Who Knows What to Expect When You're Expecting
Woman Reading a Letter, by Johannes Vermeer, c. 1663. Rijksmuseum. Italians lived in some of the most medically sophisticated cities and states in early modern Europe, and were remarkably health literate. Abortion was a feature of the medical landscape. Healers at all levels of the medical establishment provided women and men with materials and services to terminate pregnancies and with health care afterward. But in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, this was becoming more contentious. Some theologians and moralists labeled practitioners who participated in abortions sinners and murdere...
Source: laphamsquarterly.org