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[[File:Storer.jpg|thumbnail|left|300px600px|Dr. Horatio Storer]]While In 1973, the simple answer might be 1973 Supreme Court legalized abortion nationally with the ''Roe v. Wade'' decision, but the history of abortion’s decriminalization occurred on a state-by-state basis—much like its criminalizationbasis before the court's decision.
In colonial America, abortion was dealt with in a manner according to English common law. Abortion was typically only frowned upon, or penalized, when it occurred after “quickening,”—when a woman felt fetal movement—because it suggested that the fetus had manifested into its own separate being. Quickening could vary from women woman to woman, and sometimes as late as four months. Additionally, it was only penalized because it was typically seen as some kind cover-up for improper sexual relations.
States began to draft abortion legislation in the first half of the 19th century , and by 1880, every state had an abortion statute. Most of these early abortion statutes were designed to protect women from medical quacks far from the established centers of American medicine—Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, for example. These early statutes (for the most part) punished only the provider of the abortion, not the woman, and either did not apply to physicians, or did not apply if the abortion was necessary to preserve the life of the woman. Therefore, except under these special particular circumstances, abortion was illegal.
Nevertheless, women continued to acquire abortions—whether they were illegal or not. Until 1930, it was actually safer for women to acquire an abortion than it was for them to carry a child to term. For that reason, many women probably risked a questionable abortion. The black market’s translation into high profits compelled some physicians to specialize in the procedure, or to provide them under more generous circumstances (for example, to protect the woman’s life or health).
As abortions became black market commodities, late 19th century Americans—writers, journalists, preachers, and physicians—began to describe abortion with a moral absolutism that had never existed before.
====Social Context & Legislation====
This change didn’t occur within a vacuum, however. In the late 19th century, targeting abortions and abortion providers—like midwives and “irregulars”—occurred within the context of the professionalization of the medical field. Individuals like Dr. Horatio Storer attempted to legitimate themselves as professional medical men, and they did so at others’ expense. In claiming that pregnancy and childbirth were not natural events, where women and midwives could maintain authority, they argued that pregnancy and childbirth were medical conditions requiring physician intervention.
Furthermore, this new generation of physicians declared that abortion represented women’s selfishness and “antenatal infanticide " in an era marked by concerns about race suicide and white women’s reproductive rates.
Throughout the 20th century, law enforcement continued to enforce local abortion statutes with limited success. Due to the nature of this criminal activity—specifically how legally ambiguous it was—it was often difficult to bring an abortion case to trial unless a woman died from the procedure. Under these conditions, it perpetuated the idea that abortions were dangerous procedures, and reformers and AMA members latched onto it with as much zeal and vigor as possible in order to advance their goals.
The Depression and advancements in medical technology changed things for women seeking abortions in the 1920s and 1930s. Sterilization of equipment, specialization, and, later, antibiotics, all worked together to decrease mortality. So while the procedures themselves became much safer, law enforcement also recognized that this created an opportunity to put patients on the stand to testify against providers of illegal abortions. Because of increased restriction in the 1940s and 1950s, more women were forced to seek out illegal abortions in substandard conditions.
====Towards Legalization====
[[File:32936173946 bc0836c5c5 o.jpg|thumbnail|left|300px|Roe v. Wade]]
The most notorious example of the dangers of illegal abortion became lionized in the cover of Ms. Magazine in 1973 when they depicted the 1964 death of Gerri Santoro. By the 1960s, the public perception of illegal abortions was that they were dirty and dangerous. American women were also acquiring illegal abortions in Mexico, which also contributed to the idea that they were illicit. Whether acquiring a back alley abortion in her hometown, two towns over, or across a national border, many women risked the unknown in order to acquire a measure of reproductive control.
The rise of these illicit abortions actually compelled some legislators in border cities to revisit their stance on abortion. Beginning in 1962, legislators in San Diego, California , for example , seemed to recognize there was a need to standardize abortion laws in the wake of the number of women ignoring them altogether.
There were several attempts to standardize American abortion law. The American Law Institute, for example, attempted to draft a model law for abortion in the United States that allowed for legal abortions under the conditions that most legislators approved of: in order to protect the life of the mother, if the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest, or if the fetus was likely to be deformed or ill.
The ''Roe'' decision gave women autonomy over their pregnancies during the first trimester and allowed states to regulate or restrict abortions during the second and third trimester. As a result, abortion statutes in the remanding states were struck down and determined to be unconstitutional. ====Bilbiography====
Linda Gordon, ''[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0252027647/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0252027647&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=63fbae3d85d23e43dbfbe1cdc3f7ee52 The Moral Property of Women: A History of Birth Control Politics in America]''. Urbana: The University of Illinois Press, 2007.
Leslie J. Reagan, ''[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0520216571/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0520216571&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=8e59bb2b7842c2e0a3b80951c0dc9670 When Abortion was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867-1973]''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
[[Category:Wikis]]
[[Category:Women's History]] [[Category:Gender History]] [[Category:Gender and Sexuality]] [[Category:United States History]] [[Category:Medical History]]
Updated February 7, 2019
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