Historical overview of the topic of abortion and start nationally and then look at california specifically, specifically on the topics of specialized abortion or abortion specialists and decriminalization and then go back to the National Contact to look at roe v. Wade and some of the legislation thats happened since then and in some of the more recent years. So if you recall from around week 1 or 2, we did have a rebrief zrouks on the topic of abortion in the colonial period nd we talked about sarah gorspiner and her abortion in the 1940s and had a brief introduction to it but today were going to pick up around e time of the com stock act, does anyone remember of the com stock act from a couple weeks ago, can you tell us what it is . [ advertising contraceptives or information on no advertising of contraceptives and the dissemination of the stuff in the mail. So good. The comstock act effectively made it criminal to advertise these things beginning around 1873. Now, we showed you guys the political cartoon, if you recall comstock was carrying a woman and the caption was, she gave birth to a naked baby, you know. So the joke or punch line is comstock was really prude. Its important to know he doesnt oppose all methods of Birth Control but encourages couples to use methods of Birth Control he considers dignified or ethical. Those messages include abstinence and include the rhythm method where you avoid sexual intercourse at moments when a woman is more fertile. But also sleeping in different beds. So these are things that hes ok with. But he doesnt like other types of Birth Control. He doesnt like condoms, uches, or abortion because their relationship. And remember the womens Reform Movement these types of Birth Control had been linked to other industries as a matter of vocation, women who were prostitutes employed these different methods because they needed to continue working. So when were putting this again in the context, as a refresher of the 19th century, and were looking at gender ideologies and separate spheres and race suicide. If you are an educated middle and upper class white woman and want to use these types of methods, theyre at best frowned upon and again if youre married and at worse theyre immoral and if youre a single woman attempting to use any of these other methods or any of the methods you are considered immoral. So lets look at an example of a 19th century abortionist. Now, this is the example of restol. Sher was born in 1812 and she was the woman you went to if you wanted an abortion in new york city from 18371878. In 1836 she married a man named Charles Lohman and when she began to embark on this career as a professor of womens medicine, a midwife, but also an abortionist and purveyor of contraceptives and her husband supported her in this state, were in this together. They sold patent medicines that may or may not have been effective but made most their money providing abortions, illegal abortions. She became very well known and she often came under scrutiny from various different religious and moral reform groups in new york city. 1841 was the year of her first trial and she was charged with performing an abortion on a woman resulting in her death. She does have several various subsequent brushes with the law. But some of the critics against her cited the fact that she donated to political campaigns, that she had the Police Department on her payroll. She always seemed to get off easy and sometimes she even settled out of court. So in the one trial after which she is found guilty and does have to serve time in prison, that was her trial in 1847, she received such special treatment in prison the city council investigated and the warden of the prison ended up getting fired. So upon her release from prison in 1847, they continued their work and they were so profitable in this that when her step daughter got married in 1854, she actually is rumored to have given them a 50,000 wedding gift. 50,000 in 1854. And paid for their european honeymoon. They were doing quite well. They also managed to buy a four story brown stone on fifth avenue which is very prime real estate in new york city. So theyre not slumming it over there. After charles died, it looked like ann was going to retire. Ut in 1878, Anthony Comstock disguised himself as a potential customer. He approached her and he pretended to need contraceptive materials. He made a bunch of purchases and he used those to collect a search warrant and then he had her raided. And she was brought to trial for violation of the comstock act. She did try to do some legal maneuvering and had her turnover try to help her out but was to no avail. Seemed like she was actually going to do hard time for this trial. And so on april 1, 1878, the day her trial was supposed to begin, she slit her throat with a knife in her bathtub. Thats what this artist renditioning is trying to show. Now, some people did criticize comstock for entrapment but he was nonchalant about it and called it a bloody end to a bloody life. And when she actually died, her estate was valued upon a million dollars, which is over 25 million today. Uestions so far . Comstock wasnt the only person who was opposed to abortion at this time. And its important to note that the 19th century is an era of transition when were looking at the abortion business. There had been earlier arguments against abortion before this. But when you couple this with mass media, you couple this with the spread of print material, with slide dissemination of ideas and advertisement, it affords greater opportunity for this previously taboo subject to kind of become open and well known in the public and people can discuss and talk about it a little bit more. So in the 1820s and 1830s, we begin to see some territories and state actually beginning to implement some of the first abortion laws. And most of these legislators imagine that these laws are a form of consumer protection, that theyre creating these laws in order to protect women. Now since there is increased medical and Technological Advancements going on in this of you do have new methods Birth Control and new methods of abortion that are untested and that can be really crude if performed in the wrong hands. So this image, for example, is of aer isated curet, a long kind of spoonlike device. You cant tell but it is serrated and this would be used to perform an abortion and you would dilate the cervix and insert this device and scrape the uterine walls. So if you have someone who is unskilled or who is not a qualified medical professional, this could be potentially dangerous and deadly to a woman. So to an extent these laws do function to protect women because theyre trying to keep the wrong people from performing these procedures. So dr. Horatio would become the face of the Antiabortion Movement in the 18th century and he believed the medical men were the guardians of women and children. He is the quintessential example of a medical Association Member of the 19th century. Hes from new england and he went to harvard and he was really religious he was a member of one of these first generation gynecologists who are basically moving into this brandnew field. Hes a contemporary of people like Jay Marion Sims who we read about in medical bondage. Hes known for his efforts to eradicate the process of abortion. He and contemporaries are responsible for making abortion a moral issue for the first time that previously no one was really interested or invested in the moral implications of abortion. No one talks about abortion in a moral way before, at least not in relation to it being a potential person but he and others like him began to refer or bortion as infanticide prenatal infanticide or even murder and they emphasized their own education and specialization to basically argue they were the people who were best in the position to lobby the government to basically eradicate this practice. Now we talked previously about the development of the medical field and how it worked in tandem with basically delegitimatizing midwives and quack doctors and is part of this as well because its usually midwives and physicians of color who were most likely to perform abortions. So its not just about this moral thing, its also about suggesting that these other people should not be qualified to practice medicine, we are. We american medical association, a. M. A. Members are. So basically as a result of this campaign, good reputable doctors did not perform abortions unless it was absolutely necessary to protect the life of a woman. Other than that, abortions were immoral because fetuses were potential persons and eventually by 1880, all states had laws against abortion. Questions . Yeah, jillian [jillian why was the moral element added . What was the reason they had against abortion . It was more about, you know, sex being for procreation and that it should be within the confines of marriage. So it was less about the fact that this was a person and more about, well, this meant you were having, you know, immoral sex practices. Yeah, mark . Mark were they a bunch of doctors that said were the authority now . Alicia a bunch of physicians that organized themselves and said were creating standards. We are its not backed by the government, rather they kind of formed their own lobbying group that said were defining the standards of professional medicine and we are going to kind of be gatekeepers for this practice to make sure that everyone meets these standards that we have a main line position on things and they basically become a lobbying group after that. Other questions . Ok. So you have dr. Storer and other people putting force this kind of moral and Educational Campaign but another thing thats adding fuel to this movement to get rid of abortion was the proliferation of abortion stories in the press. Now, most women who acquire abortions in the late 19th and early 20th century, they do so quietly by using referrals from friends, sisters, coworkers and maybe trusted physicians and many of these women secretly have successful abortions and we dont know anything about them. But shes arent the women who become topics in conversation in popular culture, that you have the sensationalism of publicized abortion related deaths that provide fodder for reformers and for physicians and other moralists who believe that legalized abortion is gradually going to erode americas moral fabric. And in typical yellow journalism fashion, newspapers of the 19th and early 20th century broadcasted story after story of young, pretty girls who were dying as a result of illegal abortions. Undercover reporters for the New York Times actually ended essay sing a infanticide to talk about illegal abortion in new york city so in this investigation there were two journalists who went undercover pretending to be a couple and then in this long form expose they transported readers of their newspaper to the abortion underworld and they exposed physicians, midwives and Police Officers who were basically receiving bribes or somehow involved in this trade. So using abortion stories of kind of seedy Human Interest stories helped the newspapers to profit because you could spread these stories out for days at a time. You can give a little bit one day and then just drag the story out for a week or two weeks if you wanted. Now, if you recall, a couple weeks ago we saw a short clip from the 1934 film road to rouen. If you remember, they were having a party and eve and ann were taken away by a female Police Officer and then they were medically inspected and then eve had syphilis and then she reformed and changes her life and ann find out shes pregnant. So when i turned off the clip i told you anns boyfriend told her hes not going to marry her and takes her to have a illegal abortion and she dice. That was the same thing except that was a film example where you have these stories of sex and jilted lovers, coughups and death and its really titillating for whoever is reading or watching them. But its important to note that they also fit within this larger framework. Its not just about stopping abortion. Its also fitting with other terms to regulate sexuality to make sure sexuality was conforming with heterosexual normative practices, repressing homosexuality, preventing abortion, policing prostitution and preventing the dissemination of other obscene material. It is making sure womens sexuality fits within a certain framework and that that framework is marital reproductive sex. Everyone else should be shamed. So these women who died from these procedures they cant conceal their identity or practices anymore, they kind of serve as Cautionary Tales for everyone else. But even though there is this policing of abortions dont just disappear. And by the 1920s the campaign, the a. M. E. Campaign against abortion has created a more hostile environment for women. Eking these procedures women may feel harassed by their physicians or they may have given them sermons and some might have felt guilty to speak to their doctor about this. Its also harder to get an abortion if physicians are cracking down on other providers through their internal regulation but even if Law Enforcement is helping with that as well. And abortion is a illegally ambiguous procedure in the United States. I mentioned by 1980 all states have laws against it but its important to note the procedure is not so banned in and of itself. Rather the circumstances around the abortion indicate whether the procedure is legal or illegal so this means that an abortion could be legal for one woman and illegal for another or even legal for one womans pregnancy and then illegal for her next pregnancy. The same woman. This is because every state with an abortion statute has a clause that provides exceptions for when a womans life is in danger. That if a woman is likely going to die from this pregnancy, then a physician has the right and has the authority to form an abortion in that instance. But there are no clear criteria to assess whether or not the womans life is at risk. So theres no checklist to determine what constitutes a risk to a womans life. Now, since physicians typically practice independently, it is acceptable to come to their own conclusions and assess whether or not they believed an abortion was medically necessary. And this is considered a legal abortion, if a physician thinks their patient has a condition that will threaten her life with this pregnancy, he or she can just schedule the procedure and thats it. But if physicians are hard ined a. M. E. Members like horatio storer, they may be less inclined to provide the procedure. What if they, like, went to another person and was able to get an abortion and get a different opinion . Alicia the states vary in every state and they may not even have to go to another stay but maybe find another physician who they can convince that they should have a legal abortion. Thats a really interesting and good point that bianca just brought up because by the 1950s and 1960s, and well get there in a second, this legal distinction becomes incredibly amorph cities. By the time we get to the 1950s and 1960s, we have an abuse of this trust that professional a. M. E. Members have kind of given individual physicians that leads to that decision being removed from the individual physician and placed in the hands of a committee. So its no longer your individual physician who says, yep, i think that this is necessary, its now 35 physicians youve never met to determine whether or not they think you should have an abortion or not. Well get there in a little bit, though. Whats interesting, also, is that for some women it creates a space for negotiation, right . If i want this physician to continue working for me and my family, youll find a reason to justify this abortion, right . S. Its legally amorhi amorphsis. Eventually it goes out of the physicians hands. As professional medicine officially circumscribes what constitutes a legal abortion, in the 1930s its only an exception for life. Its only an exception for a womans life being in danger. So as this is a pretty hard line stance, there are other people who take advantage of this. You get the emergence of the abortion specialist in the 1930s and the abortion specialist is strictly performing illegal abortions. But theyre taking advantage of the technologies, perhaps, maybe even antibiotics and maybe trying to fill this market niche for them. So were going to talk about one of these abortion specialists in california. Its not just one, its like 30 of them. And in 1934, Reginald Rankin approached dr. George watts and he proposed to him an idea for an organized criminal Abortion Syndicate that would span the entire west coast from seattle to the u. S. Mexico border. And rankin approached watts specifically because watts was an abortion specialist. He had developed this new method for performing an ortion called the vacuole vacuum aspiration technique which sounds incredibly scary but meant that his abortions were safe. He was able to practice for four years, and he stayed under the radar. It reduced the risk of accepts and and in sepsis infection because it removed all fetal tissue from the uterus and why it worked. Rankin approached watts and watts came onboard and between 19341936 rankin brought in several other abortion specialists and even some physicians. He created new offices and by 1936, he had over 30 abortion specialists working for him. To most women who sought the services of rankin or any of the physicians working for him, rankin himself was not an abortionist or specialist. He was the genius or the master behind mastermind behind all of this. But if any woman went to one of their clinics, it would seem just like any other visit to another medical clinic, except a woman might be blindfolded, she might not see the person who is providing the procedure to her. Or she might have several doctors in the room with her at a time so that she can actually identify which one performed the procedure. But once the woman arrived for treatment, she would tell the nurse or receptionist how far along was her pregnancy and that would determine the cost. So the further along she was, the more it would cost. Ideally, they like to charge between 30 and 50 for a procedure. This is only in the first six to eight weeks. If you were to put that in modern values, the government inflation calculator only goes up to 2019, but if you put 35 to 50 in 2019 values, it would