Arizona's 160-year-old abortion ban, upheld by the state Supreme Court on Tuesday, was one in a wave of anti-abortion laws driven by historical twists and turns that may seem surprising.
For decades after the United States became a nation, abortion was legal until fetal movements were felt, usually well before the second trimester. In the days before pregnancy tests and ultrasounds, the movement known as fast-forwarding was a threshold because it was the clearest sign that a woman was pregnant.
Until that point, “women could attempt abortions without fear that it was illegal,” said Johanna Schon, a history professor at Rutgers University. After expediting, the abortion provider could be charged with a misdemeanor.
“I don't think there was any particular criticism,” Dr. Schoen said. “I think what was probably criticized was the idea that they were having sex outside of marriage. But of course married women also terminated pregnancies.”
According to Dr. Sean, women end their pregnancies in a variety of ways, including by taking herbs and drugs that are thought to induce miscarriage. Commonly used herbs include pennyroyal and tansy. Another method, Dr. Schoen said, was to insert an object into the cervix, causing an infection and interrupting or terminating the pregnancy.
Because tools to determine early pregnancy did not yet exist, many women honestly said they did not know whether they were pregnant and were simply taking herbs to restore their periods. I was able to.
Abortion providers described their services in modest but widely understood terms.
“It was open, but it was kind of a secret word,” said Mary Fishel, a professor of medical history at Johns Hopkins University. Abortion pills and herbs were called “women's moon medicine” or “French restorative medicine,” she said.
Newspaper advertisements made it clear that these abortion services were available.
“Abortion had been commercialized since the mid-19th century up until the Civil War,” Dr. Fissel said. “We cannot pretend that the abortion never happened.”
According to historians, in the 1820s some states began passing laws restricting abortion and imposing some penalties on providers.
By the 1840s, court cases in cases where women who had abortions, or who sought abortions, became seriously ill or died had received some attention. Some of the cases involved Anne Trow Summers-Lohman (known as Madame Restel), a British-born midwife who provided herbal medicine and other abortion services in New York. The patient could be charged with a misdemeanor for having an abortion before rushing.
But surprisingly, historians say it was the emergence of organized and specialized medicine that was the primary catalyst for the enactment of abortion bans across the country.
When the American Medical Association, which would become the nation's largest medical association, was founded in 1847, its members (all men and white at the time) curtailed the medical work of midwives and nonphysicians, most of whom were women. I tried. . Abortion methods were often provided by people in these professions, historians say, which was one reason the association wanted to ban abortion.
The campaign that became known as the “Physicians' Crusade Against Abortion” began in 1857 to encourage states to pass anti-abortion laws. Its leader, Dr. Horatio Robinson Storer, wrote a paper opposing abortion that was officially adopted by the AMA and later published as a book titled “On Criminal Abortion in America.''
The Society subsequently published Why Not? A Book for All Women, also written by Dr. Storer, stated that abortion is immoral and a crime, and argued that married women have a moral and social obligation to bear children.
Dr. Storer promoted the argument that life begins at conception.
“He's kind of creating a moral trend, and he's doing it for a lot of reasons that make it appealing,” Dr. Fissel said. In a sense, this argument is consistent with an emerging medical understanding of embryology that characterizes pregnancy as a developmental continuum, and does not consider early onset to be its defining stage.
Social and cultural forces and prejudices were also at play. Women were beginning to seek more independence, and the male-dominated medical establishment believed that “women needed to give birth at home,” Dr. Fissel said.
Due to racism and anti-immigrant attitudes in the late 19th century, support for eugenics began to grow. Some historians say this undercurrent was partly behind the anti-abortion movement led by Dr. Storer.
“People like Storer were very concerned that the wrong Americans were procreating, that good white Anglo-Saxons were having abortions and not having enough children. ” said Dr. Fissel.
Moral trends also became evident, such as the passage of the Comstock Act of 1873, which prohibited the mailing of pornographic materials and anything related to contraception or abortion.
By 1880, approximately 40 states had banned abortion. Arizona enacted Prohibition in 1864 as part of a code it adopted shortly after becoming a territory.
Law ARS 13-3603 provides: “A person who knowingly provides, furnishes, administers, or causes to be taken by a pregnant woman, any drug, agent, or substance, or uses or uses any instrument or other means,'' thereby: If such a woman causes a miscarriage, unless it is necessary to save her life, the penalty is imprisonment in state prison for not less than two years nor more than five years. ”
“This was early, but part of a whole wave of laws that were passed from the 1860s to the 1880s,” Dr. Schoen said.