WEBVTT - Abortion: The Body Politic, Part 2 0:00:02.440 --> 0:00:09.320 It's been very important to understand the conditions of reproductive 0:00:09.360 --> 0:00:15.040 life that women lived before ROW and how little control 0:00:15.160 --> 0:00:20.840 they had over their sexuality, their fertility, and their ensuing lives. 0:00:22.360 --> 0:00:26.400 We went to a planned parenthood in d C and 0:00:26.440 --> 0:00:30.440 they asked me if I was married, and unfortunately I 0:00:30.520 --> 0:00:33.720 told them the truth and they said, we can't prescribe 0:00:34.560 --> 0:00:38.320 birth control pills for you. I was sterilized by the 0:00:38.400 --> 0:00:45.080 Dalkon shield. In ninety three, I developed acute p i 0:00:45.159 --> 0:00:52.200 D pelic inflammatory disease and encountered a doctor who did 0:00:52.280 --> 0:00:54.920 not want to remove the Dalcoon shield because it was 0:00:55.040 --> 0:00:58.320 own eugenical thinking. He thought, well, you already had a baby, 0:00:58.320 --> 0:01:00.120 so I'm not gonna take a dow con shill out. 0:01:00.160 --> 0:01:03.960 It must be some kind std lab. So for six 0:01:04.040 --> 0:01:07.959 months he kept misdiagnosing my problem as my stomach became 0:01:08.000 --> 0:01:12.000 more and more distended, until I actually went into a 0:01:12.040 --> 0:01:16.800 call after my fallopian tubes exploded and so taken to 0:01:17.000 --> 0:01:19.959 the hospital in an ambulance. Woke up with all of 0:01:19.959 --> 0:01:25.440 my reproductive organs were missing. I'm Katie correct, and this 0:01:25.600 --> 0:01:30.280 is abortion the Body Politics, Part two. Today, we're stepping 0:01:30.280 --> 0:01:34.399 into the past long before brow to trace the roots 0:01:34.440 --> 0:01:39.920 of today's abortion debate. The right to make decisions over 0:01:40.080 --> 0:01:48.080 our own physical selves is the fundament of democracy. Feminist 0:01:48.240 --> 0:01:52.600 icon Glorious steinhum, You know, in the past, when women 0:01:52.640 --> 0:01:56.400 expressed this, they have been declared to be witches. This 0:01:56.480 --> 0:01:58.960 is how women got to be witches, you know, because 0:01:59.600 --> 0:02:03.639 they actuss medicine for other women, and so women would 0:02:04.080 --> 0:02:07.880 go into their homes pregnant to come out unpregnant. And 0:02:07.960 --> 0:02:12.240 this was perceived as witchery, not only in in Europe, 0:02:12.280 --> 0:02:15.640 but to some extent in New England, in this in 0:02:15.720 --> 0:02:20.800 this country too. Here's the thing about abortion, It has 0:02:20.840 --> 0:02:26.079 always existed. As activists Loretta Ross points out, as long 0:02:26.120 --> 0:02:28.760 as women have sex with men, they're always gonna want 0:02:28.760 --> 0:02:32.400 to control their reproduction, whether it was cal dung back 0:02:32.440 --> 0:02:37.440 in the ancient Roman times or lie was that that 0:02:37.880 --> 0:02:41.880 created in more modern times. And the majority of the 0:02:41.880 --> 0:02:46.720 country does not oppose abortion, that's historian Leslie Reagan. Majority 0:02:46.760 --> 0:02:48.720 of the country does not want any of these kinds 0:02:48.760 --> 0:02:53.280 of laws. Why then, is abortion such a contentious, even 0:02:53.440 --> 0:02:58.160 volatile issue in this country. Ricky Solinger is a historian 0:02:58.280 --> 0:03:05.080 and author focusing on reproductive politics, certainly starting with the 0:03:05.160 --> 0:03:12.000 slavery regime, which defined white women as distinct is essentially 0:03:12.040 --> 0:03:15.560 distinct from Black women, and black women is essentially distinct 0:03:15.600 --> 0:03:20.760 from white women. One can trace the different positions and 0:03:20.840 --> 0:03:27.600 the different consequences of reproductive bodies depending on race. And 0:03:27.720 --> 0:03:31.840 here again is Loretta Ross. My name's Loretta Ross, and 0:03:31.880 --> 0:03:37.360 I'm an associate professor at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. 0:03:37.880 --> 0:03:40.720 That was one of the twelve black women who created 0:03:40.760 --> 0:03:44.040 the theory and practice of reproductive justice in June of 0:03:44.200 --> 0:03:51.400 n At the beginning of the enslavement, most of the 0:03:51.560 --> 0:03:57.760 enslavors thought that they could import sufficient women black you know, 0:03:57.840 --> 0:04:01.560 people from Africa, women and men in in order to 0:04:01.760 --> 0:04:06.520 enlarge their labor force. But early in the eighteen hundreds, 0:04:06.960 --> 0:04:13.000 a law was passed forbidding the importation of additional African slaves, 0:04:13.520 --> 0:04:17.200 and so that's when the force breeding became the dominant strategy. 0:04:17.880 --> 0:04:22.960 One of the things that frustrates me frequently is to 0:04:23.040 --> 0:04:26.760 the extent that any of this reproductive oppression is covered. 0:04:27.200 --> 0:04:30.000 It's always covered from the perspective of what was done 0:04:30.040 --> 0:04:33.360 to the Black community. Rarely do people cover it from 0:04:33.360 --> 0:04:38.240 the perspective of what agency we exercise, what we did 0:04:38.400 --> 0:04:43.880 for ourselves, and they missed the larger story of reproductive 0:04:43.920 --> 0:04:52.360 resistance in our community. After the Civil War, that's when 0:04:52.920 --> 0:04:57.560 articles began to appear in newspapers, white newspapers for the 0:04:57.600 --> 0:05:00.080 most part, to saying that the black birth y it 0:05:00.200 --> 0:05:05.159 was a problem, but just until it was not, because 0:05:05.200 --> 0:05:09.280 when it wasn't about free labor, then the same reproductive 0:05:09.520 --> 0:05:15.000 productivity was problem with types even though the reproductive caretaking 0:05:15.160 --> 0:05:18.680 was not because he still had mammies and things like that. 0:05:18.880 --> 0:05:25.320 So you had this bifurcated kind of racist analysis that 0:05:25.520 --> 0:05:29.240 said that black women were irresponsible when it came to 0:05:29.320 --> 0:05:32.479 taking care of our own children. But we're very good, 0:05:32.560 --> 0:05:40.599 nanny said, taken care of white ones. We're sorry. But 0:05:40.800 --> 0:05:45.280 interestingly enough, from the perspective of black women, de Eb 0:05:45.480 --> 0:05:50.360 debosed at a sociological study starting at the end of 0:05:50.400 --> 0:05:53.560 the nineteenth century in the beginning of the twentie and 0:05:53.880 --> 0:05:58.120 he reported that the black birth rate between the end 0:05:58.160 --> 0:06:01.760 of the Civil War and when he publisher's research have 0:06:01.880 --> 0:06:05.719 been cut in half from the days of slavery. And 0:06:06.120 --> 0:06:10.480 that was also the time that my research discovered that 0:06:11.279 --> 0:06:14.600 to the extent that we have perspectives from black women 0:06:15.160 --> 0:06:18.279 now that were sometimes reported in black newspapers as well 0:06:18.320 --> 0:06:24.080 as Black women's organizations that they were talking amongst themselves 0:06:24.120 --> 0:06:29.440 about managing their own fertility. They bought from Africa a 0:06:29.480 --> 0:06:33.120 lot of midwifery knowledge, so they knew which plants and 0:06:33.279 --> 0:06:37.760 herbs could cause, you know, an abortion. I think it 0:06:37.839 --> 0:06:42.320 was an eight two. I saw a black feminist author 0:06:42.320 --> 0:06:45.279 who said, not all women are designed to be mothers, 0:06:45.279 --> 0:06:47.919 and we need to be able to control, you know, 0:06:47.960 --> 0:06:50.160 what happens to our bodies and stuff. And of course 0:06:50.200 --> 0:06:54.960 this was two decades before Margaret Singer came about. All 0:06:55.000 --> 0:06:58.159 I can do is speculate from the bread crumbs of 0:06:58.200 --> 0:07:02.080 evidence that I found is that they've wanted desperately to 0:07:02.080 --> 0:07:07.680 control their own fertility after dewry, you know, centuries of 0:07:07.800 --> 0:07:17.520 forth reading and not only multiple pregnancies, but also when 0:07:17.520 --> 0:07:21.760 you're already living in miserable racial and economic conditions, you 0:07:21.840 --> 0:07:24.000 want the best future for the children that you do 0:07:24.160 --> 0:07:29.320 have and keep. Abortion was legal under common law in 0:07:29.440 --> 0:07:33.640 early America, but they wouldn't have called it abortion. Really, 0:07:34.160 --> 0:07:37.800 we're talking about early in pregnancy, up until the point 0:07:37.840 --> 0:07:41.720 of quickening, that was legal under common law. I'm Professor 0:07:41.800 --> 0:07:45.320 Leslie Reagan. I'm a professor in the Department of History 0:07:45.360 --> 0:07:48.520 at the University of Illinois or Banish Champaigne. My book 0:07:48.600 --> 0:07:51.720 is When abortion was a crime Women Medicine in law 0:07:51.720 --> 0:07:55.280 in the United States eighteen sixty seven to nineteen seventy three. 0:07:56.200 --> 0:08:00.040 Quickening is the moment when a woman can fee you 0:08:00.600 --> 0:08:03.200 the fetus moving within her. We might say, you could 0:08:03.240 --> 0:08:05.600 feel kicking. You know, it's something you made, so it's 0:08:05.680 --> 0:08:11.120 kicking so And when that occurred, then she knew, oh, 0:08:11.160 --> 0:08:14.920 there there's life within me, and they would stop trying 0:08:14.960 --> 0:08:20.640 to end this pregnancy, because after quickening was when if 0:08:20.680 --> 0:08:23.000 you ended a pregnancy, if you aborted, that was what 0:08:23.200 --> 0:08:26.080 was against the law. The quickening, as you can see, 0:08:26.680 --> 0:08:30.400 is defined by women themselves. We know from domestic guide 0:08:30.400 --> 0:08:34.480 books and um advertisements, and because they they would talk 0:08:34.520 --> 0:08:39.280 about it as their mentees were obstructed, their body was 0:08:39.320 --> 0:08:44.080 out of equilibrium. It was always very uh euphized language 0:08:44.160 --> 0:08:47.920 like that. In the black newspapers of the day that 0:08:48.040 --> 0:08:51.800 we're beginning to be published, there was a product called 0:08:51.880 --> 0:08:56.920 puff p u F and the tagline to puff was 0:08:57.320 --> 0:09:03.080 in your calendar worries, Well, what is a woman worried about? 0:09:03.080 --> 0:09:08.680 The calendar? Right? That area is missing. There's domestic guide 0:09:08.679 --> 0:09:11.920 books produced to the seventeen hundreds and the eighteen hundreds, 0:09:11.960 --> 0:09:14.080 than they're republished over and over and over again, and 0:09:14.120 --> 0:09:17.240 they include information and recipes, that's how to make teas 0:09:17.320 --> 0:09:21.040 and how to bring the messies back. I think for 0:09:21.160 --> 0:09:25.320 all all races of women, we shared this kind of 0:09:25.400 --> 0:09:30.000 information around our kitchen tables and had conversations that we 0:09:30.120 --> 0:09:32.440 did that men weren't privy too, because we didn't think 0:09:32.440 --> 0:09:36.920 it was their business. That's what I've seen consistently through 0:09:37.840 --> 0:09:40.360 you know, millennium. That's what women do. We take care 0:09:40.360 --> 0:09:42.959 of business, and we don't care what the church says, 0:09:43.040 --> 0:09:44.840 what the state says, and what the men in our 0:09:44.920 --> 0:09:48.319 lives say. We know who's gonna be around for that 0:09:48.400 --> 0:09:53.200 baby and who's not. Kind of, you know, it's a 0:09:53.240 --> 0:09:56.400 feature of our plumbing that we have a much higher 0:09:56.440 --> 0:10:00.840 stake in these conversations than the sperm donors. The thing 0:10:00.880 --> 0:10:04.120 to remember is that women's lives, up until this point, 0:10:04.440 --> 0:10:07.960 we're part of the private sphere. But in the eighteen 0:10:08.040 --> 0:10:12.520 fifties things started to change and men wanted to control, 0:10:12.960 --> 0:10:18.560 even criminalize those private decisions. First, you have you have 0:10:18.679 --> 0:10:24.120 a very small group of elite physicians pushing for new legislation. 0:10:25.000 --> 0:10:30.160 Horatio store a specialist in gynecology and obstetrics at Harvard 0:10:30.360 --> 0:10:34.280 Um in Massachusetts, is the person behind this, and he 0:10:34.920 --> 0:10:39.880 begins to talk about how abortion is infanticide and that 0:10:40.000 --> 0:10:45.280 when women think that they're getting their mensis back before quickening, 0:10:45.480 --> 0:10:49.280 that they were all wrong, that this this was really 0:10:49.320 --> 0:10:52.600 a life. So Storer really did something when he started 0:10:52.640 --> 0:10:56.079 to name this early period when people are trying to 0:10:56.120 --> 0:10:58.920 get their menscies back, named that as an abortion. So 0:10:58.960 --> 0:11:02.600 he took something that was illegal, understood to be in moral, 0:11:02.679 --> 0:11:07.480 understood to be um, you know, taking the life, uh, 0:11:07.720 --> 0:11:12.520 developing life, and applied that term to this early period 0:11:12.559 --> 0:11:17.839 that had never been treated as the same. Once slavery 0:11:18.120 --> 0:11:23.400 was legally in dead, then the forced breeding that had 0:11:23.440 --> 0:11:26.959 been visited on black women suddenly got visited on light women. 0:11:27.920 --> 0:11:31.000 And that's when you have the beginning of the agitation 0:11:31.920 --> 0:11:37.319 for the legal restrictions on birth control, information and abortions, 0:11:37.679 --> 0:11:41.360 ending up in the eight seventy three Comstock Law, which 0:11:41.640 --> 0:11:46.480 Comstock Anthony Comstock was the Postmaster General and he's the one, yeah, 0:11:46.520 --> 0:11:48.959 all right, one of the male service after doing birth 0:11:49.040 --> 0:11:55.360 control right, but he was the one who uh campaign 0:11:55.760 --> 0:11:59.600 to make it illegal to distribute information or devices. That 0:11:59.679 --> 0:12:03.040 led the birthday drill, which of course was most successible 0:12:03.080 --> 0:12:12.160 to white women at that time. So this is post 0:12:12.160 --> 0:12:17.439 Civil War, you know, the country has changed. African Americans 0:12:17.600 --> 0:12:22.760 newly freed enslaved people are free. They are supposed to 0:12:22.760 --> 0:12:25.320 have the vote, and for a while black men do 0:12:25.440 --> 0:12:30.160 have the vote. So this is part of the I 0:12:30.200 --> 0:12:35.840 think political underpinnings of why these laws get passed. The 0:12:35.920 --> 0:12:41.040 other important part of this is at that time women 0:12:41.080 --> 0:12:45.840 were organizing in various ways against prostitution of calling out men. 0:12:46.240 --> 0:12:48.439 They were also trying to get into medical school. So 0:12:49.280 --> 0:12:53.000 the same doctor storer and the politicians are like, you 0:12:53.040 --> 0:12:57.079 should be doing your duty. Women do not belong out 0:12:57.480 --> 0:13:01.480 trying to be involved in politics x. They should be 0:13:02.520 --> 0:13:08.280 having babies and raising them to be the citizens of America. 0:13:09.080 --> 0:13:13.720 And and the doctors are particularly threatened by the possibility 0:13:13.720 --> 0:13:18.360 of women becoming doctors taking over their business frankly, and 0:13:18.480 --> 0:13:22.920 they resent their efforts to get into medical school, to 0:13:22.960 --> 0:13:26.680 get into Harvard, to claim higher education. So it's in 0:13:26.720 --> 0:13:31.719 the eighteen sixties and eighteen seventies that the states make 0:13:31.760 --> 0:13:35.080 abortion illegal and criminalized it by eighteen eighty. Every state 0:13:35.600 --> 0:13:43.480 has criminalized abortion from conception on. My name is Lexi, 0:13:43.800 --> 0:13:48.000 and my abortion was amazing. Um. I did not feel 0:13:48.040 --> 0:13:50.960 that way in the moment because of all these stigma 0:13:50.960 --> 0:13:54.480 and barriers I experienced, But choosing not to become a 0:13:54.520 --> 0:13:57.640 parent was the best decision I've ever made for myself. 0:13:58.840 --> 0:14:02.760 I had an abortion, and when I was in college, 0:14:03.080 --> 0:14:09.600 I was a junior attending U mass University of Massachusetts. Amorous. Actually, 0:14:09.679 --> 0:14:13.360 let me let me provide some background information. UM. I 0:14:13.400 --> 0:14:18.000 was born to a young single mom um and raised 0:14:18.120 --> 0:14:22.320 by my grandparents. Love them to death, but they are 0:14:22.680 --> 0:14:28.080 very old school too, elderly black people from the Deep South. UM, 0:14:28.360 --> 0:14:31.960 and I was raising a very conservative household. UM. I 0:14:32.000 --> 0:14:37.520 also attended Catholic school from kindergarten to twelfth grade, so 0:14:37.640 --> 0:14:43.600 I did not I did not really have much knowledge 0:14:44.200 --> 0:14:50.200 or information about my own body, any type of sexual health. 0:14:51.080 --> 0:14:54.040 So when I did go to college and didn't know 0:14:54.200 --> 0:15:02.960 anything about UM protection or really well informed UM knowledge 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:06.440 about options. If I were to be pregnant, I was 0:15:06.640 --> 0:15:08.920 really shook. UM and I don't really know what to do, 0:15:09.040 --> 0:15:12.880 Like I didn't know who to call, you know, my family, 0:15:12.960 --> 0:15:16.800 like we've dealt with a lot of familial separation, so 0:15:17.160 --> 0:15:20.480 you know, in incarcerations, Like my mom wasn't around. Um, 0:15:20.640 --> 0:15:22.920 like I said my grandparents, that wasn't really an option 0:15:23.560 --> 0:15:25.520 I was. I did not have a lot of money. 0:15:26.120 --> 0:15:29.560 I was trying to finish school. My partner was very abusive, 0:15:30.320 --> 0:15:36.080 and yeah, I actually initially intended to continue my pregnancy. 0:15:36.360 --> 0:15:41.600 I was going to continue my pregnancy just because of 0:15:41.640 --> 0:15:44.360 these things that I had heard about abortion, which weren't good. 0:15:44.760 --> 0:15:50.320 The very false narratives, the stigmatizing language, the hush hush 0:15:50.360 --> 0:15:54.040 around it. I found out in pregnant, I'm like, I 0:15:54.080 --> 0:15:55.480 need to go there to not just sound like there, 0:15:55.520 --> 0:15:57.440 to not just sound And I was only about four 0:15:57.480 --> 0:16:00.840 weeks long, which is pretty early to find out. And 0:16:01.160 --> 0:16:06.680 in the following weeks, I became extremely sick, um bedridden, 0:16:06.760 --> 0:16:08.960 Like I was telling my grandparents I had mono. I 0:16:09.040 --> 0:16:11.480 was trying to like contact the school, trying not to 0:16:11.560 --> 0:16:14.360 like get it like kicked out because I'm missing so 0:16:14.480 --> 0:16:17.240 much class, while also like trying to avoid my abusive 0:16:17.280 --> 0:16:22.200 partner on campus. And yeah, it was a mess. I 0:16:22.280 --> 0:16:24.920 was so sick. I lost like thirty pounds in like 0:16:25.000 --> 0:16:27.320 a month and a half. I did not know what 0:16:27.360 --> 0:16:29.680 was happening in my body. I did call my ob 0:16:29.800 --> 0:16:33.480 joyant and they were like, well, we can't see what's 0:16:33.520 --> 0:16:35.400 happening to you is normal, and you have to be 0:16:35.600 --> 0:16:37.560 for ten weeks before we book an appointment with you. 0:16:37.880 --> 0:16:44.440 And I'm like, what, I'm an older singling before, and 0:16:44.680 --> 0:16:47.520 I've been there. I've helped my mother give birth, like 0:16:48.120 --> 0:16:52.960 I have seen many pregnancies in my family, and I 0:16:52.960 --> 0:16:55.240 I knew what was happening to me was not normal. 0:16:55.520 --> 0:16:58.040 And even even if these things come with pregnancy, if 0:16:58.040 --> 0:17:02.720 you're not helping me get through them, who knows without 0:17:03.080 --> 0:17:05.680 surrounding support. I was like, there's no way I can 0:17:05.720 --> 0:17:07.639 make it through it. And in my mind, all I 0:17:07.640 --> 0:17:10.120 can think about is how many black women and other 0:17:10.200 --> 0:17:13.479 women of color die at the hands of this medical 0:17:13.560 --> 0:17:17.280 system that we have. And all I could think when 0:17:17.280 --> 0:17:20.920 I called plant parenthood was I will not die because 0:17:20.920 --> 0:17:23.320 of this pregnancy and because no one will listen to me. 0:17:28.119 --> 0:17:31.160 So I did have medication abortion, went to plan Parenthood, 0:17:31.680 --> 0:17:35.440 God pills, went home me and my best friend, and 0:17:35.480 --> 0:17:38.919 then I woke up and the pregnancy was over, and 0:17:39.080 --> 0:17:41.920 for the first time in six weeks, I had eaten 0:17:41.960 --> 0:17:44.400 real food, and my best friend had just went got 0:17:44.440 --> 0:17:47.879 like twelve inch chicken palm grinder um, and I just 0:17:48.280 --> 0:17:53.880 I was like, I need that, and physically like I 0:17:53.920 --> 0:17:57.080 was relieved, even if my even if I couldn't you know, 0:17:57.160 --> 0:17:59.439 grasp that at the time, because when I went out 0:17:59.440 --> 0:18:02.040 the bath room and I saw the pregnancy was over all, 0:18:02.080 --> 0:18:04.240 I like, it was just the biggest sign of relief, 0:18:05.160 --> 0:18:11.280 immediately followed by a lot of internalized shame and stigma 0:18:11.320 --> 0:18:15.120 and just hatred. But in that moment, I am able 0:18:15.160 --> 0:18:19.639 to look back and say, even regardless of everything that was, 0:18:19.680 --> 0:18:22.040 it was nothing but relief in that moment that I 0:18:22.119 --> 0:18:24.919 knew I was not going to be a parent because 0:18:24.960 --> 0:18:28.360 I had made this decision to have an abortion. It 0:18:28.400 --> 0:18:31.719 did take me a hot minute to be able to 0:18:31.760 --> 0:18:39.080 differentiate my abortion being negative and all the external barriers 0:18:39.600 --> 0:18:45.080 and all the other things around it being negative. It 0:18:45.240 --> 0:18:48.840 was really coming and learning that, you know, it's the 0:18:48.960 --> 0:18:54.680 same white supremacist rhetoric that tells me that I'm a murderer, 0:18:54.720 --> 0:18:58.200 I'm a sowful person for having abortion. Okay, well that's 0:18:58.280 --> 0:19:01.399 the same the same piece people would also call me 0:19:01.440 --> 0:19:03.919 a welfare queen if I had continued my pregnancy and 0:19:03.920 --> 0:19:06.760 needed to help with social services and probably want to 0:19:06.800 --> 0:19:09.119 have access to them. So I would have probably just 0:19:09.160 --> 0:19:12.040 been homeless and been an awful person for that or 0:19:12.720 --> 0:19:17.359 the same white supremacy that I continue my pregnancy. I 0:19:17.400 --> 0:19:19.520 have a child, I'm raising this child, and you go 0:19:19.560 --> 0:19:22.199 and murder them in the street for no reason. So 0:19:22.359 --> 0:19:28.040 learning really how nothing black and brown Indigenous people and 0:19:28.080 --> 0:19:32.600 families do under white supremacy is good enough really helped 0:19:32.680 --> 0:19:36.280 me realize that I don't I don't need to follow 0:19:36.280 --> 0:19:39.719 any of that. The reason I share my story is 0:19:39.760 --> 0:19:46.439 because historically black and brown Indigenous people, you know, we've 0:19:46.480 --> 0:19:50.320 always been told and dictated how to raise our families, 0:19:51.080 --> 0:19:54.800 what to do. We've always been shadowed um and we're 0:19:54.800 --> 0:19:57.879 here to claim that it's ours we're taking and not 0:19:57.960 --> 0:20:13.480 a bad period more right after this, in the first 0:20:13.480 --> 0:20:19.919 couple of decades after abortion becomes illegal, abortions continue to happen. Again, 0:20:20.400 --> 0:20:23.920 here's Leslie Reagan. So there's always an exception in the law, 0:20:24.080 --> 0:20:27.200 and those those abortions that are done by doctors are 0:20:27.200 --> 0:20:31.440 called therapeutic abortions. The Great Depression in the nineteen thirties 0:20:31.760 --> 0:20:36.679 increases demand hugely. People who collected evans they could see it, 0:20:36.680 --> 0:20:39.920 they could see a rise in abortions and a decline 0:20:39.920 --> 0:20:45.560 in family size. There are clinics that developed that are open, 0:20:45.840 --> 0:20:48.560 that are well known um of people who provide a 0:20:48.800 --> 0:20:53.360 who are specialists in abortion, and they have an office 0:20:53.680 --> 0:20:56.280 with their name on the door. They have business cards 0:20:56.760 --> 0:20:59.040 and people know who they are there. They are people 0:20:59.040 --> 0:21:05.119 who provide excellent abortions. They're safe, it's very safe. But 0:21:05.160 --> 0:21:09.960 there were also questionable and sometimes dangerous options that emerged 0:21:10.040 --> 0:21:13.840 at the same time. So in New York City, for example, 0:21:14.160 --> 0:21:18.720 historian Daniel Williams, there were some abortion senicates which by 0:21:18.720 --> 0:21:23.480 the were performing, according to some claims at the time 0:21:23.680 --> 0:21:26.560 to two fifty thousand abortions per years. It was of 0:21:26.720 --> 0:21:29.200 a thriving business, but they were connected with organized crime. 0:21:29.440 --> 0:21:33.560 They employed non licensed physicians, a lot of medical school 0:21:33.640 --> 0:21:35.800 dropouts and others who had a little bit of medical 0:21:35.840 --> 0:21:38.760 training but not enough to practice legitimately. And most of 0:21:38.800 --> 0:21:43.080 the time they could practice somewhat safe abortions, but it varied, 0:21:43.480 --> 0:21:47.640 and of course women were taking their lives into their 0:21:47.640 --> 0:21:52.240 hands going to some of those places, the so called 0:21:52.320 --> 0:21:57.440 back alley butchers. Professor Carol Joffey is a sociologist who 0:21:57.480 --> 0:22:02.160 has long studied abortion care, both physicians as well as 0:22:02.359 --> 0:22:07.280 nonphysicians who were horrible, I mean, who were who were 0:22:07.359 --> 0:22:10.280 medically inept. I mean, this is where most of the 0:22:10.400 --> 0:22:15.200 injuries and deaths came from. In addition to women attempting 0:22:15.359 --> 0:22:19.600 their own abortions, and these these guys, and it really 0:22:19.720 --> 0:22:23.560 was all guys at the time. Uh, we're also very 0:22:23.600 --> 0:22:29.840 ethically challenged. There are horrible stories of demanding sexual favors, 0:22:30.000 --> 0:22:34.040 are stopping halfway through the abortion and demanding more money. 0:22:34.119 --> 0:22:39.119 These butchers made an enormous impression on the rest of 0:22:39.160 --> 0:22:43.040 the medical field, the rest of medicine that had not 0:22:43.200 --> 0:22:47.080 been involved, uh in abortion care. And remember the abortion 0:22:47.160 --> 0:22:51.520 providers before Row were tiny, tiny portion of medicine as 0:22:51.520 --> 0:22:56.800 a whole. Um. They somehow equated abortion provision with these 0:22:57.280 --> 0:23:03.240 very ethically and and medically challenged people. And so beginning 0:23:03.240 --> 0:23:07.360 of the nineteen thirties, several doctors, especially in New York, 0:23:07.680 --> 0:23:10.440 said that the law was not working and rather than 0:23:10.440 --> 0:23:13.840 try to make abortion laws more stringent, what they wanted 0:23:13.880 --> 0:23:20.400 to do was to make abortion legal in certain circumstances. 0:23:21.920 --> 0:23:25.320 Rather than than continue to endanger more women. What would 0:23:25.320 --> 0:23:28.399 be best for society, will be best for women's health 0:23:28.920 --> 0:23:31.720 would be to just admit that we can't really control 0:23:31.920 --> 0:23:36.360 women's behavior with these laws. But Leslie Ringing points out 0:23:36.720 --> 0:23:41.199 these doctors pushing for reform their outliers. At least at 0:23:41.240 --> 0:23:47.679 this point, they are radicals. Uh politically, they're they're very unusual. 0:23:48.960 --> 0:23:54.760 What happens instead is that abortion, despite being illegal, becomes 0:23:54.880 --> 0:23:58.280 much more visible. I mean it starts in the thirties, 0:23:58.280 --> 0:24:03.160 but really by the methods of policing abortion change, and 0:24:03.400 --> 0:24:07.800 these clinics that had been operating for ten twenty thirty 0:24:07.880 --> 0:24:15.960 years openly suddenly are rated and closed by the police 0:24:15.960 --> 0:24:22.800 and prosecutors. They now are going after the safe practitioners 0:24:23.480 --> 0:24:28.000 who are who are also quite visible, and deliberately will 0:24:28.920 --> 0:24:32.920 time raids. You know, a group of police four or five, six, seven, 0:24:33.000 --> 0:24:39.719 eight ten police burst in and hopefully find specialist in 0:24:39.800 --> 0:24:43.719 the middle of a procedure, capture that person, the doctor, 0:24:44.240 --> 0:24:48.240 the patient, and all of the recovering patients, and collect 0:24:48.440 --> 0:24:52.880 all of the medical records and gather all of it 0:24:53.000 --> 0:24:58.439 for evidence for prosecution for illegal abortion. And this became 0:24:58.520 --> 0:25:02.919 the standard across the country, these police raids. So it 0:25:03.000 --> 0:25:06.240 became harder to find a good provider, and it became 0:25:06.280 --> 0:25:12.960 more expensive. Meanwhile, hospitals start cracking down to the departments 0:25:12.960 --> 0:25:17.400 of obstetrics and gynecology start to create these therapeutic abortion 0:25:17.520 --> 0:25:23.040 review boards um inside their own departments. So these committees 0:25:23.040 --> 0:25:27.800 are set up and they end up deciding what is 0:25:27.800 --> 0:25:31.760 a legal, legitimate abortion, what's legal and what isn't. And 0:25:31.800 --> 0:25:34.280 it meant women they knew they had to get permission, 0:25:34.280 --> 0:25:37.760 which of course means more delay. And you know, in 0:25:37.800 --> 0:25:40.080 some of these cases I saw there were four or 0:25:40.080 --> 0:25:42.800 five doctors who are on this committee, and every single 0:25:42.840 --> 0:25:47.720 one of them had to personally determine how far along 0:25:47.720 --> 0:25:55.680 her pregnancy was, so it's you know, coerced multiple gynecological exams. 0:25:56.000 --> 0:25:59.280 It means doctors learn, oh, these cases will never get 0:25:59.280 --> 0:26:01.840 by and they don't ring him. So that also fuels 0:26:01.880 --> 0:26:05.359 this sense that that doctors have the hospitals that they 0:26:05.359 --> 0:26:08.360 need to be careful. They don't want their reputations hurt 0:26:08.400 --> 0:26:13.440 by abortion. It is now, it's common, and yet it's 0:26:13.520 --> 0:26:16.960 highly stigmatized. It's it's it's in the paper a lot 0:26:17.520 --> 0:26:23.240 associated with death and crime and the mob, and and 0:26:23.320 --> 0:26:26.600 yet you can't talk about it. And in response, the 0:26:26.600 --> 0:26:29.960 people who provide abortions knowing now that this is what's happening, 0:26:30.320 --> 0:26:33.600 they change their practices. It becomes much more clandestine, it 0:26:34.320 --> 0:26:39.040 goes underground. It makes it very scary, and everyone is 0:26:39.119 --> 0:26:41.760 of course aware of the potential of police and they 0:26:41.800 --> 0:26:45.040 realize that they are breaking the law. So it really 0:26:45.119 --> 0:26:50.199 changes the practice and availability of abortion. In the past, 0:26:50.800 --> 0:26:55.720 there was much more um worry and agony and fear 0:26:56.280 --> 0:27:00.600 about whether or not you were pregnant. Again here's Glory A. Steinham. 0:27:01.280 --> 0:27:03.520 And if you were pregnant, it didn't wish to be 0:27:03.680 --> 0:27:07.040 much more likelihood that you would have to somehow get 0:27:07.080 --> 0:27:11.879 together the money and the time, often in secret, uh 0:27:12.080 --> 0:27:17.600 to travel far away and get an abortion. That was 0:27:17.880 --> 0:27:24.560 terrifically painful and time consuming and ridiculous, because that's not 0:27:24.760 --> 0:27:28.919 a democracy. Either we have in a democracy at a 0:27:28.960 --> 0:27:34.480 minimum decision making power over our own bodies, or we 0:27:34.520 --> 0:27:38.840 are not living in a democracy. To lose that power, 0:27:38.880 --> 0:27:41.160 if you're a man, you have to commit some horrible 0:27:41.200 --> 0:27:45.159 crime and go to prison. You know. It's yet it 0:27:45.240 --> 0:27:49.639 was applying to all to all women, no matter what 0:27:49.720 --> 0:27:57.720 we did. How many institutions of society had to collaborate 0:27:58.080 --> 0:28:05.639 in order to suppress women's sexual and reproductive autonomy and 0:28:06.240 --> 0:28:12.920 support second class citizenship for women. Historian Ricky Solinger. So, 0:28:12.960 --> 0:28:17.920 whether we're talking about the media, the ways that doctors 0:28:18.080 --> 0:28:25.000 set up punishing abortion boards and hospitals, how doctors refused 0:28:25.320 --> 0:28:33.159 to give prescriptions for contraception until after marriage, this is 0:28:33.160 --> 0:28:38.240 a cautionary message for the future people who understood that 0:28:38.440 --> 0:28:43.360 being able to control fertility is an absolute life necessity 0:28:43.400 --> 0:28:47.840 for most women. There were many people all over the 0:28:47.880 --> 0:28:53.360 country who capitalized on women's desperation. The reason that I 0:28:53.440 --> 0:28:59.160 stress the importance of the project of criminal abortion and 0:28:59.200 --> 0:29:07.400 how um many institutions were involved in bolstering and enforcing 0:29:07.880 --> 0:29:12.320 the culture and the politics that degraded women's sexuality and 0:29:12.320 --> 0:29:16.959 reproduction is because that has such implications for the future. 0:29:18.800 --> 0:29:22.760 The thing that went on then in sixty six was 0:29:22.920 --> 0:29:25.720 that there was nowhere to go for help. People had 0:29:25.800 --> 0:29:28.720 no way of finding out where are you could get 0:29:28.720 --> 0:29:31.920 an abortion. It was like a speak you. I didn't 0:29:31.920 --> 0:29:35.480 even know who amongst the women girls that I knew 0:29:35.760 --> 0:29:42.400