The History Behind Arizona’s 160-Year-Old Abortion Ban

The state’s Supreme Court ruled that the 1864 law is enforceable today. Here is what led to its enactment.

By Pam Belluck
April 10, 2024

The 160-year-old Arizona abortion ban that was upheld on Tuesday by the state’s highest court was among a wave of anti-abortion laws propelled by some historical twists and turns that might seem surprising.

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.

Unlocked: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/10/health/arizona-abortion-ban-history.html

The Abortion Provider Who Became the Most Hated Woman in New York

In nineteenth-century New York, abortion was shrouded in secrecy and stigma. But, for Madame Restell, there was no such thing as bad press.

By Moira Donegan
January 17, 2024

She chose the name because it sounded French. When she took out her first newspaper ad, in 1839, she wanted to cultivate an air of mystery and sophistication. In time, her pseudonym, Madame Restell, would be furnished with a backstory for the women who arrived at her office door. The Madame, they were told, had been trained in Europe, at the continent’s famous lying-in maternity hospitals. She’d been taught by her grandmother, a French midwife, and her “preventative powders” had been used in Europe for decades.

None of it was true. The woman her clients knew as Madame Restell had been born Ann Trow, in rural England, grown up in poverty, and never received any formal medical training. But these origins were supposed to be comfortingly credentialled to Restell’s customers, the women who made her into one of the wealthiest—and most notorious—businesswomen in New York City. They came to her seeking abortions.

Continued: https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/the-abortion-provider-who-became-the-most-hated-woman-in-new-york

Opinion: Madame Restell, and the history of abortion in America

By JONATHAN P. BAIRD
July 10, 2023

Last year, as we watched the U.S. Supreme Court destroy reproductive freedom for women, more attention was paid to the outcome of the Dobbs abortion case than the Court’s reasoning and justification. Justice Samuel Alito, Dobbs author, relied heavily on history in supporting his opinion.

What happened in earlier American history is contested terrain. I would submit that Justice Alito got his history very wrong. He argued that abortion was not deeply rooted in U.S. history and traditions. Alito wrote, “…an unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment persisted from the earliest days of the common law until 1973.”

Continued: https://www.concordmonitor.com/My-Turn-Abortion-history-Madame-Restell-and-the-revival-of-Comstockery-51539521

10.07.2023

American Historical Association

American Medical Association

New York State Society for the Suppression of Vice

quickening

Samuel Alito

When It Comes To Abortion Rights, Canada Can’t Save You

As long as Americans are fighting, again, for their right to choose, they should fight for better than what we have in Canada. Trust me.

by CARLA CICCONE
Oct. 27, 2022

When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suggested that Americans are welcome to use the Canadian health care system, and the abortions it provides, I scoffed.

Offering the Canadian health care system to American abortion seekers is a nice sentiment from someone whose country decriminalized abortion in 1988, but the reality is that much of Canadian health care is currently in shambles. As a Canadian woman who has covered the issue, and experienced it personally, I know that abortion care in this country is uneven at best.

Continued: https://www.romper.com/life/midwives-abortion-roe-canada-america

What Did the Suffragists Really Think About Abortion?

Contrary to contemporary claims, Susan B. Anthony and her peers rarely discussed abortion, which only emerged as a key political issue in the 1960s

Treva B. Lindsey
May 26, 2022

In July 1869, an anonymously authored article appeared in the Revolution, a weekly newspaper run by suffragists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Titled “Marriage and Maternity,” the essay deemed abortion a “horrible crime of child-murder,” albeit one practiced not out of malice, but desperation, “by those whose inmost souls revolt against the dreadful deed, and in whose hearts the maternal feeling is pure and undying.”

Signed only with the letter “A,” the article has long been used by anti-abortion advocates as proof of Anthony’s anti-abortion views and of a broader throughline within feminist thought and activism. This claim, however, ignores two key facts: first, that substantial evidence points to the author not even being Anthony, and second, that the essay argues against the criminalization of abortion, calling for “prevention, not merely punishment.”

Continued: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-did-the-suffragists-really-think-about-abortion-180980124/

USA – Women Have Always Had Abortions

Women Have Always Had Abortions

By Lauren MacIvor Thompson
Dec. 13, 2019

Over the course of American history, women of all classes, races, ages and statuses have ended their pregnancies, both before there were any laws about abortion and after a raft of 19th-century laws restricted it. Our ignorance of this history, however, equips those in the anti-abortion movement with the power to create dangerous narratives. They peddle myths about the past where wayward women sought abortions out of desperation, pathetic victims of predatory abortionists. They wrongly argue that we have long thought about fetuses as people with rights. And they improperly frame Roe v. Wade as an anomaly, saying it liberalized a practice that Americans had always opposed.

But the historical record shows a far different set of conclusions.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/13/opinion/sunday/abortion-history-women.html

Contraceptive Knowledge in the Mid-19th-Century United States

Contraceptive Knowledge in the Mid-19th-Century United States

December 5, 2019

Circulating Now welcomes guest blogger Donna J. Drucker, MLS, PhD, Senior Advisor, English as the Language of Instruction at Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany. Here, Dr. Drucker explores the changing availability of knowledge about contraception.

What do pennyroyal, fish skins, horse riding, and ergot of rye have in common? They are all contraceptive methods that have been used for centuries. In preliterate societies, information on regulating pregnancy was likely passed down orally from one generation of women to the next as they helped each other with pregnancies, births, and child spacing. In the mid-nineteenth-century US, however, more and more women were literate and information was more securely captured in print. Examining three mid-nineteenth century medical guides, available online and searchable in the NLM Digital Collections, shows the range of information available to those who could access and read books.

Continued: https://circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov/2019/12/05/contraceptive-knowledge-in-the-mid-19th-century-united-states/

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