Abortion Before Roe

Summary

Throughline: Abortion Before Roe – A Detailed Summary

Podcast Title: Throughline
Host/Author: NPR
Episode: Abortion Before Roe
Release Date: June 19, 2025

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Introduction: The Tragic End of Madame Restell

The episode opens with a somber recounting of Madame Restell's death. Rund Abdelfattah introduces the historical figure Madame Restell, a prominent abortionist in 19th-century New York. Her demise marks a pivotal moment in the criminalization of abortion in the United States.

Rund Abdelfattah [01:36]: "In the early hours of Wednesday, April 1, 1878, the death of a woman named Madame Restell, known to some as the wickedest woman in New York... rocked the country."

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Madame Restell: A Pioneering Abortionist

Madame Restell, originally Ann Tro Summers from England, became a renowned figure in the abortion marketplace after her husband's untimely death. She capitalized on the burgeoning demand for abortion services, operating openly and amassing significant wealth.

Carissa Haugeberg [17:10]: "Madame Restell, female physician, Office and Residence, 148 Greenwich street... she can be consulted with the strictest confidence on complaints incidental to the female frame."

Restell's business included selling preventative powders, monthly pills, and performing surgical abortions. Her flamboyant lifestyle and public advertising made her a target for moral crusaders.

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The Transformation of Abortion Laws

Originally, abortion was a common and legally accepted practice in early America, regulated by the concept of "quickening" — the moment a woman felt fetal movement. However, by the mid to late 19th century, this perception shifted dramatically due to concerted efforts by the American Medical Association (AMA) and activists like Horatio Storer.

Rund Abdelfattah [02:30]: "Through the instigation of wealthy people who had patronized her in her criminal business... the crimes of this wretched woman were not hers alone."

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Horatio Storer and the AMA's Crusade Against Abortion

Horatio Storer, a prominent obstetrician, spearheaded the AMA's campaign to criminalize abortion. Discontented with the AMA's lack of a unified stance, Storer covertly authored a letter to state governors, framing abortion as a moral and societal evil.

Rund Abdelfattah [22:38]: "In 1860, governors of every single state in the US received this letter from the recently established American Medical Association."

Storer introduced the controversial idea that life begins at conception, challenging the longstanding "quickening" standard.

Joan Lester [20:21]: "The child is alive from the moment of conception."

His arguments were not only moral but also intertwined with racial fears of the time, advocating for higher birth rates among Protestant white women to counteract immigration and societal changes.

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Anthony Comstock and the Institutionalization of Vice Suppression

Anthony Comstock, a fervent moral reformer, further fueled the anti-abortion movement by conflating it with obscenity. His efforts culminated in the Comstock Law of 1873, which criminalized the distribution of "obscene" materials, including contraception and abortion information.

Michelle Goodwin [29:19]: "The Comstock Law... made it illegal to mail sex toys, pornography, contraception, abortion drugs, or even information about contraception and abortion."

This law not only targeted abortionists like Madame Restell but also silenced the dissemination of reproductive health information, significantly narrowing women's access to safe abortion services.

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The Downfall of Madame Restell

Madame Restell's unabashed entrepreneurial spirit eventually led to her downfall. In 1878, under Colonial-era laws and heightened scrutiny from activists like Comstock, Restell was arrested. Facing the pressure of impending trial and relentless persecution, she tragically ended her life.

Michelle Goodwin [33:24]: "He took out his file on her and wrote, 'a bloody ending to a bloody life.'"

Her death symbolized the effective dismantling of the abortion marketplace that had once thrived under more permissive societal and legal conditions.

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Abortion Underground and the Rise of Unsafe Practices

With the legalization of abortion systematically stripped away, the practice went underground. Women, lacking safe and legal options, resorted to dangerous methods or sought clandestine services from unlicensed practitioners.

Leslie Regan [36:34]: "He said, 'shut up.' And that's mostly all I remember about it."

This period saw a surge in medical emergencies and fatalities due to unsafe abortions, highlighting the public health crisis resulting from restrictive laws.

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Shifts in Medical and Social Perspectives Leading to Roe v. Wade

By the mid-20th century, the dangers of illegal abortions became undeniable, prompting a gradual shift in both medical and public opinion. Advocates began pushing for the decriminalization of abortion, emphasizing its necessity for women's health and autonomy.

Carissa Haugeberg [46:05]: "Doctors teamed up with like-minded lawyers and set out to reform abortion laws at the state level."

The convergence of medical advocacy and the burgeoning Women's Liberation movement led to significant legal reforms in the late 1960s and early 1970s, culminating in the landmark Roe v. Wade decision.

Rund Abdelfattah [53:08]: "The court ruled that the state could not regulate abortion in the first trimester at all... Thus, the anti-abortion laws of 46 states were rendered unconstitutional."

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Conclusion: The Legacy of Abortion Before Roe

The episode underscores the complex interplay of medical authority, moral crusades, and societal fears that shaped abortion laws long before the Supreme Court's pivotal decision in 1973. The legacy of figures like Madame Restell and Horatio Storer illustrates how deeply entrenched legal and cultural narratives can influence and restrict women's reproductive rights.

Rund Abdelfattah [54:12]: "What happened right after Roe? Check out our episode After Roe to learn more."

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Key Takeaways

• Historical Acceptance: Abortion was once a legal and common practice regulated by the concept of quickening.
• Shift to Criminalization: Influential figures and organizations, notably Horatio Storer and the AMA, played critical roles in redefining abortion as a moral and legal issue.
• Impact of Comstock Law: Anthony Comstock's efforts institutionalized the suppression of abortion information, severely limiting safe access.
• Tragic Outcomes: The persecution of abortion providers like Madame Restell led to dangerous underground practices, resulting in significant public health crises.
• Path to Legalization: Persistent advocacy and changing societal attitudes eventually led to the decriminalization of abortion with Roe v. Wade.

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This comprehensive exploration provides listeners with an in-depth understanding of the historical context and key players involved in the struggle over abortion laws in the United States, setting the stage for the transformative Roe v. Wade decision.

Transcript

[Emily]

This message comes from Capital One. Access comprehensive solutions from a top commercial bank that prioritizes your needs today and goals for tomorrow. Learn [e-mail] Commercial Member FDIC A note.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Before we get Started this episode contains graphic descriptions of abortion and suicide. If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-227-38255 or the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME-7417 41.

[Michelle Goodwin]

The police were startled by the announcement that the well known Madame Restell had been found dead earlier this morning in the bathro her mansion on Fifth Avenue. She rose in the night and went into the bathroom where she suicided. The coroner's physician examined the body and found that a deep gash had been cut across the front of the throat, severing the jugular vein. The water had been left running in the bathtub and hence there was but little blood in the water which still filled the tub. The body was cold and it was evident that the woman had been dead for some hours.

[Leslie Regan]

Read all about it.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Morning paper.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Read all about it.

[Leslie Regan]

Morning paper.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

In the early hours of Wednesday, April 1, 1878, the death of a woman named Madame Restell, known to some as the wickedest woman in New York. Read all about it Rocked the country.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

The Morning Herald, Wilmington, Delaware Madame Restell Found Dead Madame Restell left a fortune estimated at from 1,000,000 to 1,500,000 doll.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

The New York Times having for nearly.

[Michelle Goodwin]

40 years been before the public. As a woman who is growing rich by the practice of a nefarious business, she yesterday came to a violent end.

[Carissa Haugeberg]

By cutting her throat ear to ear.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

The Cincinnati Daily Star, Cincinnati, Ohio Another.

[Michelle Goodwin]

Story is that Madame Restell was murdered.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Through the instigation of wealthy people who had patronized her in her criminal business.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Clarksville Weekly Chronicle, Clarksville, Tennessee the crimes.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Of this wretched woman were not hers.

[Horatio Storer]

Alone her they were the crimes of.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

A splendid profligate society of which she was simply the paid agent. She has simply done upon herself the vengeance which the law should have inflicted many years ago. Systematic murder was her trade, the murder of the unborn perpetrated to shield the guilty lusts of the living.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

We are using language which will be.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Blamed as shocking to society, but society needs to be shocked.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Madame Restell was one of the key targets of a moral crusade that had swept the country. A crusade that started in the 1800s and led to a century of criminalizing abortion. A century that came to an end in the early 1970s good evening. In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court today legalized abortions. The majority said that the decision to end a pregnancy during the first three months belongs to the woman and her doctor, not the government. Thus, the anti abortion laws of 46 states were rendered unconstitutional. Roe v. Wade People, I think, still.

[Carissa Haugeberg]

Think that abortion was never practiced and was always illegal until the supreme court decision in 1973. And they think that the decision created the practice of abortion and expanded it. And that is completely wrong. That is not true. It was legal under common law in the colonial era in what is now the United States. And in the early United States, it was not made criminal in the way that we think of it. From conception on until late 19th century and throughout all that time, abortion was practiced by many people and really accepted in a certain way by Americans.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

This is historian Leslie Wiegand. She's a professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign and author of the.

[Carissa Haugeberg]

Book When Abortion Was a Crime. Women, Medicine and law in the United States.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

In the country's early days, people like Madame Marstel were thriving. When she began her practice around the 1830s.

[Carissa Haugeberg]

She wasn't hiding her practice at all, but nor was anybody else. She just was much she was a very good businesswoman, made a lot of money and was very rich and obvious in New York City.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

But by the end of her life in 1878, Madame Restell was facing criminal prosecution and some had branded her a monster in human shape. Her name had become synonymous with abortion.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Over the course of a couple decades, the country had moved from thinking of abortion as a personal matter, a common practice that happened everywhere, albeit quietly and in private, to a criminal offense outlawed across the country. The question is, how and why did that change happen? I'm Rund Abdelfattah.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

I'm Ramtin Arablouei.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

And on this episode of Through Law, this line from npr. We're looking back at how and why laws outlawing abortion in every state were put on the books in the first place. Coming up, a moral crusade is born.

[Emily]

Hello, this is Emily from Lompoc, California, and you're listening to Throughline from npr.

[Horatio Storer]

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[Emily]

Learn [e-mail] this message comes from Capital One. Your business requires commercial banking solutions that prioritize your long term success with Capital One. Get a full suite of financial products and services tailored to meet your needs today and goals for tomorrow. Learn [e-mail] Commercial Member FDIC support for this podcast and the following message come from Made in Cookware President and co Founder Jake Kalik shares a tool that's useful for both master and newbie griller.

[Horatio Storer]

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[Michelle Goodwin]

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[Horatio Storer]

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[Emily]

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[Horatio Storer]

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[Ramtin Arablouei]

Quickening.

[Joan Lester]

Dear Father, I did not sail before half past eight last night as the vessel had to wait for a passenger. After we had started, a fog came up with and we had to anchor in the Narrows. I never was out in such rough weather in my life, on deck nearly all the time, and yet was not so sick as I was the other day.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

In 1849, when he was 19 years old, Horatio Storr sailed from Boston to the wilds of Labrador, Canada, on a research expedition alongside a naturalist, an expert in the natural world. They were interested in the process of reproduction, which they hoped to learn more about by studying the embryos of birds and fish.

[Joan Lester]

Hundreds of fish are strewed on the shore, among which I noticed menhaden, herring, goosefish, smooth and prickly.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

It was the early days of embryology, a branch of biology focused on prenatal development of embryos and fetuses. Charles Darwin, a naturalist himself, would soon published his theory of evolution, drawing a direct line between man and beast. Horatio Stohr was fascinated by all of it embryos, nature, the circle of life. So when he got back home to Boston, he decided to enroll in medical school, following in his father's footsteps, who was a doctor who specialized in obstetrics, a modernizing field of medicine focused on around childbirth.

[Michelle Goodwin]

It was a time in which there was the burgeoning professionalization of obstetrics by white men of medicine.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

This is Michelle Goodwin, a professor of law at Georgetown Law. She's written a lot about the legal history of abortion, including policing the womb, invisible women and the criminalization of motherhood.

[Michelle Goodwin]

These are the people who were leading the way in terms of the professionalization of this new thing, obstetrics. And at the same time, they were articulating their insecurities and really a level of high disregard for midwives.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

There are different theories on why some doctors began to get interested in childbirth. Some historians believe it was a money grab. If you delivered the baby, the family would call you back for all the falls and fevers that came after that.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Others believe these doctors genuinely thought they could make childbirth safer for women. In the early 1800s, around 500 in every 100,000 births ended in the death of the mother. Today that number has dropped by 95%. So it was a lot more deadly then. And doctors like Horatio Storer thought they were helping women at a time when women didn't have much of a say. But women didn't necessarily want their help.

[Emily]

She's always here.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

For tens of thousands of years, childbirth.

[Carissa Haugeberg]

And pregnancy was all in the domain.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Of women historian Leslie Regan.

[Carissa Haugeberg]

Again, midwives delivered babies. And they did it surrounded by her friends, her mother, her sister, potentially her daughters, neighbors. There was a crowd of women involved in the delivery along with the midwife.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

But in the early 1800s, as more doctors, male doctors, doctor equaled male, entered the delivery room, which is in the.

[Carissa Haugeberg]

Woman'S, you know, in her own home, in her own bedroom or her mother's.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Bedroom, that began to shift a millennia old dynamic. And as you can imagine, having a man in the room suddenly introduced to.

[Carissa Haugeberg]

Some awkwardness, especially a brand new doctor, Sometimes they've never seen a childbirth at all.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

New doctors like Horatio Storer.

[Carissa Haugeberg]

So they could be coming in and they're surrounded by older women who know what's happening. And there are these stories in doctor's diaries of, you know, they've been taught you need to shave the woman's pubic hair, you know, for sanitation before you deliver the baby. And they pull out that shaver and they're kicked out of the room. They're like, you are out of here. You're not doing this.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Storer and his fellow specialists in women's health didn't just face skepticism from women in those delivery rooms, Other doctors also looked down on them because as you.

[Michelle Goodwin]

Think about it, they were entering a profession where nearly 100% of it had been done by women. More than 50% of that had been done by black women.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Some even referred to the specialty as man midwifery. It was a time when modern medicine was still, in its early days, there were no antibiotics, no pregnancy tests, no ultrasounds. People didn't really go to hospitals. C sections were rarely done and even more rarely successful.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Not to mention some considered it improper, even offensive, for a male doctor to perform a pelvic exam. And especially as the field of medicine was still trying to establish itself as a bona fide profession, mainly in the United States and Europe. For the most part, up until the 1870s in the US there were no.

[Carissa Haugeberg]

Laws regulating who was a doctor.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Then some states began passing medical licensing laws, more medical schools opened up, and in 1847, a small group of doctors started the American Medical association, the ama.

[Carissa Haugeberg]

They explicitly do not include women, and African Americans are not part of their medical profession.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Chapter one of the Duties of Physicians to Their Patients and of the Obligations of Patients to their Physicians. And they laid out an elaborate code of ethics. Physicians are enabled to exhibit the close connection between hygiene and morals. Physicians as conservatives. Despite their best efforts, the AMA wasn't having much luck convincing people to take them seriously. The editor of the Cincinnati Medical observer described physicians as a body of jealous, quarrelsome men whose chief delight is in the annoyance and ridicule of each other.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

By the time Horatio Storer came along in the 1850s, they were desperate for ideas about how to make their profession more respectable. And Storer set his sights on abortion. Just as women had overseen childbirth for most of human history, they'd also been on the front lines of ending unwanted pregnancies, of carrying out abortions. But in early America, they wouldn't have been using the term abortion. At the time it was referred to as restoring the menses. Trying to get your period again, you.

[Carissa Haugeberg]

Know, taking herbs, taking teas, riding horses, falling down stairs, trying. Trying to get their menses back.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

It was considered acceptable for women to restore their menses up until the moment of quickening, when.

[Carissa Haugeberg]

When they felt quickening, when they felt.

[Tobias Dwyer]

Movement, which for some women doesn't occur until the fifth month of a pregnancy. So people didn't wrestle with this as a moral or ethical or even a legal question if a woman engaged in that practice before about the fourth or fifth month of pregnancy.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

There were no laws in place to prevent abortions before quickening.

[Tobias Dwyer]

And so the conception of when life began really began at the moment of quickening.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

By some estimates, in the late 19th century, around 2 million abortions were performed each year, which means the number of abortions per capita was several times higher than it is today. Keep in mind, birth control options were very limited then, so there was less you could do to prevent a pregnancy in the first place.

[Carissa Haugeberg]

You know, quickening is recognized and the law and churches and, you know, the general community understands that this is in women's purview in terms of what's going on with their bodies. They know their bodies.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

In other words, it was your call as the woman to say when or if you felt movement.

[Tobias Dwyer]

So I think one thing that people misunderstand about the opposition to abortion is, is that people assume that there's always been a vibrant religious or moral opposition to abortion and that in fact, that's actually relatively recent. It's not something rooted in ancient history.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

This is Carissa Haugeberg.

[Tobias Dwyer]

I'm an associate professor of history at.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Tulane University and author of the book Women Against Inside the Largest Moral Reform movement of the 20th century.

[Tobias Dwyer]

The question is, how does this go from being a personal, private decision either among women or between couples, to one that the state becomes invested in?

[Rund Abdelfattah]

This question brings us back to Madame Roselle, the so called abortionist of fifth Avenue.

[Leslie Regan]

Get your morning paper.

[Michelle Goodwin]

Read all about it.

[Carissa Haugeberg]

Madame Restell, female physician, Office and Residence, 148 Greenwich street, between Cortland and Liberty, where she can be consulted with the strictest confidence on complaints incidental to the female frame.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Years before Horatio Stores started building up his name in medicine, advertisements for Madame Restell's services filled the papers. $5 for a packet of preventative powder, $1 for female monthly pills. And if those didn't work, she offered surgical abortions. $20 for poor women, $100 for the rich. She called herself a doctor, just like many others in the business did.

[Carissa Haugeberg]

Dr. Dow advertised Dr. Carswell, sleeping Lucy in Vermont.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

They were all creating a Persona, a brand like Madame Restell. She arrived in New York City from England in 1831 with her husband and newborn baby. Back then she went by Ann Tro Summers. But within months, her husband died of fever and she was left on her own. Looking around, she saw that the marketplace for helping women prevent and end pregnancies was thriving. So she changed her name to Madame Restel and opened up shop.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

The pills sold in this marketplace turned traditional folk remedies that had been around for centuries into commercial products. They didn't always work and sometimes produced harmful side effects. Some women died.

[Tobias Dwyer]

The American health marketplace in general was kind of dangerous. People were routinely sending away for herbal remedies to cure all manner of maladies.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Some states began passing poison control laws.

[Tobias Dwyer]

It was a desire to protect women from ingesting poisons that might harm them.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Madame Restell and others began to be charged under these laws. But the penalties were never too harsh. And though it earned Madame Restell some critics in the papers, she continued to celebrate her abortion business loudly, living a life of luxury.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

1847, the Sunday Dispatch, New York City.

[Michelle Goodwin]

Madame Restell is showy enough for a princess. She likes fine carriages, handsome horses and expensive living. Her pew is one of the pleasantest.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

In a very fashionable church. She has fortified herself too strongly ever to be overthrown. At that point, no one, least of all Madame Restell herself, believed her reign would ever end.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

But those poison control laws were just the start of a moral tide that was sweeping the country.

[Joan Lester]

It has been said that misery loves companionship. This is nowhere more manifest than in the histories of criminal abortion, and it.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Would lay the foundation for a campaign to make abortion not only immoral but illegal, a campaign that would eventually take down Madame Restell and the entire abortion marketplace, a campaign led by Horatio Storer.

[Joan Lester]

If we had proved the existence of fetal life before quickening has taken place or can take place place, we are compelled to believe unjustifiable abortion always a crime.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Coming up, Horatio Storer launches the physician's crusade against abortion.

[Tobias Dwyer]

Hi, this is Tobias Dwyer from Ann Arbor, Michigan, and you're listening to Through Life from npr.

[Emily]

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[Horatio Storer]

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[Ramtin Arablouei]

Part 2 A Century of Criminalization.

[Joan Lester]

The moral guilt of criminal abortion depends entirely upon the Real and essential nature of the act. It is the intentional destruction of a child within its parent. And physicians are now agreeing from actual and various proof that the child is alive from the moment of conception.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

In 1860, governors of every single state in the US received this letter from the recently established American Medical Association.

[Joan Lester]

The evil to society of this crime is evident from the fact that its instances in this country are now to be counted by hundreds of thousands.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

But there was really only one guy holding the pen.

[Tobias Dwyer]

Horatio Storer.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Carissa Haugeberg again who studied the formation of the anti abortion movement.

[Tobias Dwyer]

Basically he ghost wrote a letter from the president of the ama. So it looked like it was coming from the president. But Storr was actually the one who wrote it saying that the AMA opposes abortion. And he used the language of morality.

[Joan Lester]

In reality there is little difference between. Between the immorality by which a man forsakes his home for an occasional visit to a house of prostitution that he may preserve his wife from the chance of pregnancy and the immorality by which that wife brings herself willfully to destroy the living fruit of her womb.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

The letter was pivotal to what historians call the physician's crusade against abortion. And Storer was making a few key arguments for why abortion should be illegal across the country. First, he introduced a new idea.

[Joan Lester]

The child is alive from the moment of conception.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

That life began at conception. Remember up till now people generally agreed that life began when a woman could actually feel life move inside her at quickening. But that wasn't enough for Storer. He campaigned on a moral argument that also tapped into the racial fears of the moment. Fears that would eventually inspire a pseudoscientific field of racial improvement and planned breeding of the population.

[Michelle Goodwin]

American eugenics.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

These racial fears would inspire forced sterilization programs to decrease certain populations. Whereas Storr's anti abortion campaign was trying to increase other populations by focusing on Protestant white women. Because elite Protestant white women were often the ones going to. People like Madame Restell and people like Horatio Storer were realizing that that had consequences.

[Tobias Dwyer]

The birth rate for Protestant white women had been declining over the course of the 19th century. So he had fears of what was commonly referred to as race suicide. That the Anglo stock wasn't going to replenish itself fast enough to to keep up with the swells of new immigrants to the United States.

[Carissa Haugeberg]

And who is going to have power and populate this country and populate the Great Plains and the Great West? Well, it is going to be Chinese migrants, it's going to be African Americans, newly freed people And Catholics, they are not the ones using abortion. It's our, you know, Yankee women who are using abortion, trying to get into medical school, trying to do politics, when they should be at home having babies and taking care of them.

[Michelle Goodwin]

They begin to say, we need white women to use their loins because they're concerned about the blackening and the browning of what is now, what at that point became the United States. And this real concern that when black people become free, what will this mean for white people? And white women become a key to that.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

So part of Soror's thinking was that criminalizing abortion would help rebalance the scales of who was being born into this country. But there was more to his strategy. He saw this as a way to finally knock out the competition, midwives and people like Madame Russell.

[Tobias Dwyer]

And so if the AMA could wrest control over the marketplace of abortion, it would be lucrative to this growing cadre of university educated, mostly male physicians who were beginning to specialize in things like obstetrics and gynecology.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

So midwives were slandered in this campaign.

[Michelle Goodwin]

Described as unsanitary, unclean, as unmoral, and.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

As clueless as the mothers themselves, saying.

[Carissa Haugeberg]

Women do not know. They don't know. When they quicken and really makes fun of women's own sensations and knowledge and says, you know, some of them quicken at one month, some of them never quicken at all, and then they have.

[Joan Lester]

A baby, they may very constantly be recognized by the physician in cases where no sensation is felt by the mother.

[Carissa Haugeberg]

So there's this scoffing at women's knowledge, saying, this is a sin. This is murder.

[Joan Lester]

You're killing children by the moral law. The willful killing of a human being at any stage of its existence is murder.

[Carissa Haugeberg]

And the general public and women don't get it. They don't know that. And we need to change the laws.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

So to help people get it. Storer wrote articles, books, reports, speeches, all to make his views on abortion and women clear. In one lecture called the Origins of Insanity in Women, he advocated for ovaryectomies for women who, quote, have become habitually.

[Joan Lester]

Thievish, profane, or obstinate, obscene, despondent or self indulgent, shrewish or fatuous.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

The solution, as he saw it, remove the cause, a woman's reproductive organs.

[Tobias Dwyer]

He was really hostile to women.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

And that hostility was starting to gain traction. A few years into the campaign, some states began to pass laws outlawing or restricting abortion. Perhaps the harshest was in Connecticut in 1860. The law got rid of the quickening rule and made abortion a crime for which the abortionist and the woman getting the abortion could be fined and jailed. And over the next few decades, most states across the country would adopt similar laws, thanks in part to another campaign that was going on at the same time that was getting even more attention. It was led by a Union Army Civil War veteran named Anthony Comstock, who's.

[Tobias Dwyer]

Well known for leading the anti birth control crusade of the 19th century.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Anthony Comstock was a descendant of some of the earliest Puritans in New England. He took that ancestry to heart and went on to work with the Young Men's Christian association, the YMCA in New York City, and founded the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. And he dedicated his life to exactly that. Suppressing vice.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

In 1873, Comstock began lobbying Congress to pass anti obscenity laws. There had been a rise of prostitution and new forms of birth control like diaphragms and rubber condoms. All of which triggered a powerful backlash, a backlash that culminated in the Comstock.

[Michelle Goodwin]

Law, the criminalization of sending materials through the mail that could be sent, seen as obscene. That no obscene, lewd or lascivious book, pamphlet, picture, paper, print, or other publication of an indecent character, or any article or thing designed or intended for the prevention of conception or procuring of abortion, nor any article or thing intended or adapted.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

The law made it illegal to mail sex toys, pornography, contraception, abortion, abortion, drugs, or even information about contraception and abortion.

[Michelle Goodwin]

Including some medical books that had pictures of anatomy. Right. It's just how deep it went.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

But here's the thing. Comstock conflated birth control with abortion. He saw no difference between the two, which meant that abortion was wrapped up into this new law, making it a federal offense to send or order material about abortion by mail, with punishment of up to $5,000 in fines, which is over $110,000 today and up to 10 years in prison. The law was the first of its kind in the Western world.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Between Comstock's laws and Horatio Storr's crusade, by 1880, every single state had a law outlawing abortion on the books. These laws launched a century of criminal criminalization.

[Carissa Haugeberg]

So in the terms of the way the laws are written, there is always an exception written into the laws that allow for medical professionals, for doctors, to perform abortions if they, in their medical judgment, believe it is necessary to save a woman's life or to save her health. This is clearly written from the perspective of a specific group of the medical profession, and they're really claiming abortion as theirs. It is the procedure that doctors can perform if they believe it is medically necessary and that medically necessary is not defined in the law. But it does mean that they can kind of control this and also say, you know, other people, midwives, you know, Madame Restell, immigrants, bad people are doing this procedure and it's immoral and now.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

It'S illegal unless it's done by US doctors.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

In the end, Horatio Storer and the AMA's Campaign Against Abortion, aided by Anthony Comstock's anti contraception campaign, was a success. And although not all doctors agreed with or followed the new laws, midwives and entrepreneurs like Madame Restell were still sidelined as male gynecologists and obstetricians took over. But they didn't just lose business, they were in danger now that their very livelihoods were illegal. Things were especially dire for Madame Restell since she had been so public and bold about her services. Her clientele were mainly upper class white women. The women's Storer believed she'd be having more kids. All eyes were on her as these laws took hold and Comstock made it his mission to end her.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

In 1878, he rang her doorbell on East 52nd street, pretending that he was a married man seeking an abortion for his wife, who already had too many children and wasn't in good enough health to birth another. She sold him some pills and he was on his way. But the next day, Comstock returned with a police officer who arrested Restell. As always, Restell went to the press.

[Michelle Goodwin]

He's in this nasty detective business.

[Tobias Dwyer]

There are a number of little doctors who are in the same business behind him.

[Carissa Haugeberg]

They think if they can get me.

[Michelle Goodwin]

In trouble and out of the way, they can make a fortune. If the public are determined to push the this matter, they will have a.

[Tobias Dwyer]

Good laugh when they learn the nature.

[Michelle Goodwin]

Of the terrible items of the preventative prescriptions. Of course, if there's a trial, it will all come out.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

But there was never a trial. Restelle became distressed. She paced around her house asking her servants why she was persecuted time and time again. And on the morning of the day she was supposed to appear in court, one of her chambermaids walked into her bathroom and to find her dead in her bathtub, she had slit her own throat.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

When Comsock found out, he took out his file on her and wrote, quote, a bloody ending to a bloody life.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

As for Horatio Storer, he co founded the Gynecological Society of Boston, which focused on diseases that affected women and reproductive health and came to be known as a pioneer in the field of obgyn, obstetrics and gynecology.

[Michelle Goodwin]

When we think about this, is there any wonder why for so long medicine looked white and male in the United States? What explains that? It's certainly not because women aren't intellectually curious about medicine. It's not because women don't know how to read books. It is because the American Medical association, through the tools of all of this time, very specifically, very specifically made sure that women would be cut out.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Coming up, abortions go underground.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Foreign.

[Michelle Goodwin]

Hi, my name is Fen Corso.

[Tobias Dwyer]

I'm a teacher from Tampa, Florida, and this is Throughline from npr.

[Emily]

This message comes from Progressive Insurance. Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.

[Horatio Storer]

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[Ramtin Arablouei]

Part three into the Shadows.

[Leslie Regan]

I still remember the sound.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

When Joan Lester was 19 years old, she found herself in a dark room with a doctor whose name she didn't know.

[Leslie Regan]

I don't even know if he was.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

A gynecologist alone at midnight getting an illegal abortion. What happened next was really common and really graphic.

[Leslie Regan]

So he told me to lie down on the table, you know, take my pants off. First. I lay down on this table. He inserted a curette, which is basically a razor, and began to scrape the inside of my uterus to scrape out the fetus. And I still remember the sound. In addition to the pain, I don't think he gave me any painkillers. And so I began to moan. And then I think I screamed. He clamped his hand over my mouth. He said, shut up. And that's mostly all I remember about it.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

At the end of the procedure, the doctor gave her a couple of towels.

[Leslie Regan]

Blood was just coming down my legs. And I remember soaking through the one or two towels that I had. It hurt like hell. I, I was probably crying.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

A few weeks later, Joan was still in a lot of pain, so she went to the closest hospital looking for answers, looking for help.

[Leslie Regan]

I got to the hospital emergency room and there was a doctor there who was the admitting doctor.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

She told him she'd had an abortion.

[Leslie Regan]

And there I am, writhing in pain.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

When suddenly his whole demeanor changed.

[Leslie Regan]

He said, you're an abomination. This is God's punishment to you for your sin, for what you've done. And you're never going to have church children. Your tubes are going to be sealed up because you have this huge pelvic inflammatory infection. And he was just screaming at me.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Joan was admitted into the hospital and put on antibiotics. If she'd waited, she might have gone into septic shock. When an infection causes your blood pressure to drop to life threatening levels. Over the next week, she began to recover.

[Leslie Regan]

And I have to say that this was probably not one of the most extreme examples of what happened to women. They were just all kind of horror stories because we were just completely vulnerable because we had done something illegal and, you know, we basically had no rights.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

For decades after Horatio Storer and the AMA got those laws on the books in every state, women continued to quietly seek out abortions in the private practices of doctors who disagreed with or simply worked outside of the laws, which there were plenty of. Those doctors rarely faced criminal charges unless a woman died. It wasn't until the middle of the 20th century that the horror stories of botched illegal abortions like Joan Lester's began skyrocketing. A byproduct of a changing world. The hospitals designed to serve thousands at a time are equipped with the most modern devices and specialists and expert technicians.

[Carissa Haugeberg]

By World War II, everybody is in the hospital.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

John Rogers Jr. White, 6 pounds.

[Leslie Regan]

Mother's name Clara.

[Carissa Haugeberg]

90, 95% of the entire population goes to hospital to deliver babies.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

That's exactly the reverse of the figures. When John Senior.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

There had been a revolution in medicine. Things like X rays, antibiotics and sterile surgeries made hospitals important like never before. Childbirth and abortions were theoretically safer than ever.

[Carissa Haugeberg]

And so abortion too is increasingly going to be done in the hospital. And this, this really changes things.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Many OBGYN doctors moved into hospitals where they had a lot more oversight. And hospital administrators, who are worried about.

[Tobias Dwyer]

Violating state laws and getting sued, formed.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Abortion review committees that would review whether.

[Carissa Haugeberg]

An abortion was medically justifiable or not.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

And they made it really hard for a woman's abortion request to get approved.

[Tobias Dwyer]

Women are subject to multiple exams, usually by both psychiatrists, obstetricians, and then often three other physicians. This is an era when many women don't have health insurance, certainly when there aren't federal programs to help women pay for these services.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Certified OBGYN doctors who would have done abortions before Were terrified of getting caught now, especially because this shift in medicine collided with another massive change.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Babies all over the map.

[Carissa Haugeberg]

Babies. Babies.

[Tobias Dwyer]

After World War II, we had the baby boom, and there was enormous pressure put on American women to have children.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

During the Second World War, Women had staff jobs in factories and other parts of society as the men went off to battle. When the men came back.

[Carissa Haugeberg]

You like to cook, don't you, Tess?

[Tobias Dwyer]

Well, it's accomplishing something.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Women were pressured to return into the home and to have children, get married.

[Leslie Regan]

Have children and live with a white picket fence.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

And abortion was at odds with this. City officials, motivated by the social messaging of the time and looking for ways to boost their public profile in the face of growing racial tensions and accusations.

[Tobias Dwyer]

Of corruption, begin enforcing these laws that have been on the books.

[Carissa Haugeberg]

They start to go after people who've been practicing for 10, 20 years, and they raid them.

[Tobias Dwyer]

So we see an explosion of the illegal marketplace for abortion in the 1940s and 1950s.

[Leslie Regan]

You're thrown underground and into the shadows.

[Tobias Dwyer]

As the illegal marketplace flourishes, a whole host of people fill that vacuum.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Some doctors risked losing their license to practice, risked going to jail, and continued providing abortions to women in secret.

[Tobias Dwyer]

But the vast majority of women sought to self abort.

[Leslie Regan]

I heard of people throwing themselves downstairs or drinking Clorox or, you know, various kinds of poisons.

[Michelle Goodwin]

There were women who died in motel rooms, sitting on top of clumps of towels. People coming home and finding daughters dead in bathtubs, bleeding out, coming home and finding wives on the top of dining room tables having used hangers and things like that. Many women of all social classes, many women of color, were getting abortions. The real story here is the difference in outcomes.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

If you had the means, which usually meant you were an upper middle class white woman, you could pay off someone with a little more training to do the abortion, you know.

[Michelle Goodwin]

It was African American women who were most likely to end up in the clutches of the so called back alley butchers.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

This is Carol Joffe.

[Michelle Goodwin]

I'm a professor at the University of California, San Francisco.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

It's hard to pinpoint exactly how many illegal abortions were being carried out in this period. Estimates range from 200,000 to 1.2 million per year. There was a cone of silence around it. Many women were too afraid to talk about their experiences, fearing both legal and social consequences.

[Michelle Goodwin]

We have to remember what it was like in the 1950s and the 1960s and the shame that was brought about by being a single mother. Women were not supposed to have babies out of wedlock. They were not supposed to divorce their husbands if they experienced domestic violence. I mean, it was legal to rape your wife. So in the United States, we're talking about a time in which states laws protected men who raped their wives.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

More and more women like Joan Lester were showing up in emergency rooms with infections and injuries caused by botched abortions.

[Carissa Haugeberg]

5, 10, 20 a day, hundreds coming in on the weekends.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Doctors and medical students were scrambling to help them all.

[Carissa Haugeberg]

And they're holding their hands while they bleed and die. And this justice for many people is intolerable.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Abortions, if done in sterile conditions by a trained professional, were rarely deadly at this point. But the illegal marketplace was creating an epidemic.

[Carissa Haugeberg]

So that drives a lot of doctors to support the decriminalization because they personally know what the results are, and they see it as a public health problem.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Doctors teamed up with like minded lawyers and set out to reform abortion laws at the state level.

[Carissa Haugeberg]

And the hope is, you know, these doctors will be able to perform more of the abortions that they think are.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Necessary in cases where women had been raped or the mental or physical health of the fetus was at risk. A group of doctors had been responsible for getting laws against abortion, abortion rights on the books. And now doctors were on the other side of the fight, Pushing to get those same laws off the books. More than a dozen states passed reform laws in the late 1960s and early 70s, and four states legalized abortion outright. New York, Alaska, Washington and Hawaii.

[Tobias Dwyer]

Almost immediately, as states revised their laws, anti abortion activists began to mobilize. And most of them were catholic. So they were really the only stalwart opponents to abortion.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

On and off for centuries, the catholic church had declared all abortion murder. And in the 1960s, a movement began to form around that idea.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

At this time, as the movement is emerging, would they have been self identifying as anti abortion or pro life?

[Tobias Dwyer]

They would have used the language, the descriptor, pro life Catholics who were coming out of anti war activism, civil rights activism, anti nuclear proliferation activism. They believed that life should be protected from conception to death. So they opposed the death penalty. They supported a more generous welfare state to enable women to be able to support families.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

They saw all of this as a part of a broader movement to protect life at all stages. A quote, pro life movement.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

But outside of this Catholic opposition, the pushback to these reform laws was minimal. Mainline protestant institutions even came out in support of expanding access to abortion, Seeing firsthand the toll of illegal abortions on women in their congregations.

[Leslie Regan]

A new move, movement for women's liberation Is launched. And once again, protesters take to the street to support their demands for total freedom Economically, politically, socially.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

In the 1960s, the Women's Liberation movement began to advocate for what one organization called, quote, true equal partnership with men.

[Carissa Haugeberg]

Equal rights, to have a job, to have respect, not be viewed as a piece of meat.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

We just want what men have had all these years.

[Leslie Regan]

Those of us like myself who were involved were just living and breathing, you know, liberation, liberation, liberation.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

But pretty soon, the mostly white, mostly middle class leaders of the movement shifted their focus.

[Joan Lester]

What is it you're pioneering?

[Rund Abdelfattah]

What do you want me to say?

[Carissa Haugeberg]

The sexual revolution.

[Leslie Regan]

I feel we're going into the beginning.

[Carissa Haugeberg]

Of an emotional revolution.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

They wanted to get rid of the shame and silence that had surrounded women's bodies and sexuality for so long.

[Leslie Regan]

We don't just take our clothes off and say, look, I am nude.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

You know, it's all very natural. Abortion became a top priority for the movement, and they encouraged women to speak out about their illegal abortion stories.

[Leslie Regan]

And it was pretty shocking. It was shocking to me. I think it was shocking to everybody how widespread this was. Respected professionals and mothers, oh, my God, they had an abortion. It really changed the conversation.

[Michelle Goodwin]

What's so interesting is that so much of the feminist movement of that time, in general, was very focused on health and was very anti doctor. There was a tremendous critique of. Of gynecology. You know, the image of. Of a woman in the stirrups became sort of this emblem of. Of female passivity and male power.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

And suddenly they found themselves on the same side as these doctors, Forced to work with them whether they liked it or not.

[Michelle Goodwin]

I have referred to them as, quote.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Uneasy allies who didn't always see eye to eye.

[Michelle Goodwin]

It was a clash of style.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Feminists wanted sweeping change. Some called for repeal of all laws restricting abortion. They were saying, we don't need to be told when it's appropriate to have an abortion by a doctor or anyone else. It should be a private, personal decision.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

But some people who supported abortion rights Worried that framing the issue within the context of the feminist movement and pushing a national agenda might create a backlash.

[Tobias Dwyer]

So for the women who opposed abortion beginning in the late 1960s, they understood the sexual revolution as a threat, a threat to the family, Something that might cause men and women not to get married and have children in the orderly way that they should. They believed that they were suddenly being criticized as being stupid or being dupes for having that lifestyle.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

And there was a fear that abortion was just the beginning of the end of that lifestyle, that this is part.

[Tobias Dwyer]

Of a moral decline wrought by the sexual revolution.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Some of these women began joining the pro life movement, a movement that was still in its infancy, a movement that was poised to enter a new era.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Today, we find it the center of a gathering storm as women and men argue the question of abortion, the right to life, or the woman's right to choose. In 1970, while all this was happening, a small group of lawyers took on a case in Texas. The plaintiff, a woman named Norma McCorvey, who was listed as Jane Roe in court records to protect her identity. The defendant, Henry Wade, the district attorney of Dallas County, Texas, where Jane Roe lived. The issue Jane Roe was pregnant with her third child and wanted an abortion on the grounds that it should always be a woman's right to choose. Under Texas law, abortions were only allowed when necessary to save a woman's life.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

By 1973, the case had made its way to the Supreme Court. Jane Roe had already had her child, but the stakes were much higher. By then, if the court sided with Jane Roe, abortion would become legal nationwide.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Good evening. In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court today legalized abortions.

[Michelle Goodwin]

The majority, Roe v. Wade, was a 7 to 2 opinion. Five of those seven justices who struck down laws criminalizing abortion were Republican appointed.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

The court ruled that the state could not regulate abortion in the first trimester at all. Only in the third trimester, once the fetus could live outside the womb, could states ban abortion entirely.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

And the court stopped short of giving women total control over the decision, quote, the attending physician in consultation with his patient is free to determine without regulation by the state that in his medical judgment the patient's pregnancy should be terminated. Doctors remained a central part of the decision and at the heart of the issue. Still, this was a huge, sweeping change, and abortion was now legal in all 50 states.

[Michelle Goodwin]

And everybody thought the problem was done. It wasn't. So what happened right after Roe?

[Rund Abdelfattah]

What happened right after Roe? Check out our episode after Roe to learn more.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Foreign that's it for this week's show. I'm Ramtin Arablouei.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

I'm Randab Dil Fatah, and you've been listening to Throughline from npr.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

This episode was produced by me and.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Me and Lawrence Wu, Lane Kaplan Levinson, Julie Kane, Victor Iz, Anya Steinberg, Yolanda Sanguine, Casey Minor.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Fact checking for this episode was done by Kevin Vogel.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

Thank you to Turner, Ross Blaze, Alder Ivenbrook, Lawrence Wu, Julie Kane, Benjamin Swift, Owen Perry, Sam Clague, Shaheer Khan, Eric Lu, and Bergen Hoff for their voiceover work and A special thanks to Deb George for her editing support.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Thanks to Sarah McCammon, Tamar Charney and Anya Grundman.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

This episode was mixed by Josh Newell. Music for this episode was composed by Ramtin and his band Drop Electric, which.

[Ramtin Arablouei]

Includes Anya Mizani, Navid, Marvi, Sho Fujiwara. If you have an idea or like something you heard on the show, please write [e-mail] or hit us up on Twitterlinenpr.

[Rund Abdelfattah]

And if you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact the National Suicide prevention lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or the crisis text line by texting home H O M E to 741741. Thanks for listening.

[Horatio Storer]

This message comes from Jackson Seek clarity in retirement [e-mail] Jackson is short for Jackson Financial, Inc. Jackson National Life Insurance Co. Lansing, Michigan and Jackson National Life Insurance Co. Of New York, Purchase, New York.

[Emily]

This message comes from Mint Mobile. If you're tired of spending hundreds on big wireless bills, bogus fees and free perks, Mint Mobile might be right for you with plans starting from 15 bucks a month. Shop plans [e-mail] Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month 5 gigabyte plan required. New customer offer for first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. This message comes from satva. Getting quality sleep can improve athletic abilities, increase energy, and boost memory and learning. Satva mattresses are designed to promote that kind of sleep. Save $200 on $1,000 or more at satva. Com. NPR.