Abortion's Complicated History in the United States of America

Abortion has long been an issue of debate in the United States. Lately, as abortion has become legal and more accepted in modern society women have begun to come forward and talk about their experiences having abortions before they were legal.
Betty was only seventeen when she found out that she was pregnant. She and the father had been in a long term relationship, and had discussed having children of their own. However, when he found out that she was pregnant their relationship immediately changed. Suddenly he began to question her fidelity, and he accused her of being pregnant with another man’s baby. After his reaction, Betty decided not to tell anyone, especially because having a child out of wedlock was frowned upon. She began to search for an abortion clinic. She found one by looking through the telephone directory for gynecologists who did not advertise themselves as obstetricians. She went to meet the practitioner in a run-down shack in the middle of nowhere. Once Betty arrived, the practitioner immediately began the procedure. The method this practitioner used was a cervical puncture followed by an insertion of willow bark. Betty was given no pain medicine. After she left she began to bleed profusely and soon presented symptoms of an infection. Although the woman who performed the abortion told her not to come back, she did, and was given some painkillers. After a few days the infection appeared to have passed and her doctor told her she was no longer pregnant (Fadiman). Betty’s story is not a rare one. Many women suffered because of the unsafe conditions that they had endure to get an abortion after abortion was criminalized. These conditions were a direct result of new laws that punished women for attempting to procu...

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...white women (Reagan 28 – 44).
Although the history of how abortion became such a taboo act, forcing many women to attempt to self-induce, may be unclear, one thing is evident: the criminalization of abortions has greatly harmed women in America. The change from common law, which allowed abortions prior to quickening, to codified laws that prohibited it, was the beginning of the criminalization of abortion. In addition, the actions of the American Medical Association to get rid of non-traditional practitioners, and the way the Church changed its perspectives on abortion played a crucial role in making it harder for women to obtain abortions. Due to these actions, the danger of abortions increased because the only ones that were accessible were often underground, and unsafe. If it were not these occurrences many women would have been more likely to survive abortions.