The state fighting to dismantle abortion rights has a long history of permissive abortion laws

by Isabelle Taft
June 8, 2022

When Mississippi asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, it argued that a long tradition of state restrictions on abortion in the U.S. “defeats any claim of a deeply rooted right” to an abortion.

Yet for all but 21 of its 156 years as a state prior to Roe, Mississippi law technically permitted abortion for any reason until about 16 weeks of pregnancy.

Continued: https://mississippitoday.org/2022/06/08/mississippi-abortion-history/


What The History Of Back-Alley Abortions Can Teach Us About A Future Without Roe

By Maggie Koerth
JUN. 2, 2022

A metal coat hanger can’t speak, but it can send a message. Long a symbol of the dangers faced by people seeking to end pregnancies in the years before Roe v. Wade, coat hangers stand in for a whole inventory of physical horrors, most of which never involved coat hangers, specifically. Over the past few weeks, protesters have mailed hangers to the Supreme Court in an effort to evoke that past era — from the so-called back-alley butchers who botched surgical procedures and sexually harassed patients, to the terrible lengths individuals went through to give themselves an abortion at home. The message is simple and brutal: Without safe and legal abortion, the protesters believe, people will die.

Continued: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-the-history-of-back-alley-abortions-can-teach-us-about-a-future-without-roe/


What will US’s future look like if abortion becomes a crime again?

As Roe v Wade faces a direct challenge, criminal defense attorneys, prosecutors, local judges and cops begin to lay out what it would look like to criminalize abortion

by Jessica Glenza, Graphics by Zala Šeško
Mon 29 Nov 2021

In the early 1970s, law enforcement leaders in Chicago decided the practice of illegal abortion was intolerable in their city and, in a mostly forgotten chapter of history, undertook a campaign to root out those who performed the procedure in secret.

On a tip, police turned their attention to “Call Jane”, a feminist collective of young women who, since 1965, had provided safe but illegal abortions to roughly 3,000 Chicagoans per year. The collective was raided after two Catholic women told police their sister-in-law planned to have an abortion performed by the group.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/29/us-abortion-supreme-court-roe-v-wade


The Criminalization of Abortion Began as a Business Tactic

The Criminalization of Abortion Began as a Business Tactic
By Erin Blakemore // January 22, 2018

If you opened up the Leavenworth Times, a Kansas newspaper, in the 1850s, you’d see an ad for Sir James Clarke’s Female Pills. These pills, the advertiser bragged, were ideal for bringing on women’s periods—and were “particularly suited to married ladies.”

Then there was Madame Costello, a “female physician” who took out an ad in the New York Herald in the 1840s. She advertised to women “who wish to be treated for obstruction of the monthly period.”

Continued: http://www.history.com/news/the-criminalization-of-abortion-began-as-a-business-tactic


Before Zika: The virus that helped legalize abortion in the US

CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/09/health/rubella-abortion-zika/

By Jessica Ravitz, CNN

Updated 6:13 PM ET, Tue August 9, 2016

Story highlights:

More than 50 years before Zika hit the US, the rubella virus affected pregnancies
The rubella, or German measles, epidemic helped legalize abortion in the US

(CNN) More than half a century before the Zika virus grabbed international headlines and photos of newborns with abnormally small heads were splashed across our screens, a different outbreak that affected pregnancies fueled change in the United States.
It was an epidemic that predated the birth of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who made waves this weekend when he said pregnant women infected with the Zika virus should not have the right to an abortion, even if there's a significant chance their babies will be born with microcephaly.

It was an epidemic that helped legalize abortion, the very right Rubio fights against.

[Continued at link]
Source: CNN.com