When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867-1973, with a New Preface

I've just ordered this book, because it's theme is not just history for me, it was a frightening part of my life. When I was a teenager abortion was a crime: and the choices that forced on women was another crime. Two of my young friends got pregnant while in high school, one at 14 and one at 16, "A" students both, they were forced to drop out of high school, marry, and face the world with a 9th and 10th grade education. Oh, the 14 year-old was "allowed" to come back and take her freshman finals: very possibly because a 14 year old, 9 months pregnant, was meant to be a frightening an object lesson, and one that successfully prevented me from having sex until I was 19. Which meant that my first love at 17 left me after a year of frustration for both of us. Another of my friends was sent to Arizona to live with her Aunt for her "asthma" -- I now believe to have a baby in a home for unwed mothers. Which was another object lesson in our town, a home for unwed mothers, from which troops of teenage unwed mothers marched to the local mall together. To a lower-middle class girl like myself, sex was frightening, because it meant I might not escape the fate of my friends" a furnished basement "apartment" in their parents's home, a new baby, a teenage husband, and no education. When I made it to state college, I began to have sex with another long-term boyfriend, still frightened, watching another friend get pregnant at 19, and drop out of college for another baby and teenage husband. My fear was only partly relieved by a local campus character we all called "Crazy Charlie" for what-seemed to be tall tales of his exploits. But I was ready to take on face value what Crazy Charlie said one day: that he knew a doctor in Philadelphia, who would perform an abortion for $200. (To give you an idea of how much money that was 35 years ago, it was 1/10 of my yearly tuition and board at state college.) But if I had gotten pregnant, I would have spent that money, and trusted my health and fate to a Crazy Charlie, and the man he claimed was a doctor, who could have been a nurse, mid-wife, or have no medical training whatsoever, all because I wanted to have a future. I would have risked my life for my future, at a time when the New York Daily News printed photographs of women who had died in a pool of blood, after illegal abortions. My sister, four years younger than I, also had a friend who got pregnant at 16, while abortion was still a crime. But she lucked upon an underground railroad of authority figures that included ministers and doctors, who found doctors to perform abortions for women in need, the forerunners of the doctors, ministers and others who pressured the courts for Roe vs. Wade, because they were sick unto death, of dealing with the ugly aftermath of illegal abortion: the suicides of pregnant women, the botched abortions that killed or maimed thousands of women a year in the United States. Because they were also aware of another dirty secret: that upper middle class and wealthy women were routinely and discretely given D&Cs at the clean and safe hospitals of their leafy suburbs, that those with money were also able to send their daughters to Puerto Rico for abortions masked as "vacations." That only lower middle class and poor women were forced to face murder and maiming through illegal abortions. In the states which restrict abortion, so-called "Abortion Wards" are returning, filling with women maimed by illegal abortions -- and again, damn few are daughters or wives of money. Today, my sister's friend who had an abortion at 16 has gone on to marry, have two children, and become a pharmacist (and I doubt that she's one of those pharmacists who deny patients birth control, or emergency birth control.) None of my friends who got pregnant in high school came to our ten year reunion -- I heard that one said she was still "ashamed" that she'd never graduated. All who would support the elimination of legal abortion, keep in mind the tragedies you'd guarantee: maimed and murdered women, lives stopped short, more unwanted children in the world. There are 500,000 children in the foster care at this moment -- how many million more do you want? Many of those children are adoptable, but will not be adopted -- why don't "pro-life" advocates step forward to adopt them now? Do you want the forced return to warehouse orphanages for still more unwanted children? Do you want women sent to prison for seeking an abortion, and doctors also jailed, when we already have a shortage of doctors in this country? And nurses jailed, when we have a shortage of nurses in this country? How much damage and destruction of life will you support to force the rest of us to subscribe to your "religous" views? I've never heard a so-called "pro-life" advocate answer those questions honestly. Making abortion illegal will not stop abortions, it will just stop safe abortions, as is the reality in the few civilized countries in which abortion isn't legal, but their abortion wards are full to bursting with maimed women, and whose morgues overflow with dead women.

"When Abortion was a Crime" by Leslie Reagan. Without a doubt one of the best books I have read recently, if you are as passionate about women's reproductive rights as I am and wonder about what it was like in the good old days before women's had rights to control their own bodies. I didn't know this book even existed until I was watching Rachel Maddow one night and the author was on her program discussing a paperback copy that had recently been released (I don't care for paperback unless I don't have a choice). So I bought a used hard copy of the book that had originally been in a Library in Illinois. That came in good enough condition and no major flaws in it. So far, I have had good luck buying used ones. Most have come in good condition. Sometimes only a few highlighted phrases here and there. But, that's immaterial. I can overlook it. I was raised in the 50's when abortion was illegal. I was raised in a small Midwestern coal mining town in a super religious family and had no idea such a thing as abortion even existed in those days. So if I had gotten pregnant I was just out of luck. That's how painfully ignorant a lot of we teenagers were in those days. It's a day and age I have no desire whatsoever to return to. Or to see my Granddaughters be forced to return too. It wasn't that great of a period in this country. This country was awash in racism, sexism was the order of the day too and what one viewed on television was mindless drivel designed for 4 year olds. I married when I was 17 and my mother stumbled through a description of what was going to happen on my wedding night. But, I didn't get a vivid enough description to have clue what to expect. That's just how dumb and uninformed a lot of girls like myself were. I am really surprised I didn't get into trouble when I was young, not knowing anymore than I did. I have always wondered about the issue of illegal abortion when I grew a older and wondered what it was like in the days before Roe. I knew next to nothing about the era. Just whispers I had heard from other people and had read about in passing. Something a lot of us hope our daughters and Granddaughter will never be forced to return too. But, it is looking like Christian zealots are going to chip away at Roe v Wade until it is just a shell of a law. Because the electorate keeps making the mistake of voting the type of people in office who are catering to these religious zealots. People often take their freedoms for granted until after they have been taken away. They don't comprehend when these people get through taking away women's rights, they will start in on African American's, Hispanic's and anyone else who doesn't live up to their immoral beliefs. And they will drag us kicking and screaming back to the dark ages of back alley abortions. But, they won't stop the practice. It's just going to cost them dearly in new tax dollars to add new law enforcement personnel, new judges to already over burdened court system, to build prisons to house all the new criminals in. But, it won't stop the practice. I don't know how many of them are intelligent enough to have looked at it that way. But, morality laws do not work and have never worked. It just brings on a worse society. They should have learned that for a few of their other misadventures like prohibition. This book covers most aspects of what it was like before Roe and should be required reading for anyone interested in women's personal freedoms. It was an enlightening book.

In the wake of the SCOTUS decision in Dobbs I selected this title to read as part of an effort to contextualize the opinion. And the book did, in fact, provide to me some understanding of the varying treatment of the abortion issue over the examined century. I now know, for instance, that the harsh economic and social conditions during the Depression allowed for the greater availability of abortion services. And during the McCarthy era of the 1950’s, when personal freedoms generally were under attack, it became more difficult to access safe abortions. The book’s failing, though, is in the absence of any meaningful discussion of the forces that were at play on the state pre-Roe that initially led to the implementation, and then to the preservation, of abortion bans, notwithstanding the uninterrupted demand for abortion services. Is this simply explained by the unchallenged political power of the Church to advance the “life begins at conception” position or were there other political pressures at play? And, whatever those forces were, had they significantly weakened by the early 1970’s which thereby allowed the general public acceptance of Roe? Finally, without identifying and evaluating the pre-Roe forces that bolstered the century of abortion bans, this book did not assist this reader in answering the question of whether, in the wake of Dobbs, those forces have returned.