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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHistory of Abortion in the U.S.
(lengthy, excellent read)
History of Abortion in the U.S.
Women around the world have used abortion to control their reproduction at every point in history, and in every known society regardless of its legality.
In the United States, abortion was widely practiced before 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 against the growing movements for suffrage and birth control an effort to control women and confine them to a traditional childbearing role.
This legislation was also a way for the medical profession to tighten its control over womens health care, as midwives who performed abortions were a threat to the male medical establishment. Finally, with the declining birthrate among women from Northern European backgrounds 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.
. . . .
Laws prohibiting abortion subjected women to desperation, fear, and shame, and took a heavy toll on womens lives and health. Poor women and women of color suffered disproportionately, as the ability of a woman to obtain an abortion, let alone one that was safe, often depended upon her economic situation, her race, and where she lived. Women with money could sometimes leave the country or find a physician who would perform the procedure for a high fee. Poor women, for the most part, were either at the mercy of incompetent practitioners with questionable motives or unable to find anyone who would perform the procedure. Many attempted dangerous self-abortions, such as inserting knitting needles or coat hangers into the vagina and uterus, douching with solutions such as lye, or swallowing strong drugs or chemicals.
Because many deaths were not officially attributed to unsafe, illegal abortion, its impossible to know the exact number of lives lost. However, thousands of women a year were treated for health complications due to botched, unsanitary, or self-induced abortions, and many died. Others were left infertile or with chronic illness and pain.
Wherever abortion is illegal, committed people take enormous risks to provide safe abortions clandestinely, to treat women who have complications, and to help women find safe providers. Before the Supreme Courts landmark Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in 1973, some dedicated and well-trained physicians and other medical practitioners risked imprisonment, fines, and loss of their medical licenses to provide abortions. Information about these services often spread by word of mouth.
. . . .
http://www.ourbodiesourselves.org/health-info/u-s-abortion-history/
uppityperson
(115,677 posts)Equal access. k&r
niyad
(113,254 posts)Wounded Bear
(58,642 posts)the fact that wealthy women had basically unlimited access, and poor women were dying from unsafe abortions.
Hear our Voice
God is Pro Choice
REP
(21,691 posts)In 1957, when a new Thunderbird cost about $2,700.00, an unsafe illegal abortion from a drunk doctor stripped of his license cost $500.00.
underpants
(182,763 posts)niyad
(113,254 posts)lapislzi
(5,762 posts)Have I mentioned you're one of my favorite DUers?
niyad
(113,254 posts)Brickbat
(19,339 posts)Orrex
(63,200 posts)I heard an amazing speech on Alternative Radio by Katha Pollitt that I mentioned here.
Ms. Pollitt made string of powerful and IMO irrefutable points about the nature of abortion and what a society's attitudes about abortion say about its attitudes toward women. Meshes very nicely with what you've posted here.
I believe that her speech is behind a paywall, but she's written extensively on the subject. Terrific stuff.
k/r
niyad
(113,254 posts)Orrex
(63,200 posts)niyad
(113,254 posts)FailureToCommunicate
(14,012 posts)mention of the background and context of the role of the German measles (rubella) and thalidomide crisis that softened public attitude in favor of the need for abortion rights...
The spotlight on the Zika virus has brought some of that history to light again:
"The United States suffered an outbreak of rubella in 1958, but it wasnt until after the thalidomide disaster in the early 1960swhen a drug given to pregnant women caused severe birth defectsthat Americans really began to fear the effects of rubella. During a 1964-65 rubella epidemic, U.S. public officials actively warned women of the danger of becoming infected, says Leslie J. Reagan, author of Dangerous Pregnancies: Mothers, Disabilities, and Abortion in Modern America."
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/02/160205-zika-virus-rubella-abortion-brazil-birth-control-womens-health-history/
niyad
(113,254 posts)FailureToCommunicate
(14,012 posts)Thank you for posting the original article
niyad
(113,254 posts)kiva
(4,373 posts)so just read an excerpt:
When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867-1973
https://www.amazon.com/When-Abortion-Was-Crime-1867-1973/dp/0520216571/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1467153548&sr=8-1&keywords=When+Abortion+Was+a+Crime%3A+Women%2C+Medicine%2C+and+Law
niyad
(113,254 posts)it is obviously worth the read.
please let us know what you think when you are finished.
Rhiannon12866
(205,161 posts)And I did buy the revised edition after that. It really should be required reading!
Odin2005
(53,521 posts)...the "pro-life" people would rather you not know.
niyad
(113,254 posts)and research, and learn.
niyad
(113,254 posts)ismnotwasm
(41,975 posts)Is an excellent read--I hope everyone reads it
niyad
(113,254 posts)HockeyMom
(14,337 posts)in the 1950's in a hospital performed by her OB/GYN who delivered her then grown up daughters.
She and her husband were not wealthy by any means, but perhaps she did not fit the profile to raise any suspicions? Married woman in her late 40's with two grown children. This was the then so called "change of life" pregnancy. She thought menopause was finished and stopped using birth control.
Her doctor wrote that she had heart problems (didn't) and that pregnancy would put her life in danger. They still had to pay her doctor a huge amount of money, but she told me herself that they would have sold their home to pay for an abortion if that is what it took. She and her husband did not want more children at their ages when they were Grandparents already. Her husband in his 50's had cancer and only lived about 5 years afterwards.
Hubby's Aunt didn't fit the profile of women having an abortion back then, and in some people's minds, would not either in 2016.
niyad
(113,254 posts)closeupready
(29,503 posts)an early 20th Century socialite, Social Register daughter of a perfume importer in New York. She went missing one day after telling her family she was going shopping along Fifth Avenue, and was never seen again.
The theory that was floated by some people was she had become pregnant by a boyfriend she was then seeing, and in order to avoid scandal, she sought an abortion from an illegal abortion clinic near Pittsburgh, and died during complications.
It kind of shocked me to read about that, sitting here in the 21 Century in a world where abortion is considered a fairly normal medical procedure by most people, like hernia repair.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Dorothy_Arnold
Warpy
(111,241 posts)even if they found doctors to do them. Abortion pills were a fond dream and the concoctions women resorted to in order to get rid of an unwanted pregnancy made them ill, often permanently, but did nothing to abort them. The subject was largely taboo and few people shared even effective means because everything to do with women and their bodies was taboo. Babies you didn't want, couldn't care for and couldn't afford to feed were directly from god, allowing men completely off the hook. Even today, a lot of them don't feel any responsibility toward protecting their partners.
The laws, of course, drove abortion totally underground, opening the door for former patent medicine hucksters to set up traveling practices, leaving a trail of maimed or dead women as they traveled around, no one willing to turn them in because they had offered the hope of ending unwanted pregnancy and maybe they'd get good at it if they made enough mistakes first.
Yes, that's how desperate women feel when their lives are threatened by unwanted pregnancies. This is what antiabortionist fools never seem to understand, that every area of a woman's life is being threatened and it is appalling. It needs to be voluntary.