Abortion has been legal and illegal at different points

The country has shifted its position on the topic before

Prior to the American Revolution and well into the 19th century, abortion was legal up to what was known as the quickening—or the point of fetal movement. While women could get the procedure, it was incredibly dangerous to do so before the arrival of antiseptic medical techniques.

Many writers have documented this period brilliantly, none more so than Leslie Reagan in her definitive account When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867-1973. The first step activists need to take is to familiarize themselves with how the country has treated abortion and birth control. Reagan’s work is the best place to start.

It wasn’t until the 1860s that a push to ban abortion came. Horatio Storer, a prominent gynecologist at the time, wanted to end the procedure for multiple reasons, including the potential health risks and danger, but also because he had moral issues with terminating pregnancies. As he pushed the American Medical Association to take a strong antiabortion stance, legislatures throughout the country passed laws restricting and punishing abortionists. It was never treated as murder though. In Pennsylvania, the penalty for a criminal abortion was three years. Similar statutes existed elsewhere.

For the next 100 years, women went to underground and back-alley providers, many of whom had no medical training whatsoever. Some didn’t even use antiseptic methods to sanitize the instruments they used to perform an abortion. Mechanics and cab drivers were among the people who sought to make money off an illicit racket. Emergency Rooms filled up with women who had complications from botched operations.

Legally, the push for birth control led to the Griswold v. Connecticut decision, which legalized the dissemination of birth control information to married couples. In a later case, that right extended to unmarried people. Eventually, women pushed for abortion access through the court system as some legislatures began liberalizing the laws pertaining to reproductive care.

I’ll go more into detail in later newsletters, but part of this effort is to refer women and men to the resources, academic articles and works that would inform their advocacy.