"In 1900, women attempted to induce abortions by inserting knitting needles, crochet hooks, hairpins, scissors, chicken feathers and cotton balls into their uteruses. In 1917, black women "pinned their faith on... [the] ingestion of... starch or gunpowder and whiskey." Reagan, an assistant professor of history, medicine and women's studies at the University of Illinois, dedicates her disturbing work on abortion in America before Roe v. Wade to "the lives of... women who died trying to control their reproduction." She chronicles the covert efforts and subsequent prosecution of doctors and midwives, and of unmarried women and their lovers (while married women made up the majority of clientele and were accused of "race suicide," they were pursued less often). Reagan has her work cut out for her: Though the law forbade abortions, she writes, "some late-nineteenth-century doctors believed there were two million abortions [performed] every year." And then, as now, debate raged: though some doctors disagreed, the Journal of the American Medical Association declared itself against abortion in the case of rape since "pregnancy is rare after real rape." For those who take legal abortion for granted, Reagan's work is an eye-opener."
"1930s: The number of abortions increases significantly during the Great Depression. "The Depression years make vivid the relationship between economics and reproduction," Reagan writes. "Married women with children found it impossible to bear the expense of another, and unmarried women could not afford to marry."
A migrant family prays before their noonday meal Oklahoma during the Great Depression.
The dangerous practice of unregulated abortions led to a high U.S. maternal mortality rate, Reagan says. In her book, she cites a study done in 1931 showing illegal procedures are responsible for 14% of maternal deaths. |
