This month, The world knows that the US Supreme Court intends to strike Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case defended legal abortion in the US. In a draft majority opinion leaked to PoliticoJustice Samuel Alito argues that Roe had to be overturned in part because the Constitution made no mention of abortion (correct: 55 delegates wrote it did not mention termination of pregnancy, nor any other specific medical procedure, for for that matter, birth) and also because, contrary to Roe, Alito stated that abortion was not previously considered a right in the United States. “Until the late 20th century, such a right was completely unknown in US law,” Alito wrote. This is wrong. While the opinion is far from final, having this fundamentally false assertion even included in the draft is a counter sign that the Supreme Court needs a remedial history lesson.
“Abortion is not always a crime. Throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, abortion in early pregnancy was legal under common law,” historian Leslie J. Reagan wrote in her 1996 book. When Abortion Is a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867-1973. While abortion has indeed been outlawed for a long time in American history, this criminalization took place nearly 80 years after the Constitution was written. The wife of someone who shares the Reconstruction period may find it difficult to obtain a legal abortion; Meanwhile, the Founding Father’s mistress could receive a child during early pregnancy without state punishment.
When abortion is a crime is an essential scholarship tracing the social movement to ban abortion and punish doctors, midwives, and patients. Drawing on public records and archival research into how abortion laws are created, enforced, and circumvented in the Chicagoland area, Reagan documents changing attitudes and beliefs about autonomy. The body as well as the beginning of life affects pregnant women and the health care workers trying to help them. While much of the book, as its title suggests, focuses on the century when abortion was banned in the United States, it also provides a thorough summary of the customs and policies of termination. before being banned. “Abortion is illegal only after the ‘birth’, the time when a pregnant woman can feel the baby’s movements (around the fourth month of pregnancy). The common law view of pregnancy and abortion is based on an understanding of pregnancy and human development as a process rather than an absolute moment,” wrote Reagan.
Then, as now, the vast majority of abortions occurred before “quickly,” and so were largely legal, popularly considered a matter of bringing about menstruation, or “restoring menstruation.” ” As Reagan points out, pharmacists routinely sell brand-name abortion pills to their customers during this time, and “restore menstruation” is not a particularly divisive topic.
At this point, reading Reagan about life during the abortion ban can feel more like reading speculative fiction than historical fact, as her chronicle increasingly resembles a glimpse. past to the future. As When abortion is a crime As explained, the original American anti-abortion movement took place in the mid-1800s, which led to a series of laws banning abortion in the 1860s-1880s. Reagan outlines how activist physician Horatio R. Storer campaigned against abortion using white ideas, arguing that abortion of white infants would result in the American white population being decimated. replaced by other races. “The hostility towards immigrants, Catholics and people of color has fueled this campaign to criminalize abortion,” Regan wrote. “White male patriotism demands the enforcement of maternity leave for white Protestants.” Storer has shaken many medical institutions with this argument. (Today, his xenophobic tone sounds depressingly familiar — In essence, Storer is a propagandist ahead of his time for “Theory of substitution“Currently embraced by American rights.) This Storer-led era of prohibition has not prevented abortions but has made them more dangerous.
The American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians have submitted a concise amicus to the Supreme Court to explain this historical background in September. The summary cites Reagan among dozens of other sources, as she is not the only scholar to make a clear and unequivocal point that abortion is not always a crime. Historian James C. Mohr .’s 1978 book Abortion in America: Origins and Developments of National Policy, 1800-1900 opens with the following lines: “In 1800, no jurisdiction in the United States enacted any statutes on the subject of abortion; Most forms of abortion are not illegal, and American women who want an abortion have already done so. “
