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JenniferMortonFirstEssay 4 - 19 May 2021 - Main.JenniferMorton
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< | History of Abortion Law in the US | >
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History of Abortion Law in the US | | | -- By JenniferMorton - 26 Feb 2021 | | | | |
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> | Second Draft
Title
History
Women have been intentionally ending their pregnancies for thousands of years. The oldest written records of the remedies used for contraception and techniques used for abortion exist on Egyptian Ebers Papyrus written around 1550 B.C. (1) From colonial America until the mid-nineteenth century, the phenomena known was the ‘quickening’ was used to determine whether a fetus’ existence was relevant in law (Mohr, 1979). The term quickening refers to, “the first perception of fetal movement by the pregnant woman herself,” which was the only completely reliable method of determining pregnancy prior to more recent medical advances (Mohr, 1979). Pregnancy prior to the quickening were considered, “potential for life,” rather than life (Mohr, 1979).
The American Medical Association's Role
One prevailing theory on the origin of government intervention in the United States is that doctors in the nineteenth century wanted to corner the market on medical practice and saw criminalizing abortion as the pathway to do so (1). Midwives, apothecaries, and homeopaths were often employed by women seeking to terminate their pregnancies and ending that avenue for business more distinctly separated their services from doctors’ services. Doctors were organized through the American Medical Association (AMA) and able to advance their interests. In 1821, Connecticut was the first to pass an explicitly anti-abortion law which outlawed, “willfully and maliciously [administering] any deadly poison, or other noxious and destructive substance,” with the intention of ending a pregnancy after the quickening with up to a lifetime imprisonment (2). This law can be seen as targeted at the remedies that apothecaries used to help assist women with their abortions, which were sometimes dangerous; it did not affect surgical methods (2). Missouri and Illinois followed with similar laws (2). This change illustrated a break from the traditional view towards more restrictive regulation.
The AMA spread information that abortion procedures were damaging, “[women’s] own health and the health of the nation,” (1). This campaign was extremely successful. Mohr wrote that by the turn of the twentieth century, the US, “completed its transition from a nation without abortion laws of any sort to a nation where abortion was legally and officially proscribed,” (2). Even distributing information about contraceptives and abortion became illegal in 1873 as part of the Comstock Laws.
Movement for Reproductive Freedom
The American Birth Control League was formed in 1916 by Margaret Sanger. This group existed in opposition to Comstock Laws by distributing information about and advocating for access to birth control. The League evolved into Planned Parenthood and served a role in the changing attitudes of the public. The feminist movement in the 1960’s and 1970’s in the US brought the topic of reproductive freedom to the forefront of the nation’s consciousness once again. After Sanger’s death, Planned Parenthood became a major proponent of abortion-rights—both establishing clinics and lobbying for legislation.
After some states began loosening their own anti-abortion legislation, the national government stepped in 1965 when the Supreme Court oversaw Griswold v. Connecticut and ruled that a Comstock Law in Connecticut which outlawed the use of any drug or device for contraceptive purposes was unconstitutional (3). The law violated a ‘right to privacy’ (for married couples) which can be inferred from the Bill of Rights (3). Griswold was reaffirmed in 1972’s Eisenstadt v. Baird which extended the right to birth control for unmarried people as well (4 Justice Brennan wrote, “If the right to privacy means anything, it is the right of an individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters to fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child,” (4). This landmark case set the precedent for the landmark case—Roe v. Wade.
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