2022 Year in Review

P H O T O : T H E N E W A R A B
While the debate around abortion in the US has been a fixture in the sociocultural
sphere for more than 50 years now, the history of abortion laws in the
US extends far further and holds a more complicated interpretation of life,
bodily autonomy, and religious freedom. Before 1840, abortion laws in the US
were far less stigmatised than they are today. According to historian Jennifer
Holland, the factor of limited medical knowledge on foetuses meant that
criminalising abortion was much more difficult for authorities. As such, laws
around abortion relied on a British common law to perform the procedure
known as the ‘quickening doctrine’ — wherein foetal movement can be
detected between 4 to 6 months of gestation, thus defining the cutoff for when
an abortion procedure can be carried out. If the abortion occurred past the 6
month mark, then the pregnant person would be charged with a
misdemeanour. Healthline explains that the change in attitude towards
abortions after 1840 may have been led by male physicians — who established
the American Medical Association (AMA) — who argued that their collective
knowledge of the human body was distinctive and more accurate than the
knowledge held by female healers and midwives.
By 1900, abortion was criminalised when carried out under any means —
medical or chemical — except if the mother’s life was in danger, which came
down to whether a doctor deemed that the mother’s life was at risk. This
however did not stop people from seeking out abortions, it only hampered
efforts to have safe abortions.
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