The Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade relied heavily
on the argument that quote a right to an abortion is not deeply rooted
in the nation's history and traditions. Paul Solman takes a look
now at that history is part of our continuing coverage of America
after Roe.
An abortion recipe from 17 48. The recipe itself that he gives is
remarkably explicit.
Detailed and for the time medically accurate English professor Molly
Farrell discussing a book she studied here at the American Antiquarian
Society in Worcester, Massachusetts, while researching how early
Americans used numbers.
Published by Benjamin Franklin, the American instructor was a do
it yourself Guide to various life hacks for Colonial Americans. There's
all different types of recipes for Google eat for dropsy for fever,
and I saw one that said, suppression of the courses. Maybe it was
because I myself at the time was pregnant and thinking about these
things.
But it connected with me like, Doesn't that mean a missed period
when the courses are suppressed Courses is menstruation.
How do we jump from that to abortion, So this was a typical parlance
used in the time to indicate that we're talking about, um, pregnancy.
It both uses terms like suppression of the courses that were common
to other recipes for abortion, Farrell and others, the books recipe
of traditional abortion inducing roots like Pennyroyal and Angelica.
Shows that the practice was as deeply rooted in American history
as opposition to it, especially this is for young, unmarried women.
This is a problem that they usually have, and it says that they should
not long for pretty fellows or any other trash whatsoever. Basically,
what got you you know, into this mess was longing for pretty fellows
or falling for the lines.
Delivered by pretty fellows. Yes, I mean, it's it's remarkably explicit.
Actually, it's really direct. Do you think that historical context
has gotten enough attention in this debate?
I think historical context rarely gets enough attention in any debate,
American Antiquarian society President Scott Casper. We might look
or some might look just at a series of laws or what is or is not
in laws without looking at what's happening in
Popular practice in the press.
What people's ideas are in culture. We forget often that the past
was just as complex and contested as our present is many people try
to find in the past.
What resonates with their own views in the present so reference from
17 88 in a copy of a sort of sex manual of the day that resonates
for those opposed to abortion, midwives are admonished by no means
to prescribe such medicines as well cause abortion desired, which
is a high degree of wickedness and may be termed murder. On the other
hand, that same text Aristotle's masterpiece was published many times,
says curator of books Elizabeth Pope Out of those more than six
The additions. Only a few handful have those directions to midwives
that I mentioned that described abortion as murder.
But even in that instance, they do seem to be saying that midwives
were, um, providing abortions to people who had desired them. Then
there's the case of Englishwoman and Loman, who became a midwife
known as Madame Estelle in 18 39. She placed an ad in the New York
Sun, which read. Is it moral for parents to increase their families,
regardless of consequences to themselves, or the well being of their
offspring when a simple, easy, healthy and certain remedy is within
our control?
In 18 47. Madam Bristol was arrested and tried and demonized in the
police Gazette and elsewhere, says graphic arts curator Loren Hughes.
So cartoons, for example, painting Madame Bristol as a very dark
figure or cartoons showing Madam Bristol's offices full
of pregnant women who are uneducated who are seeking help but are
in disguise, for instance, so that no one wants to know who's having
abortion. And yet rest ALS sometimes rest steals was a busy, publicly
advertised practice are their ads for
Herbs or patent medicines that induce abortion. Yes, although they
don't say that therefore abortion their ads there for
Restarting the flow for managing menstruation for
General women's health that include everything from patent medicines
to herbal remedies that date back to the 17th and 18th century And
these are unequivocally abortion inducing concoctions. They would
have certainly been understood as such. So this is Thomas Jefferson's
notes on Virginia and Jefferson chronicled Native American abortion
practice. Thomas Jefferson mentions again without any kind of judgment
in his 17 85 notes on the state of Virginia.
That indigenous women in Virginia
Routinely induced abortion through the years use of particular herbs.
So he mentions here. The women very frequently attending the men
in their parties of war and hunting. Childbearing becomes extremely
inconvenient to them. It is said. Therefore, they have learned to
the practice of procuring abortion by the use of some vegetable here.
We have men writing about women doing this, and one of the frustrations
that I have is that
Um, women's knowledge often doesn't get written down. And what about
enslaved Americans? We have testimony of enslaved black women talking
about how, yes, When they would want to induce a miscarriage. They
would take turpentine, for example, and the slavers knew about this
and then so they would reformulate the turpentine that they used
to make sure that it wouldn't work in that actively trying to stop
them because, of course, that would
Reduce the value of their property. In the end, then everyone at
the antiquarian Society insisted on just one thing.
History tells more than one story about abortion contested now contested
them, like so much else in the history of pluralistic America.