Abortion
History of Abortion in the U.S.
Abortion has been used to control fertility in every society we know about, regardless of its legality. It was practiced legally in the United States until about 1880, by which time most states had banned it except to save the life of the woman. Anti-abortion legislation was part of a backlash to the growing movements for suffrage and birth control--an effort to control women and confine them to their traditional childbearing role.17 It was also a way for the medical profession to tighten its control over women’s health care.18 Midwives, who performed abortions, were a threat to the male medical establishment. Finally, with the declining birth rate among whites in the late 1800s, the U.S. government and the eugenics movement were concerned about “race suicide” and wanted white U.S.-born women to reproduce. More than most other medical procedures, abortion is linked to women’s status and political power, as well as to the population objectives of the society.
When Abortion Was a Crime
| I had an illegal abortion, which led to infection, and I was close to death. I ended up in a legal hospital with a real doctor who managed to pull me through. Thank god the pregnancy was terminated. All this rubbish about guilt feelings is just that. Ask me if I would do it again knowing the risks—YES--absolutely. Thank heaven it’s legal now, so women don’t have to endure life-threatening situations. |
Abortion was widely practiced during the entire period when it was illegal. In the 1890s, there were an estimated 2 million abortions per year and 1 to 2 million annually during the 1920s and ‘30s (compared with 1.3 million today). Whether a woman could obtain an abortion at all, let alone one that was safe, depended upon her economic situation, her race, and where she lived. Women with money could leave the country or find pricey doctors. Poor women, for the most part, were at the mercy of incompetent practitioners with questionable motivations; or they tried dangerous self-abortions, such as inserting knitting needles or coat hangers into the vagina and uterus, douching with dangerous solutions like lye, or swallowing strong drugs or chemicals. All women were subject to the desperation, shame, and fear created by the criminalization of abortion.
| When I was 15 and pregnant, abortion was illegal. I was denied any choice--I had a baby that I gave up for adoption. This experience has been a driving force in my life. I became an OB/GYN; I do abortions because I am totally committed to making sure that other women have the options that I didn’t have. |
Laws prohibiting abortion took a heavy toll on women’s lives and health. Because many deaths were not officially attributed to unsafe, illegal abortion, we can never really know the exact number. However, scholars estimate that approximately five thousand women died annually in the U.S. because of unsafe abortions.19 Several hundred thousand women a year were treated for health complications due to botched, unsanitary, or self-induced abortions; many were left infertile or with chronic illness and pain. Poor women and women of color were at the greatest risk. Nearly four times as many women of color as white women died as a result of illegal abortion.20
17. Leslie Reagan, When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine and Law in the United States, 1897-1973 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 11-12.
18. For more on this, see Petchesky, Abortion and Women's Choice: The State, Sexuality, and Reproductive Freedom (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990), Chapter 2; and Kristin Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), Chapter 2.
19. Zad Leavy and Jerome Kummer, Criminal Abortion: Human Hardship and Unyielding Laws, Southern California Law Review 35 (1962): 126.
20. Reagan, When Abortion Was a Crime, 211-13.
Excerpted from Our Bodies, Ourselves: A New Edition for a New Era, Copyright © 2005, Boston Women's Health Book Collective.
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