USA – ‘Good Genes,’ Anti-Abortion Laws, Declining Birth Rates, and What They Have in Common

Liz Parker, Common Dreams
Oct 12, 2025

… in America, promoting good genes and limiting access to birth control and abortion are inextricably tied by two threads: white supremacy and the patriarchy. And they have been for more than 150 years—ever since the first time abortion was criminalized in America in the late 1800s.

In the words of Leslie Reagan (author of When Abortion Was a Crime): “White male patriotism demanded that maternity be enforced among Protestant women.”

Continued: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/anti-abortion-history-us

12.10.2025

Commentary

American Medical Association

When Abortion Was a Crime

Herbal Abortion Is Making a Comeback. So Are the Dangers.

Since the Supreme Court gutted Roe, interest in old folk methods of terminating pregnancies has spiked. But the health and legal risks involved with these treatments are stark.

Julia Sonenshein
September 9, 2025

Though not particularly common in most herb gardens these days, rue can add a bit of bitter and bring balance to a dish gone too sweet or salty. Pennyroyal looks like mint and has a similar, zingy taste. Mugwort is tart. Tansy flowers into perfect yellow buds. Parsley is likely in your refrigerator right now, wilting a bit in your crisper drawer.

These herbs—along with a host of other foods, drinks, and cooking utensils—have all been used as abortifacients, or substances that terminate pregnancies, and have played a role in virtually every region of the world. Their usage has varied depending on the culture, political climate, concepts of gender, influence of faith, or power of the state. In many cases, they were used on this land before the formation of the United States, and they’ve been part of U.S. history since the early colonies.

Continued: https://newrepublic.com/article/198841/herbal-abortion-revival-dobbs-health

Abortion in America: How access and attitudes have changed through the centuries

by: Eliza Siegel, Stacker
Jul 28, 2023

The Postal Service can legally deliver abortion medications in the U.S.—including to states with abortion restrictions or bans—according to a Justice Department decision posted online late Jan. 3. The Postal Service requested that the Justice Department provide guidance on this issue a week after the Supreme Court’s conservative majority voted to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision in June 2022. That ruling, which sparked intense debate across the U.S., led to abortion restrictions and bans in many states.

In its decision, the Justice Department ruled that sending, delivering, and receiving abortion drugs by mail is not in violation of the 1873 Comstock Act —which aimed to prevent morally “corrupt” items from being delivered by mail—because there is no way to determine that the intent of the recipient is to commit an unlawful act. There are also no federal restrictions on the drugs in question.

Continued: https://www.ksnt.com/news/abortion-in-america-how-access-and-attitudes-have-changed-through-the-centuries/

USA – The Coming Rise of Abortion as a Crime

In places where abortion is now illegal, a range of pregnancy losses could be subject to state scrutiny.
By Melissa Jeltsen
JULY 1, 2022

Before last week, women attempting to have their pregnancies terminated in states hostile to abortion rights already faced a litany of obstacles: lengthy drives, waiting periods, mandated counseling, throngs of volatile protesters. Now they face a new reality. Although much is still unknown about how abortion bans will be enforced, we have arrived at a time when abortions—and even other pregnancy losses—might be investigated as potential crimes. In many states across post-Roe America, expect to see women treated like criminals.

On Friday, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending abortion as a constitutional right. Nearly half of U.S. states either are in the process of implementing trigger bans—which were set up to outlaw abortions quickly after Roe was overturned—or seem likely to soon severely curtail abortion access. Reproductive-rights experts told me that in the near future, they expect to see more criminal investigations and arrests of women who induce their own abortions, as well as those who lose pregnancies through miscarriage and stillbirth.

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/07/roe-illegal-abortions-pregnancy-termination-state-crime/661420/

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/

The Future of Abortions in America. An access map.

by Irin Carmon, Maps by Marcus Peabody
May 23, 2022

The legal right to abortion is likely to disappear in half the country in a matter of weeks. Abortion itself, and the need for it, will not, and never has. The question is what it will cost medically, financially — and criminally.

In his leaked draft opinion demolishing Roe v. Wade, expected to be finalized in June, Justice Samuel Alito said abortion’s legality is not “deeply rooted in the nation’s history and traditions.” Abortion’s reality unquestionably is. “The historical record clearly shows that generations of women desired and needed abortions, and neither law nor church nor taboo could stop them,” Leslie Reagan writes in her definitive history, When Abortion Was a Crime. She quotes a doctor’s letter from 1888: “I am sure there is no comparison between the number of abortions committed by doctors and the number committed by women themselves,” he wrote. “They talk about such matters commonly and impart information unsparingly.”

Continued: https://www.thecut.com/article/future-abortion-access-map.html

She was out in front of the fight to legalize abortion, but few know her name

October 11, 2021
Sarah Handel, Ailsa Chang, Matt Ozug
NPR - 16-Minute Podcast, with Transcript

Abortion-rights activist Patricia Maginnis died earlier this year at age 93. She's a lesser-known figure in the movement, but her ideas — which started as fringe — became mainstream.

AILSA CHANG, HOST:
There was a time in most places in this country where if you got an abortion,
you could face interrogation by police, which meant decades ago, the vast
majority of people seeking abortions in the U.S. had to go underground for a
doctor or secretly perform the procedure on themselves or simply leave the
country.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2021/10/11/1045084662/she-was-out-in-front-of-the-fight-to-legalize-abortion-but-few-know-her-name

11.10.2021

When Abortion Was a Crime

Linking Voter Suppression and Abortion Restrictions: “If We Lose Voting Rights, We Lose Women’s Rights”

A combination of legal restrictions on voting and abortion, physical violence and intimidation tactics have emerged again during a time of renewed challenges to white male supremacy.

5/7/2021
by CARRIE N. BAKER

In the first four months of 2021, Republican lawmakers introduced over 360 bills to restrict voting rights and 536 bills to restrict abortion rights. The defeat of Donald Trump, and Biden’s attempts to dismantle Trump’s white supremacist agenda, have inspired a fevered campaign by state-level Republican lawmakers of voter suppression and abortion restrictions. While at first glance these efforts might appear to be unrelated, they are deeply connected, says Smith College professor Loretta Ross.

“The right-wing has an intersectional agenda. Their whole plan is to maintain a white majority by whatever means possible. So that requires them to try to socially engineer white women into having more babies and to restrict voting rights and immigrant rights,” Ross told Ms.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2021/05/07/voter-suppression-abortion-restrictions-womens-rights/

A World Without Legal Abortion: How Activists Envision A ‘Post-Roe’ Nation

October 27, 2020
Sarah McCammon

Judge Amy Coney Barrett's Supreme Court confirmation could open the door to a world that many anti-abortion-rights activists have been envisioning for decades.

"I hope and pray that we will be in a world post-Roe v. Wade," said Carrie Murray Nellis, 41, an adoption attorney based in Georgia.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2020/10/27/927862869/a-world-without-legal-abortion-how-activists-envision-a-post-roe-nation