The criminalization of abortion began as a business tactic. Up until the founding of the AMA in 1847, virtually all deliveries were attended by women-midwives. Men were rarely in the delivery room. In this most womanly of events, women took care of women. Abortion was common, advertised openly, and legal throughout the United States. Married women used these services and as many as 20% of pregnancies were terminated. It had been legal in the earliest American colonies.
It was discussed in a sort of code. If a woman’s period stopped, a procedure could be done to restore it using medication or a procedure to end the pregnancy. An interruption of periods was thought of as a disturbance of the natural rhythm of the body that should be restored. It was only after “the quickening” when a women could feel the baby move that abortion became illegal. That was at about 20 weeks of pregancy.
Medicine was largely unregulated in the United States until the AMA was founded, but members immediately began to agitate to make abortion illegal. “ During the second half of the 19th century, American physicians intent on overseeing women’s reproductive health campaigned to criminalize abortion, sending a common practice underground…To do so, they challenged common perceptions that a fetus was not a person until the pregnant mother felt it “quicken,” or move, inside their womb. In a time before sonograms, this was often the only way to definitively prove that a pregnancy was underway. Quickening was both a medical and legal concept, and abortions were considered immoral or illegal only after quickening….The association’s efforts were led by Horatio Storer, an obstetrician often called the father of American gynecology. Storer didn’t want the medical profession to be associated with abortion, and considered women’s desire to terminate their pregnancies to be tantamount to insanity. He felt that a woman’s biological role was to be a wife and mother, and that to disrupt that path was not just to commit a social crime, but murder.”
Male obstetricians viewed themselves as “the physical guardians of women.” The AMA made a concerted effort to discredit the work of women who held the majority of the knowledge base on childbirth and reproductive health at the time. By 1873, there were laws on the books forbidding contraception and by 1900 most states had laws against abortion. White male obstetricians used abortion to discredit midwives and drive them out of the profession. This is a very dark chapter in the history of American medicine, and as I explained yesterday, we are still paying the price for this business tactic that destroyed midwifery for generations.
Excellent article! I worked in OB for 30 years and never knew the history. When I first started in Labor and Delivery in the late 80's midwifes were common. I had even considered going into it but glad I didn't considering a few years later they were pushed out again. About 8 or 9 years ago they came back and are practicing again.
This explanation reveals why the abortion debate rages today and why midwives are so uncommon now. What a travesty perpetuated by these male gynecologists. Thank you for this revealing post.