Abortion Before Roe

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NPR

Society & Culture, History, Documentary

4.7 • 15K Ratings

🗓️ 19 June 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Abortion wasn't always controversial. In fact, in colonial America it would have been considered a fairly common practice: a private decision made by women, and aided mostly by midwives. But in the mid-1800s, a small group of physicians set out to change that. Obstetrics was a new field, and they wanted it to be their domain—meaning, the domain of men and medicine. Led by a zealous young doctor named Horatio Storer, they launched a campaign to make abortion illegal in every state, spreading a potent cloud of moral righteousness and racial panic that one historian later called "the physicians' crusade." And so began the century of criminalization. This episode originally ran as Before Roe: The Physicians' Crusade.

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0:00.0	Support for NPR and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
0:05.4	RWJF is a national philanthropy working toward a future where health is no longer a privilege but a right.
0:12.1	Learn more at RWJF.org.
0:15.4	A note before we get started, this episode contains graphic descriptions of abortion and suicide.
0:21.5	If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact the National Suicide Prevention
0:26.5	Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255, or the crisis text line by texting Home, H-O-M-E, to 7411741.
0:52.6	The police were startled by the announcement that the well-known Madame Restelle had been found dead earlier this morning in the bathroom of her mansion on Fifth Avenue.
1:02.0	She rose in the night and went into the bathroom where she suicided.
1:06.0	The coroner's physician examined the body and found that a deep gash had been cut across the front of the throat severing the jugular vein.
1:15.8	The water had been left running in the bathtub, and hence there was but little blood in the water which still filled the tub.
1:23.9	The body was cold, and it was evident that the woman had been dead for some hours.
1:31.4	Read all about it.
1:33.4	Warning paper.
1:34.6	Read all about it.
1:37.9	In the early hours of Wednesday, April 1st, 1878, the death of a woman named Madame Ristell, known to some as the wickedest woman in New York,
1:48.0	read all about it, rock the country.
1:52.8	The Morning Herald, Wilmington, Delaware.
1:56.2	Madam Restell found dead.
1:58.1	Madame Restell left the fortune estimated at from $1 million to $1,500,000.
2:03.6	The New York Times.
2:05.6	Having for nearly 40 years been before the public as a woman who is growing rich by the practice of a nefarious business,
2:11.6	she yesterday came to a violent end by cutting her throat ear to ear.
	...

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