(Post 1)
Chapter 1 of Joseph Dellapenna's
Dispelling the Myths of Abortion History entitled “Only Women
Bleed” has several sections and for the purposes of eating this
elephant in manageable bites (a metaphor I have always found a bit
unsettling as an elephant lover) we will focus only on the first
point. A broad discussion of the new orthodoxy of the history of
abortion. There are two key points to this new orthodoxy:
1) Abortion has always existed in
societies and has been an accepted practice with little to no social
condemnation. (This argues that the unborn have never been understood
as persons within society.)
2) Abortion laws in the United States
were established to protect the women often injured and sometimes
dying from unsafe abortions. (This argues two things: Now that
abortion is safe for women restrictive laws are no longer necessary,
and the unborn have never been understood as persons under the law.)
As I am writing this, a character on an
episode of the old sitcom Bewitched is claiming that women in
the pioneer days gave birth during lunch and were back at work in the
fields by late afternoon. Modern women are simply making something
complicated that is naturally easy. I know this is shocking to
suggest, but it may be that childbirth is not so naturally easy as a
character on an old sitcom would have you believe.
Dellapenna begins with an interesting
introduction on the odd nature of human childbirth in comparison with
other animals. He notes several differentiating factors including our
large brains combined with a narrow pelvis designed for walking
upright, the inability of women to bend enough during childbirth to
remove the baby alone, and the inability to do certain tasks alone
like unwind the umbilical chord if needed or clear mucus out of the
baby's mouth. These all require the human birth process to be
assisted. Other mammals can give birth in seclusion, but when humans
do so, Dellapenna argues, we probably face the highest incidences of
fetal and maternal death of any mammal.
As a result, assisted delivery has been
a part of the human birthing experience for as far back as we have
records. Why does this matter to the history of abortion? Because
midwives and what passes for doctors throughout history (I will give
ample reasons in the next few posts for my mocking what people used
to call doctors) have been intimately involved in child birth in a
way that other members of the community have not been.
Dellapenna acknowledges that it can be
taken as axiomatic that as long as women have been getting pregnant
there have been women so desperate to avoid having a child that they
would risk just about anything to end the pregnancy. And who would
these desperate women go to for help? Those people most identified
with pregnancy; midwives.
Part of the new orthodoxy is to assure
us that abortion has not been the social and moral taboo that people
like me try describe it as today. Dellapenna points out two
curiosities in regards to our historical records concerning midwifery
that seem to raise questions about that claim from the outset. The
two are so intermingled that it does no real good to enumerate them
separately.
Midwives practiced medicine in a time
when medical knowledge was deficient at best. They experimented with
herbs, oils, and other techniques to assist in labor and pain
management. Given their total lack of knowledge of microorganisms,
the importance of sanitary conditions, and the impact of numerous
environmental and physical factors on the efficacy of any solution it
is understandable why people would have limited basic expectation
from their midwives. Dellapenna quotes historian David Hunt as
saying, “[i]t was hoped that she [the midwife] would cut her nails,
wash, and remove the rings from her hands before beginning.” Even
though there seems to be evidence that midwives were safer than
doctors, it is not surprising to learn that women and children did
die during lboth pregnancy and labor under the care of midwives, and,
as there is little so dear to most properly functioning emotional
beings as family, it is understandable why midwives developed an
unsavory reputation.
As a response to this reputation
Dellapenna says, “It is no wonder then that even the earliest
regulations enacted for midwives included requirements that midwives
demonstrate themselves to be 'of good character' and prohibited them
from certifying the cause of death of someone under their care
(mother or child). Ecclesiastical regulations requiring midwives to
have licenses from the church expressly forbade abortion and
infanticide”.
So what? Remember the scene in A Few
Good Men (spoiler alert) with Colonel Jessup (Jack Nicholson) on
the stand. He claimed the he ordered all of the marines not to “Code
Red” Santiago (the victim) and ordered Santiago to be immediately
transferred from the base the very next morning to protect him. At
the same time, he claims that his orders are always followed. Lt.
Kaffee (Tom Cruise) sees some inconsistencies in this story. If
Santiago was to be transferred why didn't he pack or call anyone to
give them the good news? If Col. Jessup's orders are always followed,
why was it necessary to transfer Santiago to protect him? Kaffee
asks, “Why the two orders?” The events are much more consistent
with Jessup being the bad guy who is lying to cover up the truth of
what happened.
In our best Kaffee attitude let's ask
some questions. If abortion held no stigma and enjoyed widespread
approval, why did the midwives have a bad reputation? Why did being
of good character require an oath not to participate in abortions?
Quoting Dellapenna, “By the nineteenth century, the moral
reputation of midwives had become so suspect that they were often
characterized by novelists as 'drunken incompetent slattern[s].' That
such an unsavory reputation arose in large measure from the
association with abortion and infanticide belies the claim of
abortion rights activists that abortion was socially accepted until
the late nineteenth century.”
One could get the impression that a
certain point in the new orthodoxy has been conceded in all of this
discussion. Abortion, whether it was accepted or despised, has been
common and was a normal activity for midwives. That point will get
more attention in the future but we can address it now with one final
lawyerly moment from Dellapenna as we close out this post and move on
to the next section.
“In the remarkably detailed diary of
midwife Matha Ballard for the period of 1785 to 1812, when many
historians now insist that midwives were commonly performing
abortions, there is no mention of even a single abortion. We cannot
assume that Ballard simply did not report such activities; her diary
includes accounts of incest, illegitimacy, child abuse, and other
unsavory activities. If Ballard did abortions so routinely that they
did not strike her as significant, it would still be extraordinary
that, in such a detailed record of the events of her life, she would
not mention it even once. Either Ballard, considered abortions even
viler than the activities she recorded or she neither did nor knew of
any.”
Either way, they fit in the new
orthodoxy about as well as Jessup's two orders in his explanation of
the events in A Few Good Men.
