Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Abortion in the US

Episode Date: July 19, 2022

In this episode we are looking into the first time abortion was made illegal in the US. This is the first of a special two-part series looking at the history of abortion in the US and the UK.The overturning of Roe v. Wade in June ended almost half a century of the option to choose whether to continue a pregnancy in the US. But abortion had not always been illegal before Roe v. Wade. So when did this happen? How was it policed? And were all abortions forced into alleyways or were there any safer options?Kate spoke to Professor Leslie J. Reagan from the University of Illinois. Leslie is the author of When Abortion Was a Crime, she explains the forces which drove abortions underground in the late 19th century, the methods of enforcement for these laws and the ways that people found to get around them.*WARNING there is discussion of abortion and death in this episode which some listeners might find upsetting*Produced by Charlotte Long and Sophie Gee. Mixed by Sophie Gee.Betwixt the Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society. A podcast by History Hit. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello everybody. I am jumping in here with quite a serious fair-doos warning. Today we are talking about the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the history of abortion in America. This can obviously be quite a tough subject, so this is just your heads up, that that's what we're talking about. Adult themes will be covered some distressing content, and if that's not for you, then please just give this one a miss. On the 24th of June 22, the US Supreme Court overturned the 1973 ruling known as Roe v. Wade, meaning that after 50 years of being able to access abortion, many women now no longer have that right.

This is an incredibly difficult time for women who have lost this right, but it isn't the first time that it's happened. Today, betwixt the sheets, I'm joined by Leslie Regan to look at the first time that abortion was made illegal in America, which was in the late 19th century. We're going to be talking about what that meant for women then, how that campaign started, and what women had been doing to access abortions up to that point. Let's begin. So to Leslie J. Regan, thank you so much for joining me today.

Great to be here. Thanks for having me. No, it's my pleasure. I'd love to say that we met under happier circumstances, but the current discussion that we're going to have, it's a really heavy one, And I'm so grateful that there's historians like you doing the work that you're doing around this. I mean, what's it like in the state at the moment? What's your reaction to the initial overturning of Roe v. Wade?

Well, we knew it was coming, but it's just awful. It's very distressing. You know, I live in Illinois, which is a state that has passed a reproductive health care act and is making sure that people know it's legal and that they're welcome to come to Illinois. But, you know, everybody can't travel. and I'm just very concerned for the suffering that has already begun and that it's going to get worse. It's very chaotic for people. Yeah, that's a good word for it.

Like, I'm in the UK. I'm on the other side of the pond to you guys. And we still felt it here. Like, there's just a collective, I suppose, intake of breath and fear about what this means, what precedent this sets. And I think that that's felt the world over, actually. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, the movements to criminalize and legalize abortion have been related, and we look around at the rest of the world. And the legalization in the U.S. and England were related when abortions became available in England. Many people traveled to the U.K. from the United States and Canada. Obviously, that was incredibly expensive and difficult, so only a few people could do it, but people did. And there was a lot in the press about, oh, my God, there's so many women coming here. We have to stop them. And when I see that other countries are moving to legalize abortion, like Mexico and Ireland,

I, like you, am very glad for people there and see that as a victory for women's rights and their health. And to see this go backwards is very, very frightening and upsetting. It just seems like such an enormous step back. And from the outside looking in, it's like America's this like colossal giant. you know of guys what do you i suppose that's the fear is like if america can do this if it's going happen in america in 2022 then where else can this happen it's very scary it's really scary yeah well of course we have a different political system you just had a prime minister resign under pressure and we had a very similar leader where that didn't happen and the party supports

them so they are different yes but you know these ideas are shared and i think you know there How did this happen is we have a Supreme Court that's been packed by a party that is a minority party, but because of all the ways that electoral politics work in this country, they were able to win the presidency with a minority vote and fill the Supreme Court, and they're doing exactly what they were hired to do. We knew was coming. And of course, it's abortion, but it's a lot of other things as well in terms of changing the way government works, what we can expect and the ability of people to make things better.

You know, I grew up with the idea that America was this incredible, you know, the greatest democracy in the world, the land of free, and then this happens, and it's basically nine people who weren't publicly elected made this decision. And it's just like, what? What is that system? But anyway, we'll save American politics for another day. We'll focus on this today. So you have in the course of your research, research, the history of,

abortion and it's times like this where I mean your work is always important but is it really important right now because the history of abortion is not quite what people think that it would be is it no not at all I mean the history I think a lot of people will think if you see a law that says it's illegal or if you hear from priests or you hear a public discourse that condemns abortion that oh it didn't happen and that everyone agreed this was immoral and terrible. And what I found when I did my research is really the history is the opposite. It was rather commonplace. You know, it kind of changes over time, how people access it, what people think about it, how they do it. But it was not unusual. It was common while it was criminalized throughout the entire

hundred years that it was illegal in the United States from the 1860s and 1870s up to the early 1970s. And there really was a popular understanding, a popular morality that accepted abortion and understood why women needed it at certain times. This was not expressed from the rooftops at a time when, of course, women did speak in public, but they didn't have public authority. They didn't have political power through the vote. They weren't elected. And yet, you can find it in the way that they talked with doctors and with their families and friends. the way men on a very, very rare comment to find a historical record from a man on a jury saying, what? It doesn't matter that she wanted this abortion and they quickly shut him down. No, no, that doesn't matter at all. So you get these glimpses of if she saw that she needed it,

then it's acceptable. So that is what I think most people don't know. And then of course we have the opinion from the U.S. Supreme Court that says history, history, history. is what matters and produces a history that is false. It really is a false history. And because one of the crucial things in your work when abortion was a crime is that it wasn't always illegal. And I think that that is a really important point. In fact, in the terms of historical span, it was illegal for a very short space of time, actually.

Yeah, 100 years of criminalization feels like a pretty, long time. But you are absolutely right that in early America with European settlement under British common law, there was nothing governing what we would think of as early abortion, which they talked about as the need to restore the mencies. It really saw if you've missed your period, there's a health problem and you need to do something to get your mencies back and restore them, take care of that obstruction. And until a woman herself perceived quickening, which meant feeling some kind of movement inside of her, feeling the stirring inside of her, to use their terms, then at quickening, she knew she was pregnant. And at quickening, when she recognized it, the law recognized it.

And society recognized, ah, there's a child, now you cannot do anything. thing to end that pregnancy. That is a crime. That's immoral. But prior to that, this is not talked about and thought of as an abortion in the way that we use that term now. No. And this idea of the quickening, that is significant because it's not just in legal text that this is sort of the recognition of when life begins, I suppose, which is particularly significant for the debates going on now. But this was actually what the church taught as well. I think I read a source somewhere that said the quickening is when the enthronement of the soul takes place. So this is kind of like scripture and medical, but they were all kind of agreed on this. This is like the first movement

of the fetus is when the baby is alive. Yeah, when the woman is quick with child. Quick with child, of course. And when she perceives it. And so, and the cases that we do know of in the 18th century in the United States and colonial period, where there's prosecution, it's after quickening. But there aren't very many of those cases even. It's after quickening when someone has died and they pursue prosecution or when someone's been forced into it, where it becomes a public scandal because in this case in 1821, it's a minister who is living with a family, he has a relationship with one of the daughters. And instead of marrying, they get abortifasians.

they try to bring back the Menzies and then brings in somebody to use instruments after quickening to bring on an abortion. So the scandal is about a minister, a daughter, the failure to marry, and then this effort post-quickening. And that's what's driving kind of the local community, outrage, and any kind of state efforts to prosecute. And I think I was doing a bit of research and sort of the quickening, the first movement is round about three months? Is that? You know, quickening, there's no set time. It is completely when a woman herself perceives it. And we are so attached to that there's some technology, there's some precision, there's some exact way that our bodies behave, that pregnancy develops, that we think, ah, there's a certain moment. And that's what's getting written

into our laws, right? Texas has a law for six weeks at fetal heartbeat, quote unquote, because there is no heartbeat. It's an electrical development, which will eventually become a heart. But we're creating, you know, new names for things because that's the anti-abortion movement. So somewhere maybe between three to five months, depending on the person. Yeah. Now, that doesn't mean there were court cases where if they didn't have information where the woman herself has said, you know, she perceives this, if she was big, if she was great, then that would be understood as she's quick. Quick with child.

Yes. I read somewhere in ancient Rome that they didn't even believe that a child was an actual child until they'd been confirmed a citizen, which was after birth. So they had a practice of what we would now call infanticide. Babies were killed and that was not considered great, but it was. just a weirdly standard thing to happen and not considered grossly immoral because they weren't recognized as citizen, which is wild. Well, it does show you ideas change over time, communities thinking.

Doesn't it? And that this is a social creation is when we understand life to begin. It's not really scientific or biological. And of course, most important is there's the law and then there's what people have learned through religion, what their own personal moral beliefs and conscience are. And in the United States, you know, it's a pluralist country. It is built on the idea that there's no state religion and that we all can participate in and have different beliefs. And they might even change over time, right? In a person's own individual life. We know that too. Yeah. So when you have such

division, it's very clear that there isn't agreement in the society. And these are actually different beliefs. And so this is an imposition of a very specific Catholic, now Christian evangelical view. Yeah. The idea of when does life begin, it's a theological debate, isn't it, and one that there isn't a consensus on. But it's not one that we're going to resolve here. No. Wow. Is it ever? But I wonder if we could talk a little bit about, so we're talking about the world before what we'd now called safe abortions. And if you were a girl who needed to, as you say, restore your mensies, what would be the options available to you? What was being practiced before legalized abortion? Well, so in 17th, 18th century, this really applies to the United Kingdom as well. You know,

what we know about this is people knew of various methods and they could grow herbs in their own gardens and they turn them into teas, and then later these herbs and remedies are sold as everything becomes commercialized with capitalism, and you have traveling salesmen who sell the materials and then medications and potents and pills. Female pills, I've read that. Yeah, in the 19th century. So in the early period, people would know this maybe from each other, from their mothers, their sisters of what to do if their mencies were obstructed.

they also might do things like go horseback riding, throw themselves downstairs, things like that to try to bring their menace back to induce a miscarriage. In the 19th century, people could buy pills. They were advertised. They were advertised in newspapers. People might buy them from a pharmacist or a midwife or a doctor or order it through the mail. And then eventually, in the 1830s, there are people who provide abortions and use instruments who become quite well known and have, you know, what we would think of as clinics where people knew where to go and to pay them for this service. And that becomes very important because what is a domestic practice is becoming visible. It's becoming visible in public and it's becoming visible to journalists.

And we have booming journalism and, you know, competing newspapers who are figuring hearing out, like, scandal is what sells. And we're, you know, trying to sell papers to men that is also about boxing and scandal. So this becomes more known because the press is covering it and selling it as scandal. And that becomes very important for, you know, the criminalization ultimately. And it seems to be linked a lot. It sounds really obvious to say it, but like the focus and the outrage around abortion at this time is it's not so much the fact that people don't want to be pregnant. It's how they got pregnant. There seems to be a really strong link with this. It's kind of like outrage about sexual promiscuity, outrage around the kind of sex that isn't

just for procreation. It does seem to be a kind of a concern about the sexual morals of people. Yes. I mean, certainly there was a lot of concern about sexual morals in any community and among the Puritans and in early America. But there's both understanding of an unmarried woman. who gets stuck and the man doesn't marry her like the case that I was telling about. They're furious at the man. Yeah. And so there's some sympathy to that. But then there's also, as it becomes public, that it's married women who are going to these clinics.

And it's a very specific group of married women in the 1830s and 1840s that they cover in the press that they're married, their middle class, the Yankee women. And they're going in and having a board. and they're also involved in politics. They are out there in the public sphere. Of course, we know about the abolition movement in the 1830s and 1840s and on, but also they're talking about temperance

and they're talking about prostitution. And the women's rights movement talks about both of those in terms of male misbehavior, male immorality, and male sexual abuse. They don't use our terms, but they talk about how out of those talk about how alcohol, men go and use all the money and destroy the family. There isn't food. There are shoes for the kids. And they also turn around and assault their families. And that

women, they use different language, but women are subjected to rape and involuntary pregnancies. So that's one attack on male morality and the other is focusing on prostitution. And the women's rights movements, they're organizing to actually watch who goes in and they're listing the names of the men. And they are saying, men are the ones who are immoral. Women are highly moral. We're the ones who go to church. We're the ones who raise the children and watch what's going on. And they need to come to our standard. They need to become like women. And so there's a bit of a backlash here where even the physicians who begin this campaign is like, hey, women are immoral because they are having abortions, and that is worse than prostitution. And so, you know, there's this kind of

a defense and attack on women. And you have to understand, as I'm saying this, that we're really talking about, very specific. There's white middle classes, and there's also working class outrage over these movements, as well as outrage at the class above that is trying to correct their behavior. So most of this is really directed at what you think of as rather powerful or protected or special women, the upper middle class is white women. Wow. I hadn't made that connection before. That's really interesting that it's a way of attacking their morality. Yes. That's fascinating. Well, and one of the key players in New York is Anthony Comstock. Ah, yes. And he's part of the YMCA, and he's going after vice. And his, the origins of his work is, you know, men are passing around or

purchasing dirty pictures, erotica, in the Civil War, the soldiers. And he starts fighting that and then fighting any kind of vice, obscenity, you know, dance halls, and anything to prevent pregnancy, contraceptives or abortion are equated with immorality and pornography. And eventually, we have a federal law that bans the advertisement and the use of the postal service for any kind of quote-unquote obscenity, including anything about abortion or contraception. Which had a huge repercussions. So people can't order any kind of health, anything. If it's due with reproduction, they can't order protection through the post or anything like that at all. Well, it doesn't completely, I mean, one thing about this all the time is the laws don't work.

No, they don't. You can't think that they absolutely shut things down because they don't. No. But what they do is produce more surveillance. over anyone who's trying to sell or provide the service or anyone who's trying to get information and people who are using them. So there's more surveillance, there's more policing, and they will go in and shut down certain people. So they, Madam Restelle in New York, who is the very famous abortion provider in the 1830s and 1840s. They go after her numerous times, even when they don't have a law to use. And, you know, Comstock is around for a long time. He also goes after Margaret Sanger's first birth control clinic in New York in 1914, 1915.

So they do shut things down. At the same time, they cannot reach everybody. But of course it frightens everybody. They're being policed, and lots of people can't get information. I mean, it was successful enough that Margaret Sanger thought no one had ever talked about any of this before. There was no information, no knowledge. And actually, there had been a very lively discussion about sex. controlling pregnancy earlier in the 19th century.

So before the 90th century, early 19th century, it wasn't widely spoken about, but it was certainly understood and acceptable that there were remedies available, things that you could do, things you could take that would induce a miscarriage. Then as the 19th century rumbles on, we start to get more and more concern around specifically abortion.

And when does it actually become illegal in America? And what happened? What led up to that? So the laws that criminalize abortion from conception on are passed in the 1860s and 1870s. So by 1880, it's criminalized in every state, but it goes by states. So we have this, you always have to remember in the U.S., we have a patchwork of laws. Yes. Now and in the past, but now we have 50 states and what might be happening in every state is not the same.

So that makes it very complicated for everybody. So to go backwards, 1860s and 1870s, and it is initiated by, a very specific figure, a physician named Dr. Horatio Storer, who was trained at Harvard. He was a Harvard professor. He's a specialist in gynecology and obstetrics. And he writes essays on abortion and how it is a killing, that quickening is meaningless. That is not when pregnancy begins. You know, women don't really know anything.

Some of them never are quick. And yet they deliver a baby. Ha, ha, ha. Thanks, Horatio. So scorning the knowledge that was at the root of morality and law and women's own capacity to understand their own bodies and saying quickening's irrelevant, life begins earlier at the instant of conception and claiming they had new science, which they really didn't. But anyway, he writes about really the evils of abortion and the people who are performing it. And eventually, he's the person who pushes the new.

new American Medical Association, the AMA, which is tiny, it is not powerful, it is not well known, it's nothing like the AMA today, and pushes that organization and the medical societies to bring model legislation criminalizing abortion at all stages of pregnancy and pre-quickening and post-quickening. And medical societies bring this to the state legislatures. And that's how these laws are eventually passed. So you have to ask, what are they saying, and why does this convince the state legislators? And also, why are the doctors interested in this? Yeah, why then? What was happening then?

Exactly. So doctors, this is a small group. There are lots of different kinds of doctors in practice in the 19th century. There's no licensing. People who are apprenticed to somebody else can become a doctor. If they read textbooks, they can become a doctor. or they can have this much more fancy and expensive education and go to Europe and become a doctor. So you can see right there, there's enormous class differences.

There are these very elite, well-to-do people who become orthodox, regular doctors. And then there's a whole lot of other people who they think are not doctors. They shouldn't be able to practice and they are competing with them. And that includes midwives and what they call lady doctors. Lady doctors, brilliant. Yeah. So this is also about, they want to. to control the competition.

They are claiming we're the doctors, and these other people are the ones who are performing abortions. Passing these laws will mean that they have a new ally in the state. They're connected, and they can declare that something that has not been unusual, has been acceptable in the law, is now criminal,

with one exception. Doctors who have a bona fide medical reason to perform an abortion may do so. do so. So it always remains legal for doctors, regular doctors, not the people that they're attacking, right, to perform abortions. They always leave that exception for themselves where in their medical judgment, if it's needed to preserve the, quote, life or the health of the woman, they can do it. So that's their interest, but that's not necessarily convincing for the state legislatures. They're also saying the people who have abortions are these Yankee white middle class women,

and they're not doing their duty to the nation. Instead, they're out involved in the public and in politics. They should be bearing children and raising children and staying out of areas of life that are not their business. Wow. And if they don't have children as they should for the nation and their families and their class, then the country is going to be settled by immigrants, by quote unquote aliens,

and especially Catholics. And we will be, you know, basically the class that's in power, white Protestant elite men, we will lose the power. So this, and he produces data showing how immigrants are having so many more children than, quote, unquote, Americans. It's not even accurate data, but okay. And he's the key person that produces all the material and state legislatures. This one guy just.

Yeah, I mean, he doesn't do it all alone, but he writes everything, produces everything, writes the letters that the medical society sends to the legislatures and tells them how to go about this. And obviously, the medical societies take it up and the state legislators listen and pass these laws. And it is directed, especially, you see the class racial dynamic in terms of what their goals and fears are. the results of these laws later most hurt i mean it hurts all women it's directed at these middle class women but it especially then hurts women of color working class women poor women as we have a new loss enforcement system created and as you have you know many doctors refusing to provide abortions it's kind of a long answer what no it's fascinating that what was driving this in no

small part and not even subtly was the argument that we need more white people. Very specific white people. It's white Protestants who are of the upper classes, who are the people who are educated, moneyed, and have political power. And it's, I think that it kind of goes to the heart of what we're dealing around with here is that not being able to control family size, not being able to control your reproductive capacities. I once came across a record of a woman in Ireland in, I think it was 1910, and she'd given birth over 23 times.

Yeah. Like she just, because obviously she got married very young and then pretty much every year from then on until she hit menopause. Yeah. She'd had a baby. Well, and you know, in early America, the European settlers and after the revolution had

really high fertility rates. They had you know, 10, 15 children, which also includes miscarriages and stillbers. I mean, That doesn't count pregnancies. And I know, like Europe thought, what? They're so, they're bizarre over there. They're having so many.

They're so fertile. But over the 19th century, this drops in half. Do we know why? Well, we know there's various ways to do that. And we also know some of the whys. I mean, if you think sociologically, people in the middle classes, if you want to ensure that your own children are able to maintain that. family class, that takes money to be able to, like say 1830s, 1840s and on, right? It takes money to

ensure that they are educated and the son might become a minister or a doctor, which was not well-paying particularly, set them up in business to make sure that your daughters can get married. So they have fewer children because they're focusing on that small family and ensuring their class status. Then others, you know, rural families, as they move into cities, we all know that very quickly they may have large families and then over time, the size gets smaller. And that's for a whole bunch of reasons. When you're farming, you need lots of people to do all the work and the gender, it's gendered that kind of labor. But once you're, you know, in a city, you have smaller living space. The number of children needed declines. So it's also about people's planning and their

desires. And so they're using a lot of different things. 19th century married couples might not always live together because they traveled. They traveled and they visited family for six months at a time. Of course. And that kind of thing. Nursing newborns will decrease fertility, you know, that kind of deliberate abstinence. And then there are also the methods, there's kind of the basic methods that everyone since antiquity on has figured out. Men pull out. And, they use teas and different things. There are kind of earlier versions of the diaphragm that are available. So people can be using all kinds of things and they work some of the time to some degree. And then if somebody realizes, uh, my mencies are late and we might be having another child,

they can turn to abortion. So those are the key methods that everyone's figured out since antiquity. You know, it's either trying to prevent before you get pregnant or once you're, you prevent the birth at the point of pregnancy. Yeah. So those are the methods that bring down family size and fertility over the course of the 19th century. It's such a difficult question to ask because obviously we don't have reliable statistics and figures on this, but is there any way of knowing how many people were trying to

access abortions? When they made it illegal, was there any kind of pushback against it? Was there any kind of outcry of like we need this? Well, there's not an outcry in the way. that we, the way it is today. There's none of that. But for a lot of people, it doesn't change anything. Because they're doing this at home.

It's domestic. They are going to local neighbors. And so a lot of it is simply invisible. Yeah. They also continue to go to midwives and to doctors. So the medical profession is leading the cause to criminalize abortion and is talking about how it's immoral. This is a murder.

this is like infanticide in public. But then a patient comes to them and they say, blah, and they tell, it's why they need this. Doctors perform abortions. They also have a loophole that allows them to do it. But a lot of that is just, it's going to be quiet. Health care takes place at home. It does not take place in hospital. Abortions mostly are going to be at home. And unless there is an injury or a death, most of the time, nobody's going to see it. And there's so many, many people available in the 19th century. It changes with the 20th century because it becomes increasingly visible and you have fewer providers. But, you know, what I found is doctors, of course, were providing abortions, just like midwives and other people, and they made referrals. So it all is

going to depend on people's ability to find the person who will help them and to give them information. And I would say, even into the early 20th century, there's so many reports from doctors saying, oh, you know, these ladies, they come in, and they are well-respected, married ladies in the community, and they think it's okay to have an abortion. And I tell them, no, quickening doesn't matter. And they laugh and say, I'll just ask somebody else. There are so many reports like that from doctors who are frustrated with their patients that they cannot teach them. They preach at them. It doesn't seem to make any difference. They critique the ministers and pastors of the country because they don't seem to be concerned about this. And really, the doctors are putting themselves above the ministry

when they insist on the immorality of abortion. And of course, we should note, they are talking about morality, not talking about, really, they're not talking about medicine. No. I mean, they are saying there's something different about science, but it is driven by all of these other issues, the criminalization. And of course, the more that the focus ramps up on the horrors of abortion, how immoral it is, the more it becomes spotlighted as an issue, the more it forces it underground and into the hands of people that aren't safe, I suppose, because if you couldn't access a doctor to do this for you, then you could take one of the herbal abortifacts, but they're also very toxic and they're very dangerous. Now, it was alarmed to read an article that apparently people in America

are now searching out some of these herbs and things today. So we won't name them today, which is a horrible state of affairs, but they don't work a lot of the time, and they can be extremely dangerous. And backstreet abortions likewise can be extremely dangerous, can they. So when did we start to get a kind of a pushback in the states to this? So it's been criminalized, it's illegal,

the doctors are moralizing to high heaven. When do you start to get the voices saying, this should be legal? We need this to be legal. You know, there's a couple of people in the 30s. There's a movement in the 1930s in Britain to legalize abortion. There's nothing like that in the U.S. I mean, there were a couple people who talk about it, but there's nothing similar. And that, of course, is we do not have, I mean, the left had been stamped out after World War I, and we just did not have the same kind of politics. So there was nothing comparable. It's not, it's in the late 50s that you have a group of, a small group of doctors and law. lawyers who begin to talk about we need to change these laws. The laws are basically tying our hands, doctors' hands, because we don't know what the law actually means. And we know we need to provide abortions for our patients. We know there's medical reasons and we want to, but we're

afraid that we are going to be policed and arrested. And so we need to change the law so that we can provide more abortions. So that's where it begins and they write a model law and it begins to go into some of the state legislators and it is just to expand legal abortion for doctors, what we call therapeutic abortions, what they call therapeutic abortions for medical reasons only. And they say they have written into it. It's for protection of life, health, rape, I think is in there and for fetal deformity. So it's very narrow, but it's intended to to expand the practice of legal abortion. And they're very aware of the dangers that women are facing,

but they also discussed, you know, but what about for a young woman, you know, a 16-year-old, oh, we can't put that in, that will never fly. So they're aware that this will not sort of solve everything. And then we have a couple of things happen. We have Finkbine and Thalidomide, which everybody is familiar with. Thilidamide was widely sold in the UK

and Germany and Europe. But in the U.S., it was not sold. But it was in cough syrup. It was a sedative. Really? I didn't know that. Yeah, it caused birth defects, especially missing limbs,

shortened limbs, and very high miscarriage and infant mortality rates. And this terrified the world and terrified Americans. So there begins to be a conversation about abortion because doctors are like,

you know, if you know you've taken this, you should get an abortion. you deserve to be able to have an abortion. There's absolutely no question in the medical profession about this. Sherry Finkbein is the person who tries to help other mothers like her because she had taken something and realizes, oh, this is the medicine that's causing these, quote-unquote, damaged babies in Europe and asks for an abortion.

But she tells people, she goes to the press, and immediately there are people who say, what? You know, you can't do this. the local sheriff, if this happens, I will prosecute you. And the doctor and the hospital, they get scared and they will not allow the abortion. And then every single state does the same thing. And she ultimately, she cannot get a legal abortion in the U.S. And no one's going to take the risk.

So, I mean, ultimately the Swedish journalists were very interested and they paid to help her and her husband to go to Sweden, ultimately have an abortion there. So there's that, which really brings birth defects and the fear of disability and abortion and the sense from somebody like her, a white middle class mother who was very respectable. She had four children who did not want to have an abortion. And they start talking about abortion. So there's Finkbine and then there's a German measles epidemic. German measles is rebella, and German measles causes birth defects if a woman becomes infected when she's pregnant. And that can be blindness, deafness, intellectual impairments. And really, Americans and doctors and the rest of what they tended to think of this as thalidomide babies.

Because there was a lot of press and a lot of photos of thalidomide babies. And so that's what they saw. and they also were like, if I've had German measles, I don't want this to happen to my child. I don't think I can take care of them. And they sought abortions. And without question, the medical profession globally and throughout the U.S. thought this was a good reason. This was a reasonable reason for abortions.

So they're talking about this in the press. And then there are some cases in the U.S. where they, well, in San Francisco, California, they go after doctors for performing abortions for German measles, which are considered to be completely reasonable. Hospitals are okay with this. They're highly reputable doctors, and this also explodes into public, and especially for the medical profession to realize, oh, they're willing to come after you when you've done an abortion in a hospital where everybody has agreed this is reasonable. So that's all from the medical side. I mean, I have to point out that this early reform movement and the expansion of reform and the adoption of pushing these reform laws and women's support,

men's support, family support around the country for it, does come from the fear of disabilities and the fear of having disabled children. And I see this as a combination of complete fear of disabilities and avoidance. And if you look at the circumstances, their awareness as parents as to what this will actually mean in real life. So it's partly the body, but it is also, the child will be shunned, the family will be shunned. There is no support socially for helping to educate or to provide health care or even to include them in social life. Instead, they will be excluded. They have no right to education. So all of this is part of how people think. And they conclude if they know they've been infected, many or most conclude, this is terrible for the unborn baby. I must have an abortion for my child and for my family. And that is how they talk about it. I'll be back after a short break.

Millions dead, a higher proportion of civilian casualties than in the Second World War, America, Britain, Russia and China all involved in a conflict that technically remains active to this day. So why is the Korean War of 1950 to 53 called the Forgotten War? The North Koreans and the South Koreans, even today in the 2020. They're still officially at war. This July, we're dedicating a special series of episodes to finding out what this unique conflict was all about. From the halls of power? I've seen documents in the last week where the British Chiefs of Staff are telling Clement Attlee, this might lead to World War III.

This might be a nuclear war. To the battlefront. During the Korean War, the ship fired its guns far more than it ever did in the whole of the Second World War. Because that's what we were doing, die in day. Join me, James Rogers, throughout July, on the Warfare podcast from History Hit. As we remember the war, the world forgot. A little bit about the case of Jerry Santoro and what happened to her. She died of a botched abortion in 1964 and was photographed on the floor.

What impact did that have? Well, that photo was brought on in public and showed people what illegal abortion and the criminalization of abortion. abortion meant. Here was a woman who had not been able to find somebody who could perform an abortion and she and her partner tried to do this together and she died in the process and her body was found in the position of their attempt and she was bleeding and there's a black and white crime photo that then becomes published and publicized. So it shows in this graphic way what happens. We don't usually have photos available that show actually what abortion was like and also about the injuries and the deaths. There were thousands of women every single year pouring into

emergency rooms throughout the U.S. It's like 6,000 per year in New York, 5,000 per year in Chicago, 6,000, something like that in L.A. So it's everywhere. It's not just the big cities. It's just that's where we have some numbers. And so we don't have photos of that. There were entire wards dedicated to septic abortions, to people who were feverish, infected, and some of them died. And we do not have pictures of that. We do not have pictures of these crime scenes. So we have to use our imagination. So the picture of this woman then gets used in the movement to demonstrate the dangers of illegal abortion. And also to demonstrate past Roe versus Wade when you have an anti-abortion movement develop and their use of photos, blown up embryos and fetuses or things they claim to be, right, to frighten people.

This was used as a counter photo. I mean, it also ended up being controversial, you know, did anyone agree to this? It's a really graphic image. Yeah. So the thing is, I mean, that's true. There are these, and I'm really emphasizing also there's deaths, but they're also, you know, what's called morbidity, the people who are injured and the people who are harmed. And this, of course, affected them and their families for the rest of their lives. If they barely survived, they're aware of that. It also affected the people who took care of them. So medical students, residents, nurses, doctors, hospital staff, they were holding hands. They were trying to address the injuries, the perforation of the uterus and the abdomen and the bleeding. And the

infections and people were dying on them and they knew perfectly well, this could be a safe procedure. This does not have to be happening. And so that becomes part of what drives ultimately the medical profession to support complete repeal of the abortion laws because they are seeing the consequences and they have to deal with the consequences and it becomes unbearable. And the other part of that is it's also clear that there is a huge difference by class and race as to who is most injured. I mean, everybody could be in that situation of going to an unknown person or trying it themselves out of desperation because they cannot find safe providers. And so middle class white women, working class people, black, Asian, everybody. But, of course, if you were married

to a doctor, you're a doctor, many of those people had more likely to have access, but not everybody, depending on where they lived and who they knew. And so across all categories of identities of people, they're going through this. But you can see, like in the hospitals by 1970, 71, they're saying in Georgia, you know, most of the people who are coming in with injuries are poor black women, and the rates of deaths are like 11 times higher for black, unmarried teens compared to whites. So there's just this awareness of the public health disaster that has occurred as a result of these laws. And I suppose before, I'm going to have to let you go eventually. But yeah, I know.

One of the things I do want to talk to you about before you go is how is this policed? Because it seems like a really difficult thing to police. What's like did the police just raid these hospital wards? It's like what happened? How is this police? This is a really important question and I think gives us an idea of what will be coming. Because the same methods for capturing people and trying to suppress abortion are going to be revived. So they focus on people where there's deaths. And I said that first and you could think of that as we're going to get rid of the people who are dangerous. It's almost like taking care of malpractice. To do that, though, even in the 1900s, they're looking for the women who they think are going to die.

And they begin to require doctors and hospitals to ask questions, to conduct really the investigation for them and ask, who did this, where did they do it, how much did you pay, who's the quote unquote father, and even threaten them. I won't take care of you until you give me the information and then sign on this piece of paper where I've recorded what you've said. They called in the police, as required, the police interrogated women to obtain dying declarations. This happened to lots of women who didn't die, and their cases don't code into public or a court. So people who were miscarrying right into the 70s were kept until a police officer could come and question them. And we will know, and it already is happening, to women who miscarry. So women are seen as suspects. Because they miscarry, they are a suspect.

Is this an abortion? Did you do it yourself? And women who are already suspects because they are black. Because black people have been criminalized and they are seen as criminal. They are going to be policed more. They're going to be questioned more and they're going to pursue. So that's one thing where women really are punished through the process of investigation. The other method that becomes very important is raiding clinics that become known. Whether it's a complaint or they just see lots of people going in, this is everywhere in the

country, police will surround the office, the home, and collect women as they leave and hold them, go in and conduct a raid and all of a sudden people come in and their goal is to capture patients, patients who are waiting for their procedures, patients hopefully in the middle of the procedure so they can capture the doctor or the provider and people recovering. Oh, Jesus. And all of their medical records. and then use all of that to question people and bring them in to court to testify. So women's bodies, we have in these laws in the U.S. and the anti-abortion movement saying,

we're not interested in prosecuting women. They're victims of abortion. We're only going after the providers. That, of course, isn't true. But even if they never prosecute a woman who has an abortion, they will be punishing her because the process of investigation is, punitive. And the only way to prove it is to have evidence from people's bodies, both verbal, oral testimony, and literally doing gynecological examinations to collect evidence to prove that an

abortion was attempted or performed. The woman's body is a crime scene, basically. Yes. Some of these cases, I was so outraged and upset when I read them. I was in the archives. stomping around in just fury. Because it was, I mean, this case where they brought 10 women to the police first to a doctor who did a gynecological examination under the eyes of the police and then took him to the police station. And that just is so horrific. The coerced exams, I mean, it's an assault.

It is. It is truly an assault. And today we have, you know, we have states where it's legal so people can travel. It's very expensive. but we also have new methods of surveillance, as we all know, through the internet and through our phones. And so the ability to surveil for the police and prosecutors who want to go after abortion is astronomical simpler. You know, there's many more sources. There's cameras all over the streets.

I hadn't even thought about that. But if they want to try and prove who's had an abortion or not, they're going to have to target women who are miscarrying pregnant recently been predestinely. And it's not only that, we also have a lot of laws in this country that have been passed and have been held as unconstitutional that say a fetus is a human being, an embryo is a human being, and that harming that is manslaughter and murder. So we have these laws that can potentially come back into place, and people already have been arrested and prosecuted and imprisoned for miscarrying, for a stillbirth, for the charge that they committed manslaughter. So the dangers are, there's predictions of the incredible criminalization that is going to take place.

It's just so bleak. It's just, it's so frightening. I mean, we have to say it is frightening. It is incredibly dreadful what's happening and upsetting. There is also a very strong movement to provide abortions, which is like the 1960s to some extent, but there are people ready to provide medication abortion. They are ready. to go into states on the borders or go into the states and provide abortions. We have the international effort of having a ship in international waters and people going there for abortions. All of this is going to happen in the U.S. too. But it becomes harder, more expensive, dangerous if they think they might get caught. And some people will not know that there's somebody out there who wants to

help them. They will not be able to find the people who will help pay for it, who help drive them, who will help in all the ways they need, pay for child care. They won't be able to access to internet and get the information. And again, the most vulnerable. They're the ones who are going to, in desperation, go to someone else or do things themselves and they may or may not survive. Leslie, it has been so amazing to talk to you. And if people want to find out more about your work in your research, which they should because it's so valuable now. It always was, but particularly now, where can they look you up? Where can they find you? So I have my book, When Abortion was a crime, which has been reissued in a second edition with a new update about the current situation,

and dangerous pregnancies, which is about German measles and rebella and the scientific discovery, what that meant in terms of disabilities and politics and the abortion movement. Professor Leslie Regan, thank you so much for joining me and lending me your expertise, knowledge on this really, really important subject. Thank you so much, Kate, for having me. I appreciate it.

Thank you for listening, and thank you to Leslie for your work. If you like what you've heard, please don't forget to like, review, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. This was a tough one, so thanks for staying with us. And most of all, stay well, and stay safe, everybody. Join me again, The Twix for Sheets,

the History of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by History Hit.