The Shift in Abortion Policy in the 1800s Essay

Even after abortions became illegal, women continued to have them. Practitioners did their work behind closed doors or in private homes. Women often resorted to desperate and deadly measures just to have an abortion. Women had been able to get abortions by leaving the country or paying a physician in the U.S. a large fee for the procedure. While others weren 't so lucky. They often sought out back-alley procedures or took matters in their own hands. The methods

Abortions became increasingly more common throughout the end of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century, even though, by 1900, abortion was prohibited by law throughout the U.S. unless two or more doctors agreed that an abortion was necessary to preserve the life of the pregnant woman (Sauer).

Therefore, in Europe and Great Britain and of course many other countries, abortion was looked at in a very negative way and the women who got abortions were perpetrators. “Abortion was illegal in Britain under the 1861 offences against the person act. Any person, including the pregnant woman herself found guilty of attempting to procure abortion was liable to receive maximum penalty of life imprisonment” (Jones, v. 20.2, pgs. 283-298). Along with other countries the United States saw abortion as a wrong doings in the past. In the past before the 1800’s the United States did in fact allow abortions until of course laws were set in. This movement from abortion being legal to becoming illegal happened in the late 1800’s. Abortion was then outlawed in different states for many reasons. Due to abortion being illegal in most states, many women tried to have self-induced abortions which caused them many health problems (National Abortion Federation). Also, the National Abortion Federation gave statistics such as: “Between 1967 and 1973 one-third of the states liberalized or repealed their criminal abortion laws” (History of Abortion).For over 100 year’s abortion was illegal in every state and finally about forty-four years ago it was barely being made legal again.

Abortion has been a complex social issue in the United States ever since restrictive abortion laws began to appear in the 1820s. By 1965, abortions had been outlawed in the U.S., although they continued illegally; about one million abortions per year were estimated to have occurred in the 1960s. (Krannich 366) Ultimately, in the 1973 Supreme Court case of Roe v. Wade, it was ruled that women had the right to privacy and could make an individual choice on whether or not to have an abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy. (Yishai 213)

Illegal abortions are unsafe and account for 13% of all the deaths of woman because of serious complications. The most common grounds which an abortion is allowed is to save a woman’s life, in situations of rape or incest, and for economic or social reasons. In many circumstances where a safe abortion is legal, women risk their lives and many die because the obligation had not been met. In many areas unsupervised uses of misoprostol is being taken by those who cannot access services. Misoprostol is a drug used for early abortions, to treat missed abortions, and to induce labor. Every women of every social class seek terminations, typically a woman who ends her pregnancy is young, white, unmarried, poor, or over the age of 40. More than half of six million pregnancies each year are unplanned and, about half of them end up in abortions.

Abortion, the termination of pregnancy before the fetus is capable of independent life, has been practiced since ancient times. With records dating to 1550 BC, it’s no question that abortion techniques have been used throughout the ages as an effective form of birth control. Pregnancies were terminated through a number of methods, including the use of herbs, sharpened instruments, the application of abdominal pressure, and other techniques. In the 19th century, the English Parliament and the American state legislatures prohibited induced abortion to protect women from surgical procedures that were deemed unsafe. However, in 1973, abortion was legalized as a result of the U.S. Supreme Court rule in Roe v. Wade. This ruling made it possible

Abortions were widely used in the early eighteen hundreds and kept secret due public scrutineer. Not only were they considered against the law in some places but were risky due to high risk of infection from unsterile equipment used to perform the actions.” Without today’s current technology, maternal and infant mortality rates during childbirth were extraordinarily high. “(National abortion Federation, 2016) as time contained states changed and modified their laws to accommodate political agendas, these opposed to legal abortion had begun to fight absent any stated funded abortion clines. Then there was Roe v. Wade this was the first major Supreme Court battle based on abortion laws and ethics. Roe v. Wade decision of the courts said that they “considered the constitutionality of a Texas statute made it a crime to obtain an abortion except when it was necessary to save the life of the mother”. (Harris, 2014) There was another Supreme Court case that changed the views of the courts based on how they judge the frame work of decision on the trimester model. The ethics involved in this are not just solely left to the mother of the potential life but in the network of people

Historically, abortion was not regulated in the United States until the 20th century. Prior to the 1900s, abortion occurred regularly and was performed by midwives, along with other reproductive health care procedures (Ehrenreich & English, 2010). The rise of the medical industry and a growing immigrant population led to more interest amongst doctors in restricting abortion (Davis, 1983; Solinger, 2015). The American Medical Association began to lobby for the criminalization of abortion and the medicalization of birth, claiming to be interested in protecting women from the harsh chemicals used to induce abortion (Solinger, 2015). Solinger (2015) writes:

(History in dispute) In addition, middle-class Americans were still debating whether married women, let alone teenage girls, should use contraception. This illuminates how little information was provided at this time, and how an unwanted pregnancy might yield confusion and controversy. (History in dispute) Abortion, as it still is presently, was a controversial action for one to take. Many believed in the idea of “immediate animation”, where when the first fetal movement is felt, it has been “infused with a soul” (Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113). It is very much apparent why killing a fetus “infused with a soul” might render one to disapprove. Terminating a pregnancy is killing unborn human life, and this concept inspired people to Those who believed in ideas like this would advocate against giving women access to abortion, or at least disapproved them doing so.

It was argued that anti-abortion laws were “the product of a Victorian social concern to discourage illicit sexual conduct” (543). Another reason abortion was previously prohibited was because “the procedure was a hazardous one for the woman” (544). The court pointed out that this was no longer valid or relevant in this day of age. They explained that abortion was now “relatively safe”, and that “mortality rates for women undergoing early abortions, where the procedure is legal, appear to be as low as or lower than the rates of normal childbirth” (544). When abortion is prohibited, women seeking abortions sometimes tend to undergo illegal abortions, which are extremely unsafe. Therefore, the court said, “the state has a legitimate interest in seeing that abortion, like any other medical procedure, is performed under circumstances that insure maximum safety for the patient” (544). When abortion was illegal, the mortality rate for women having abortions was significantly higher than when it was made

In 1821, Connecticut passed the first law in the United States barring abortion subsequent to the practice of “quickening” which were usually performed by administering poison to the woman after the fourth month of pregnancy (Thiroux 255).

As previously stated, abortion was quite accessible during the Nineteenth Century simply because it was classified as a private matter between a woman and her doctor. Although medical practices were drastically different during that period, doctors performed very effective techniques to

Justice Blackmun argued that historically abortion was accepted and legal since the times of the Greeks and Romans. He pointed out that under common law, it was without dispute that an “abortion performed before “quickening”—the first recognizable movement of the fetus in utero, appearing usually from the 16th to the 18th week of pregnancy—was not an indictable offense.” Indeed, it was only in the last two centuries that any real regulation had been passed to punish the abortion of “quickening” fetuses. The abortion of a “pre-quickening” child was not illegal in the United States until it was banned in New York in 1860. To be sure, Blackmun argued that abortion laws in the United States were relatively stricter in the 1970’s than they had been in the past two thousand years. Therefore, under Blackmun’s argument, the Roe v. Wade ruling was more in step with the past interpretation of abortion law up to the middle of the nineteenth century.

One of these time periods that is often not discussed is the colonial period. In the 1700s, abortion was actually quite common during the first trimester. During this time period, a lack of menstruation was not necessarily seen to be a sign of pregnancy. The medical theory Humorism was prevalent during this era, and a woman’s lack

Pregnancy before marriage in the 18th century was considered a disgrace and burden for many women. The ideology during this era was based on religious beliefs and having sex before marriage was a virtue; birth control was not widely accepted or considered a safe way to prevent pregnancy. Women would perform unsafe abortions that would put their health at risk since it was performed with home remedies. “Abortion in the early 1800s was considered a