The Story of Abortion in America

The Story of Abortion in America tells the somber story of some of the earliest documented abortions. The book has been broken down into several sections by authors Marvin Olasky and Leah Savas.

Abortionists and abortions of the 1652-1842 period are revealed in Section One: Unsafe, Illegal, and Rare. Despite the title A Street-Level History 1652-2022, one documented incident dates back to 1290. "John the Scot" was chasing Alice's husband Roger the Spicer when she slammed the door on him. Alice was pregnant with twins at the time. As a result of John's hard push on the door, Alice was seriously injured, and both babies she was carrying died. John was deemed guilty and could be killed by anyone who saw him. The use of abortifacients has been known to date back to the 1600s as a way of purging the body "to remove swelling." The growing number of ardent church-going colonists contributed to to a less common incidence of abortion in early America. In their Bibles and from the pulpit, they heard how God created man in his image, that babes are a blessing of the Lord, and to be fruitful and multiply. It is written in the Ten Commandments, "Thou Shall Not Kill."

There is a beginning of unsafe forms of abortions and pro-abortion ideology in Section Two: Specialization Begins, 1838-1878.

In Section Three: Supply and Demand, 1871-1940, we are presented with headlines that read "THE EVEIL OF THE AGE. Slaughter of the innocents...scenes based on eyewitness accounts." The unborn were slaughtered through the 1930s.In 1882, Mary Hood, along with seventeen colleagues from Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania, founded Bethany Home for Unwed Mothers. This Maternity Hospital offered free care, education, shelter, prenatal and postnatal care, and spiritual counsel. The number of pro-life organizations offering compassionate support to pregnant women began to grow.

In Section Four: Seeing Life, 1930-1995, Taussig presents his nonsensical theory of "therapeutic abortion." SICK!Barnum moved from promoting circuses to successfully lobbying for the ban of contraceptives in Connecticut. That's something I didn't know. With the 1960's feminism rolled in and with that paved the way for Roe v. Wade, "which some portrayed as one more case about liberty, rather than an assault on the voiceless." At the Chicago World's Fair in 1933 the Gerber Products Company handed out pamphlets that explained, "A baby's life begins not when he puts in his squalling appearance but at the moment the sperm (from the father) meets the egg (from the mother) in the Fallopian tube." There was a sculpture showing fertilization and used the term "fertilized egg." It used only one word to describewhat was growing in the womb: "baby." Gerber even went so far as to write a warning that said, "Abortions Are Dangerous! ...Frequently women become seriously ill from infection. Many of them seem to feel no ill effects, but may find that when they do want babies later in life they are sterile, they do not conceive; or they may have one 'miscarriage' after another. So they live with unhappy memories of what might have been. If you are thinking about abortion -- stop! Go to your family doctor. Talk it over with him. Remember, some women get pregnant only once in life. Don't make a move you'll regret." Lawrence Lader met Margaret Sanger and together they published The Margaret Sanger Story: And the Fight for Birth Control. In 1975, Roe v. Wade, a landmark decision defining women's right to abortion, dealt a huge blow. After observing a D&C abortion in Washington, D.C., abortionist Michael Freiman said that he in good conscience could not perform such abortions after seeing tiny arms with perfectly formed hands and fingers and other perfectly formed body parts. As of this point, he had only performed extremely early abortions. It didn't stop clinics from opening and doctors from getting paid large amounts of money to perform abortions in the first and second trimesters. 

In Section Five: Still Unsettled, 1995-2022 Ultrasound technology made it possible to visualize a developing fetus. For the pro-life movement, this was a major victory. The legality of partial birth abortion had to be decided by Congress in 1995. A lot of attention was drawn to the evils of Planned Parenthood. States are now enacting laws criminalizing abortion. While the fight is not over, people are beginning to recognize that the unborn matter and deserve protection.

The book is extremely eye-opening and worth reading. Everyone should take the time to read it.

Disclaimer: I received this book in exchange for my honest thoughts.