. So there was this duality of
judgment on a lot of these urban women, many of
whom these progressive era reformers assumed, we're going and getting
abortion like every week. Um. And so these anxieties helped
(26:06):
give rise to the attitude of yeah, yeah, let's take
the powers and abilities away from midwives and give all
of those powers and abilities two doctors. And it's interesting
it was not just male doctors who were against midwives.
There were a lot of female doctors who were just
(26:27):
as likely to slam midwives. During this time, doctor Eliza
root In three blamed midwives for infections and inducing abortions,
but bt dubs. She also blamed improperly trained doctors in general,
saying they were just as bad. And this was presented
at a conference at a medical gathering, and the result
(26:50):
was essentially, and I'm grossly over generalizing, but the result
was basically a lot of doctors going, look over there,
midwives are evil, Like we're fine, we're gonna keep doing this.
We've got tools and medical degrees, like they're just low
class women with herbs, with herbs, and this idea of
quickening that was one of the big things that these
(27:13):
uh fancy professionalized doctors wanted to scientifically debunk was the
idea of quickening, because they said that it was just
an emotional experience that women would have and therefore couldn't
be trusted. So that gets those pre quickening abortion sort
of off the table. So all this was happening on
(27:35):
the heels of the newly formed American Medical Association, which
got together in eighteen fifty seven, and soon after all
these dude doctors got together and we're like, hey, let's
professionalize this whole medicine thing. Oh, by the way, let's
launch an anti abortion campaign and target these midwives and homeopaths,
(27:58):
whom they termed a regulars. And that was a term
irregulars that even the media picked up on, so they
would that lamestream media. So you have the other ring
effect of these midwives and homeo paths. And from eighteen
eighty to nineteen twenty, there was this massive debate really
(28:21):
all around the turn of the century over midwives, because
by this point, midwives were considered almost synonymous with abortions,
and one of the big pitches that these doctors had
for pooh pooing midwives. Was it okay, they're performing all
(28:42):
of this hocus pocus and all of the abortions, and
you know what they're doing. They are depleting the white race.
And now we get to the pivot of eugenics. Yeah,
Eugenics emerges in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century,
first in England and then in the US before being
(29:04):
exported to Nazi Germany. And it was the idea that
certain physical, mental, and moral traits were genetics. So it
was very important to these people, these people being everyone
from the American President to presidents of universities to politicians
to your average Joe on the street. Um, it was
important to them to weed out bad traits like poverty, promiscuity, criminality,
(29:28):
mental disability. And I want to go back in my
time machine and have a talk about privilege basically with
with this whole eugenics thing and assuming that things like
poverty are genetic rather than the product of generations of oppression.
But any who, I think it's interesting to me that
in the time when abortion is becoming illegal across this
(29:52):
country and people are saying it's immoral and awful, eugenicists
were pushing legislation for forced sterilization of the poor and disabled.
Tens of thousands of poor women in this country were sterilized.
The movement ends up peaking in the twenties and thirties,
but it carries through and it's not until you know,
(30:13):
like after World War Two, the people are like, oh,
that Hitler guy kind of ruined that for us. But
I find it interesting that you can be against abortion
but for for sterilization of innocent women. And this goes
to what's also happening at the time, this white fright
that's a foot where these social scientists who are stoking
(30:33):
nationalistic and racist concerns over declining white birthrates and rising
immigrant populations. I mean, even Theodore Roosevelt in said women
of good stock who refused to have children were race criminals. Yeah,
there was an attitude that it was a sign of
(30:54):
moral disease if you chose to limit your family, and
that we need a growing population of healthy white workers essentially,
and the best way for that to happen is to
make sure that women can't go to these midwives and
get abortions or ABORTI factions. And part of that had
(31:16):
to do with how uh doctors in the professionalization of
medicine and obstetrics attempted to scientifically debunk midwiffery and also
establish the hospital rather than the home, as the place
where birth and any kind of a maternal related care
(31:39):
should take place. Yeah, and Reagan writes about this as
allowing doctors to adjudicate the legality of abortions. That's a
lot of words, but it essentially is talking about how
doctors and state politicians start working together to make sure
that women can only get abortions in hospitals, but then
only in the case of life threatening emergencies. But like
(32:02):
we mentioned earlier, what does this do. This essentially only
leaves the wiggle room for wealthier women to be able
to continue to access abortion. Yeah, they would be called
therapeutic abortions, and so some doctors would declare morning sickness
as reason enough to have a therapeutic abortion. So now
(32:24):
we have this, you know, abortion still existing, but something
that's really only accessible for the wealthiest women. And we
have so many layers going on so far, so we
have some racism of foot and some eugenics going on,
we have the professionalization of medicine and obstetrics. We we
have women being shoved at the side, basically being told
(32:47):
that their feelings about physical and emotional feelings about the
quickening are total bunk. We have concern about the women's
movement of foot and men having to be held to
a new sexual standard. And then of course we have religion.
We got some religion in the background not helping things
out either. In eighteen sixty nine, Pope Pious the Ninth
(33:09):
declared embryos human beings with us all at the time
of conception and declares that abortions lead to excommunication, and
then in a papal decree condemned therapeutic abortions as well. Yeah,
so no abortions under any circumstances at all in the
(33:30):
view of the Catholic Church. So it's thanks to this
combination of all of this factors that Christian was just
mentioning that led to abortion being redefined almost completely as immoral,
though it was still common. I mean, it's not like
it went away, and that's something that we need to
re emphasize, like abortion has never stopped. People will always
(33:52):
seek abortion. And it also didn't necessarily mean that women
felt yet a moral obligation to carry a pregnancy to
turn despite the fact that women, midwives, female doctors, you
name it, they were all under these basically character attacks
from so many male doctors who are essentially mounting a
backlash against, like Kristen said, the women's movement, against women
(34:16):
having power of any kind, against women relying on any
self knowledge of their bodies and their pregnancies and being
able to say what's what. And that's where we get
a lot of the modern argument that the professionalization of
medicine is anti feminist. That's where a lot of that
argument stems from, that women were no longer allowed a
(34:39):
voice in their own bodies, in their own healthcare well.
And it's such a stark example not only of the
professionalization of medicine and the impact that can have on
women's lives, but also the politicization of medicine as well, because,
as Leslie Reagan underscores, there couldn't be this oh like
(35:00):
huge impact of abortion ultimately being criminalized if you didn't
have alliances between doctors and the state, to the point
that you have judges like Chicago judge John P. Mcgourty
ruling in nineteen fifteen that a woman who would destroy
life in that manner a k and abortion is not
(35:23):
fit for decent society. So, I mean, you just have
all of these forces at work. I mean, it's it's
almost the perfect, most imperfect storm in the mid to
late nineteenth century that ended up criminalizing something that used
to very much be a way of life in the
(35:46):
days of the Founding Fathers. Yeah, and so by this point,
not only is abortion illegal, but the women who seek
them are officially breaking the law. Their immoral and their irresponsible.
And it's almost comedic if it weren't so sad that
men are lacking from this conversation, not in terms of
(36:08):
who's legislating things, obviously that's the dudes in this scenario,
but the men who are getting these women pregnant. Um.
But that just goes back to the whole discussion of
so many women in this era who were seeking abortions
were not necessarily the prostitutes that everyone was so worried
about on the street corners of Chicago, but rather mothers
(36:31):
who were already having so many children and whose bodies
were becoming destroyed, and who didn't have enough money to
feed these children that they were having. These are the
women who were more likely seeking these procedures, and so
as a result of making abortion illegal and of labeling
women who seek them as immoral and irresponsible. You have
(36:55):
so many women, especially poor women of color, going to
deadly links to obtain abortions, especially if they did not
have much money. And this really sets us up for
our next episode where we're going to lead you through
the conversation of how essentially UH women tried to help
other women achieve abortions achieve birth control, and that would
(37:18):
then lead us to the Row versus Way decision in
and in the meantime, of course, we want to hear
from you. What are your thoughts on abortion history, and
especially if you live outside the United States, what do
you know about your own countries abortion history. Mom's Stuff
(37:38):
at how stuff works dot com is our email address.
You can also tweet us at Mom's Stuff podcast or
messages on Facebook, and we've got a couple of messages
to share with you right now. Well, I have a
letter here from Abby about our Gilmore Girls episode. She says, Hello, ladies,
(37:59):
I'm nineteen and I grew up watching Gilmore Girls with
my mom and sister. We started watching at the very
beginning when I was about four, and since then we've
been watching and rewatching all of the episodes. At this point,
I think I've seen all of them at least five times.
There's something that's always been special about watching this tight
knit mom and daughter show with my mom and sister,
and we've assigned characters to just about all of our friends.
(38:21):
My mom is missus Kim, my sister is a mix
of Rory in Paris and I'm Laine. I loved hearing
you guys talk about something so near and dear to
my heart that's made me laugh and cry and everything
in between. Since it's been on Netflix, I've gotten the
chance to watch it with friends and argue about which
of Rory's boyfriend's is the best. The answer is none
of them, which is really amazing as well, especially when
it's their first time funny story too. There's a little
(38:43):
place in the tiny town where I went to college
called Luke's Joint that serves breakfast. I spent a few
homesick lunches eating breakfast there, which always helped, especially since
the owner was kind of grumpy like Luke Danes's. I'm
really looking forward to watching the reboot with my mom
and sister. We've already planned to watch it together no
matter where we end up in twenty sev and probably
watch all of the episodes again. Thanks for an amazing show.
(39:05):
Thank you, Abby, and I've got to let her here
from Amy. Also about our Gilmore Girls episode, she writes,
I watched the show since the beginning of season one,
and I loved it because it's very sweet, fun and funny.
I loved that Rory loved to read, although I certainly
didn't have a dean thinking my love of reading was sexy.
I have some points I wanted to make based on
(39:26):
whether or not the show is feminist, the amount of
minorities representative, etcetera. I'm also a big fan of Gilmore Guys,
and I'm listening to the latest episode as I type this.
It is a feminist show, and here are some examples. First,
Laura Lae names Rory after herself, and Roy uses Laura's
last name, not her father's last name. Two, lots of
women run businesses. The independence in the dragonfly In and
(39:48):
even the town Mechanic are all women. Miss Patty is
strongly independent, as is Paris three. Rory is more renowned
for her brain than just want anything else. Yes, Liddell
is attractive, but Dean likes her her smarts and whip.
That really is cool. Second, the show really does show
a wide range of people in types. Maybe I'm wrong,
but isn't Michelle a person of color? He was one
(40:10):
of the main characters on the show, and they mentioned
him being French and don't focus on this color. But
I always thought of him as a person of color.
To Lane, another major character that is way more than
the Asian girl. Yes, her mother has some quirks, but
if they were going for stereotypes, she would have been
super brainy like Rory, very good at math and shine, quiet,
and maybe good at the piano. Three look at the town.
(40:31):
Suki is a larger woman, but look at her. She's
not a fat chick obsessed with losing weight, being the
loser who doesn't have a boyfriend. She's the one who,
in my opinion, has the most solid relationship with a
man in the entire series. She's school, pretty funny, and
super talented. Miss Patty also not then was super sexy.
So yes, I've spent long periods of time thinking about
all these things. I love the show, and I feel
(40:53):
if they try to show in a bunch of types
just to fill of quota, it wouldn't have read as real,
So thanks me and thanks to everybody who's written into us.
Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com is our
email address and for links to all of our social
media as well as all of our blogs, videos, and
podcasts with our sources. So you can read more about
(41:13):
the history of abortion. Head on over to stuff mom
Never Told You dot com for moralness and thousands of
other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com
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