04-11-2024, 05:16 PM
An interesting article regarding the Arizona abortion law that was instituted in the 1800's.
From the New York Times: The History Behind Arizona’s 160-Year-Old Abortion Ban
It contains some elements which are very revealing about how the abortion issue first developed in the US. As well as some indications that resistance to it came from the medical community itself...
For decades after the United States became a nation, abortion was legal until fetal movement could be felt, usually well into the second trimester. Movement, known as quickening, was the threshold because, in a time before pregnancy tests or ultrasounds, it was the clearest sign that a woman was pregnant.
Before that point, “women could try to obtain an abortion without having to fear that it was illegal,” said Johanna Schoen, a professor of history at Rutgers University. After quickening, abortion providers could be charged with a misdemeanor.
“I don’t think it was particularly stigmatized,” Dr. Schoen said. “I think what was stigmatized was maybe this idea that you were having sex outside of marriage, but of course, married women also ended their pregnancies.”
The truth is that for centuries, women in need of an abortion did not turn to "medical expertise" but rather tried and true folk-medicine. Often these remedies were promulgated by midwives and other community assets who specialized in help women with their specific problems. And as we progressed in our scientific and technological understanding, the claim to expertise was more or less monopolized by those who were trained in universities and members of associations that proclaimed their cloister to be those who were 'recognized' as doctors of medicine (mostly men.)
Back in those days, the term "quickening" was dubbed for describing the point during pregnancy where a gestating baby can be felt to move (usually in the second trimester.) Before then, women honestly could not be absolutely certain they were pregnant.
By the 1840s, there were some high-profile trials in cases where women who had or sought abortions became very ill or died. Some cases involved a British-born midwife, Ann Trow Summers Lohman, known as Madame Restell, who provided herbal pills and other abortion services in New York, which passed a law under which providers could be charged with manslaughter for abortions after quickening and providers and patients could be charged with misdemeanors for abortions before quickening.
The picture this account paints is kind of regrettable... but those were different people, in different times...
After the American Medical Association, which would eventually become the largest doctors’ organization in the country, formed in 1847, its members — all male and white at that time — sought to curtail medical activities by midwives and other nondoctors, most of whom were women. Pregnancy termination methods were often provided by people in those vocations, and historians say that was one reason for the association’s desire to ban abortion.
A campaign that became known as the Physicians’ Crusade Against Abortion began in 1857 to urge states to pass anti-abortion laws. Its leader, Dr. Horatio Robinson Storer, wrote a paper against abortion that was officially adopted by the A.M.A. and later published as a book titled “On Criminal Abortion in America.”
Later, the association published “Why Not? A Book for Every Woman,” also written by Dr. Storer, which said that abortion was immoral and criminal and argued that married women had a moral and societal obligation to have children.
Dr. Storer promoted an argument that life began at conception.
“He creates a kind of moral high ground bandwagon, and he does that for a bunch of reasons that make it appealing,” Dr. Fissell said. In one sense, the argument coincided with the emerging medical understanding of embryology that characterized pregnancy as a continuum of development and did not consider quickening to be its defining stage.
There were also social and cultural forces and prejudices at play. Women were beginning to press for more independence, and the male-dominated medical establishment believed “women need to be home having babies,” Dr. Fissell said.
Racism and anti-immigrant attitudes in the second half of the 19th century began fueling support of eugenics. Several historians have said that these undercurrents were partially behind the anti-abortion campaign that Dr. Storer led.
“People like Storer were very worried that the wrong Americans were reproducing, and that the nice white Anglo-Saxon ones were having abortions and not having enough children,” Dr. Fissell said.
I found this to be a relevant bit of information to add to the discussion... I hope you do too.
From the New York Times: The History Behind Arizona’s 160-Year-Old Abortion Ban
It contains some elements which are very revealing about how the abortion issue first developed in the US. As well as some indications that resistance to it came from the medical community itself...
For decades after the United States became a nation, abortion was legal until fetal movement could be felt, usually well into the second trimester. Movement, known as quickening, was the threshold because, in a time before pregnancy tests or ultrasounds, it was the clearest sign that a woman was pregnant.
Before that point, “women could try to obtain an abortion without having to fear that it was illegal,” said Johanna Schoen, a professor of history at Rutgers University. After quickening, abortion providers could be charged with a misdemeanor.
“I don’t think it was particularly stigmatized,” Dr. Schoen said. “I think what was stigmatized was maybe this idea that you were having sex outside of marriage, but of course, married women also ended their pregnancies.”
The truth is that for centuries, women in need of an abortion did not turn to "medical expertise" but rather tried and true folk-medicine. Often these remedies were promulgated by midwives and other community assets who specialized in help women with their specific problems. And as we progressed in our scientific and technological understanding, the claim to expertise was more or less monopolized by those who were trained in universities and members of associations that proclaimed their cloister to be those who were 'recognized' as doctors of medicine (mostly men.)
Back in those days, the term "quickening" was dubbed for describing the point during pregnancy where a gestating baby can be felt to move (usually in the second trimester.) Before then, women honestly could not be absolutely certain they were pregnant.
By the 1840s, there were some high-profile trials in cases where women who had or sought abortions became very ill or died. Some cases involved a British-born midwife, Ann Trow Summers Lohman, known as Madame Restell, who provided herbal pills and other abortion services in New York, which passed a law under which providers could be charged with manslaughter for abortions after quickening and providers and patients could be charged with misdemeanors for abortions before quickening.
The picture this account paints is kind of regrettable... but those were different people, in different times...
After the American Medical Association, which would eventually become the largest doctors’ organization in the country, formed in 1847, its members — all male and white at that time — sought to curtail medical activities by midwives and other nondoctors, most of whom were women. Pregnancy termination methods were often provided by people in those vocations, and historians say that was one reason for the association’s desire to ban abortion.
A campaign that became known as the Physicians’ Crusade Against Abortion began in 1857 to urge states to pass anti-abortion laws. Its leader, Dr. Horatio Robinson Storer, wrote a paper against abortion that was officially adopted by the A.M.A. and later published as a book titled “On Criminal Abortion in America.”
Later, the association published “Why Not? A Book for Every Woman,” also written by Dr. Storer, which said that abortion was immoral and criminal and argued that married women had a moral and societal obligation to have children.
Dr. Storer promoted an argument that life began at conception.
“He creates a kind of moral high ground bandwagon, and he does that for a bunch of reasons that make it appealing,” Dr. Fissell said. In one sense, the argument coincided with the emerging medical understanding of embryology that characterized pregnancy as a continuum of development and did not consider quickening to be its defining stage.
There were also social and cultural forces and prejudices at play. Women were beginning to press for more independence, and the male-dominated medical establishment believed “women need to be home having babies,” Dr. Fissell said.
Racism and anti-immigrant attitudes in the second half of the 19th century began fueling support of eugenics. Several historians have said that these undercurrents were partially behind the anti-abortion campaign that Dr. Storer led.
“People like Storer were very worried that the wrong Americans were reproducing, and that the nice white Anglo-Saxon ones were having abortions and not having enough children,” Dr. Fissell said.
I found this to be a relevant bit of information to add to the discussion... I hope you do too.
