Abortion

Description

An ancient entertainer unable to work while pregnant; a medieval holy woman performing a ‘miraculous termination’; a Reformation-era abortion provider prosecuted as a witch; a Victorian midwife saving her patients from the workhouse. Women have always sought to end pregnancies, and long succeeded. This book tells their stories.

From enslaved and Indigenous herbal knowledge on Europe’s colonial plantations to Planned Parenthood’s unlikely alliance with postwar churches, Mary Fissell reveals abortion’s long politics, tracing how Western societies have policed the practice—or chosen not to. For long periods in our past, abortion was widely tolerated by authorities and ordinary people, and far from straightforward in Christian morality: it was not a crime in Britain until 1803, nor a religious issue in America until the twentieth century.

Whether in France, Scotland, Germany or Italy, abortion controls have always sprung from wider panics around social change—whether times of war, revolution and economic upheaval, or patriarchal anxiety about women’s growing independence. As restrictions tighten once more, this vividly illuminating history reminds us that such repression never endures.

Reviews

‘A surprising and ultimately optimistic history. Expertly researched and deeply empathetic, Abortion centres the lives and stories of women and provides a crucial and fascinating context for understanding abortion politics today.’ — Leah DeVun, author of The Shape of Sex

‘A compelling, compulsively readable and timely account of the very long history of abortion and abortion restrictions. Fissell’s prose sparkles, and the stories of women—married and single, rich and poor, enslaved and free—leap off the pages.’ — Kathleen M. Crowther, author of Policing Pregnant Bodies

‘Vital reading. Fissell tells the story through vivid, engaging and often alarming accounts of real women who tried to end their pregnancies.’ — Helen King, author of Immaculate Forms

‘An important book that tells the history of abortion—and its frequent repression—from antiquity to the modern day.’ — Leslie J. Reagan, author of When Abortion Was a Crime

‘Eloquently, brilliantly and poignantly relates the experiences of individual women to convey the complexity, sadness and determination of women’s efforts to control their fertility. Their stories provide a reality check about the universality and persistence of women’s needs to end pregnancy, no matter what level of repression or discipline.’ — Julie Hardwick, author of Sex in an Old Regime City

‘The definitive history of abortion in the West, demonstrating that, for all of the recent controversy about the practice, it has also enjoyed centuries-long periods of acceptance by the powerful. Accessible and absorbing.’ — Nicholas L. Syrett, author of The Trials of Madame Restell

Author(s)

Mary Fissell is the inaugural J. Mario Molina Professor in the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, focusing on sex, gender and reproduction. The author of Vernacular Bodies, among others, she has featured on the BBC, and in Vice, Slate, The Washington Post and The New York Times.