Historically speaking, abortion was legal in the United States until about the 1880s. Even when lawmakers began to regulate it at that time, it was more to regulate the industry to avoid poisoning.
Early regulations on abortion were necessary to avoid snake oil salesmen from harming their customers and to reign in on unlicensed medical practices. It was not a moral, religious, or even political stance. It became so in the decades to follow, when women began to move into the public sphere. Barely two decades later they began the suffrage movement, championing for the right to vote. What interesting timing for men in office to start whittling away at their reproductive rights—thus forcing them back into the home...
"At conception and the earliest stage of pregnancy, before quickening, no one believed that a human life existed; not even the Catholic Church took this view," Reagan wrote. "Rather, the popular ethic regarding abortion and common law were grounded in the female experience of their own bodies."
”The force behind this 19th-century AMA anti-abortion campaign was Dr. Horatio Storer, a Harvard Medical School graduate who dedicated much of his practice to OB-GYN work before he died in 1922.
The crusade proved to be a form of backlash against the shifting aspirations of women. It was "antifeminist at its core," Reagan wrote.
The AMA pushed for state laws to restrict abortions, and most did by 1880. Then the Comstock Law, passed by Congress in 1873, banned items including abortion drugs.”
Source for historical references: https://www.cnn.com/2016/06/23/health/abortion-history-in-united-states/index.html
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