One side of the abortion debate remained constant after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade: obscene sensationalism.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a fiery Republican Party figurehead, praised the court for outlawing “mass genocide,” but opponents of abortion continue to warn that Planned Parenthood is already planning a “illegal abortion enterprise.”
There are references to dead babies on one facet. On the other hand, there are images of dead mothers, dystopian depictions of state-controlled bodies, and a terrifying lack of power and control.
In my book on the literature surrounding abortion, I make references to the Nineteenth century, when popular media painted female doctors as evil, untrained abortionists who committed infanticide. It was an easy way for the owners of tabloid newspapers and dime novels to make some quick cash. However, it seems that the discourse linking abortion to homicide and evil hasn’t changed all that much since then.
“She-devils” and “murderesses”
Even though women have been practicing household medicine and gynecology as healers and midwives for centuries, women in the US were not allowed to attend medical schools or engage in professional medical practice until the end of the 19th century. In the nineteenth century, many women continued to practice without receiving formal training by referring to themselves as “woman physicians.” The most notorious of those advertised abortive treatments and medications in widely read newspapers.
A large part of the reason why the lady doctor became associated with the idea of the smarmy, grasping, and untrained abortionist is because these girls ran advertisements in cheap papers. In the nineteenth century, untrained female abortionists were referred to as “female physicians,” according to archivist Martha R. Clevenger. The historian Regina Morantz-Sanchez adds that women’s doctors were “far and away” most frequently accused of performing illegal abortions for profit.
An illustration of the abortionist Ann Lohman, also referred to as Madame Restell, from a publication of the National Police Gazette from 1847. Wikimedia Commons receives credit for this image.
Famous 19th-century women like Madame Restell, who performed abortions without receiving formal training, made national headlines due to unfounded accusations of infanticide, promoting infants, and killing girls.
These headlines later served as inspiration for popular dime novel fiction plots, further connecting the image of an abortionist with a melodramatically depicted image of “an atrocious woman.”
Restell changed the story that was used to inspire fictitious accounts of female abortionists because she was so sensationalized in the popular press.
For instance, the renowned 19th-century author and social reformer George Lippard creates a feminine abortionist character named Madame Resimer who aids in a plot to murder an innocent girl in his 1854 novel New York: Its Upper Ten and Lower Million.
Other abortionist figures appeared frequently in the nineteenth century, labeled variously as “murderess,” “hag,” “she-devil,” and “the instrument of the very vilest crime known in the annals of hell.”
Abortion as child murder
The link these sensational novels and press reports drew between abortion and infanticide was arguably the most pernicious.
For instance, Madame La Stelle, an evil female doctor who performs abortions, is portrayed in Andrew Jackson Davis’ 1869 book Tale of a Physician. Madame La Stelle devotes her “entire attention to obstetrical cases and infanticides.”
The satirically named Mother Higgins is an untrained abortionist hired by wealthy men with pregnant mistresses to perform surgical abortions in an unnamed author’s mid-19th century novel. She also murders infants after the children are born, and she or he aids the protagonist in kidnapping, raping, and killing adult women.
Abortionists were used as tools for homicide in nineteenth-century literature, in addition to performing medical procedures. Score for the photograph: Library of Congress
These stories introduced readers to the idea that if the reproductive industry is left unregulated, ruthless abortionists might even kill infants in cold blood.
Today, abortion providers like Planned Parenthood are still frequently accused of greed. You will hear anti-abortion activists like Stephanie Curry of the Family Policy Alliance falsely assert that Planned Parenthood has a long history of intentionally “exterminating” Black infants in America for profit.
Broken innocence
While these sensational stories portray the abortionist as swarthy and ugly, the women they hurt reflect Anglo-American female beliefs from the nineteenth century.
The pregnant women had frequently been forced to travel to places like Mother Higgins’ den after being duped into having affairs by sex-obsessed men. One of the most popular sensationalist authors of the Nineteenth century, Ned Buntline, wrote a novel in which one of these characters is actually killed by an abortionist.
Mary Rogers, a well-known beauty and “respectable” girl from Connecticut who was found dead close to the Hudson River in 1841, was the subject of a fictionalized account by Buntline. She was allegedly the victim of a botched abortion performed by an unnamed abortionist Buntline refers to as a “she-devil.”
Terror in America
Strong women have a long history of being transformed into monsters in literature. Feminine energy is portrayed by witches, sirens, shrews, and masqueraders as being given or secretly employed by the supernatural.
By the time abortion was made illegal in every state in the late 19th century, there were fears among Americans that women, particularly non-white girls, would use their access to the vote and employment to take control of society.
All of those fears were embodied in female doctors.
Because of this, discussions about abortion policy in America have in no way been limited to arguments over medical practices or issues involving federal vs. state rights. Instead, for more than 200 years, narratives about abortion have been intertwined with fears about gender, class, race, and religion in America.
Media and activists have long associated abortion with graphic imagery, whether it was Madame Restell’s drawing of Satan eating a child or the flimsy claims that Planned Parenthood encouraged the sex trafficking of young girls.
It seems that any discussion of abortion is infused with sensationalism because the issue has the potential to reflect the country’s most profound fears.
University of Alabama at Birmingham Associate Professor of English Margaret Jay Jessee.
