How 19th-century literature spread the archetype of the 'evil abortionist'
Margaret Jay Jessee, Associate Professor of English, University of Alabama at Birmingham
After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, one aspect of the abortion debate stayed the same: lurid sensationalism.
GOP firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene extolled the court for outlawing “mass genocide,” though anti-abortion activists nonetheless warn of Planned Parenthood already organizing an “illegal abortion enterprise.”
On one side are allusions to dead babies. On the other, dead mothers, dystopian images of state-regulated bodies, and the terrifying loss of power and control.
In my book about the literature of abortion, I trace this rhetoric to the 19th century, when popular media described female physicians as villainous, untrained abortionists who committed infanticide. It was an easy way for publishers of dime novels and tabloid newspapers to make a quick buck. Yet it seems that the discourse connecting abortion to murder and evil really hasn’t changed much since then.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/19th-century-literature-spread-archetype-121654107.html
