Back when the American Medical Association was still a fledgling organization, however, it began a crusade in 1857 to make abortion illegal, Reagan wrote. The impetus was manifold. Some of it came "out of regular physicians' desire to win professional power, control medical practice, and restrict their competitors," namely midwives and homeopaths.
But this was also a time, Reagan said, in which women were lobbying for entrance into Harvard Medical School, in part so they could pursue work in obstetrics and gynecology.
The force behind this 19th-century AMA anti-abortion campaign was Dr. Horatio Storer, a Harvard Medical School graduate who dedicated much of his practice to OB-GYN work before he died in 1922. The crusade proved to be a form of backlash against the shifting aspirations of women. It was "antifeminist at its core," Reagan wrote. The AMA pushed for state laws to restrict abortions, and most did by 1880. Then the Comstock Law, passed by Congress in 1873, banned items including abortion drugs.
But before abortions were banned, a woman known as Madame Restell ran abortion businesses from New York to Philadelphia and Boston. Her main clientele, Reagan wrote, were "married, white, native-born Protestant women of upper and middle classes." Abortions, birth control and general efforts to manage the timing of pregnancy meant birth rates among white women were falling just as immigrants streamed into the United States. And the idea of being out-populated by "others" worried some anti-abortion activists like Storer. He argued that whites should be populating the country, including the West and the South. Better them than blacks, Catholics, Mexicans, Chinese or Indians, he said, according to Reagan.
"Shall these regions be filled by our own children or by those of aliens? This is a question our women must answer; upon their loins depends the future destiny of the nation," Storer said, according to Reagan's research.
"White male patriotism," she wrote, "demanded that maternity be enforced among white Protestant women."
https://www.cnn.com/2016/06/23/health/abortion-history-in-united-states/index.html
But this was also a time, Reagan said, in which women were lobbying for entrance into Harvard Medical School, in part so they could pursue work in obstetrics and gynecology.
The force behind this 19th-century AMA anti-abortion campaign was Dr. Horatio Storer, a Harvard Medical School graduate who dedicated much of his practice to OB-GYN work before he died in 1922. The crusade proved to be a form of backlash against the shifting aspirations of women. It was "antifeminist at its core," Reagan wrote. The AMA pushed for state laws to restrict abortions, and most did by 1880. Then the Comstock Law, passed by Congress in 1873, banned items including abortion drugs.
But before abortions were banned, a woman known as Madame Restell ran abortion businesses from New York to Philadelphia and Boston. Her main clientele, Reagan wrote, were "married, white, native-born Protestant women of upper and middle classes." Abortions, birth control and general efforts to manage the timing of pregnancy meant birth rates among white women were falling just as immigrants streamed into the United States. And the idea of being out-populated by "others" worried some anti-abortion activists like Storer. He argued that whites should be populating the country, including the West and the South. Better them than blacks, Catholics, Mexicans, Chinese or Indians, he said, according to Reagan.
"Shall these regions be filled by our own children or by those of aliens? This is a question our women must answer; upon their loins depends the future destiny of the nation," Storer said, according to Reagan's research.
"White male patriotism," she wrote, "demanded that maternity be enforced among white Protestant women."
https://www.cnn.com/2016/06/23/health/abortion-history-in-united-states/index.html
