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CHAPTER 4. ABORTION DISCOURSE IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE 59
medicine from the control of midwives and other “non-professional” practitioners,
and place decisions about abortion within the domain controlled by doctors.
The state laws, which typically made abortion illegal at any time during pregnancy
unless necessitated by medical considerations, created a zone of discretion
between “therapeutic” and “criminal” abortions, and left physicians with virtually
no guidance about how to navigate the distinctions.
The physicians used advances in the biological sciences made during the first
half of the century to publicize the process of fetal development. These advances
called into question the traditional doctrine of quickening by viewing pregnancy
as a continuous process from conception to birth. Although there is evidence that
this knowledge was disseminated into the general public prior to the physicians’
campaign (Luker 1984), the physicians nevertheless argued that women who terminated
their pregnancies did so out of ignorance of the biological processes underway.
Two additional factors appear to be associated with the criminalization of abortion
during this period (Mohr 1978, Luker 1984, Tribe 1990, Sitaraman 1994).
The transition of the United States from a largely agrarian to largely urban society
brought with it corresponding shifts in the role of women, especially among
middle-class women. Sitaraman (1994) describes the relationship between 19th
century feminism and abortion, providing additional evidence supporting the emergence
of a right-to-life movement:
In the late 19th century, marriage and motherhood became full time occupations
for most middle and upper class women in America. Industrialization
first attracted native single women, and later a greater proportion of immigrant
women into the factories, while creating a spatial and ideological
separation of the world of work and the world of family life. The ’cult of
true womanhood’ stressed moral qualities of piety, purity, domesticity and
submissiveness that corresponded to the roles middle class women assumed
in their lives: daughter, wife, and mother. In this context, 19th century feminists
engaged in social causes that extended their moral superiority and responsibility
from the home to the public arena. They campaigned for a right
to vote and a right to education rather than a right to control their sexual and
reproductive behavior.” (Sitaraman 1994, 6)(citations omitted).
Additionally, a sharp rise in non-Protestant immigration fueled nativist sentiments
supporting an anti-abortion stance. “The perception that abortion was practiced by