Before Roe: The Physicians' Crusade

Throughline

NPR

Society & Culture, History, Documentary

4.7 • 15K Ratings

🗓️ 19 May 2022

⏱️ 54 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.

In the first episode of a two-part series, we're telling the story of that century: how doctors put themselves at the center of legal battles over abortion, first to criminalize — and then to legalize.

Transcript

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0:00.0	A note before we get started, this episode contains graphic descriptions of abortion and suicide.
0:06.0	If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255
0:16.0	or the Crisis Text line by texting home HOME to 741741.
0:38.0	The police were startled by the announcement that the well-known Madame Restele had been found dead
0:44.0	in the bathroom of her mansion on 5th Avenue. She rose in the night and went into the bathroom where she suicideed.
0:52.0	The coroner's physician examined the body and found that a deep gash had been cut across the front of the throat,
0:57.0	severing the jugular vein.
1:00.0	The water had been left running in the bathtub and hence there was but little blood in the water which still filled the tub.
1:08.0	The body was cold and it was evident that the woman had been dead for some hours.
1:16.0	In the early hours of Wednesday, April 1st, 1878, the death of a woman named Madame Restele, known to some as the Wickedest Woman in New York,
1:32.0	rocked the country.
1:38.0	The morning hurled, Wilmington, Delaware.
1:41.0	Madame Restele found that Madame Restele left the fortune estimated at from 1,000,000 to 1,500,000 dollars.
1:49.0	The New York Times.
1:50.0	Having for nearly 40 years been before the public as a woman who was growing rich by the practice of a nefarious business,
1:56.0	she yesterday came to a violent end by cutting her throat year to year.
2:01.0	The Cincinnati Daily Star.
2:04.0	Cincinnati, Ohio.
2:05.0	Another story is that Madame Restele was murdered through the instigation of wealthy people who had patronized her in her criminal business.
2:13.0	Clarksville Weekly Chronicle.
2:15.0	Clarksville, Tennessee.
2:16.0	Crimes of this wretched woman were knocked hers alone.
	...

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