Hey everybody, for this context clues, we've cobbled together sections from three past

episodes of American hysteria in order to give you some context for our upcoming series

on the surprising origins and early history of the anti-abortion movement.

This up until the 1970s abortion was nowhere near the hot button outrage machine that it

is today, and in fact it was hardly a religious issue at all.

Instead we can look to a group that now champions the pro-choice cause, doctors of scientific

medicine.

Up until the 1800s, there wasn't a system in place to a credit doctors, and so wacky

patent medicines were sold by traveling salesmen, most of whom presented themselves as a form

of physician, someone with superior knowledge that could cure whatever ails ya.

While once modern medicine began to reshape the human lifespan and the human experience,

science began to light the way toward more effective treatments, cures, medicines, and

surgeries.

These new doctors hated the patent medicine craze, both for the legitimate reason that these

miracle cures were often at best useless and at worst dangerous.

But also, for reasons we can deem a little more selfish.

There was indeed a desperate need for scientific oversight in the medical world, but that doesn't

mean that the affluent white man doctors at this time knew what the fuck they were doing

either.

But what many of them did know is that these patent medicine men and women were their direct

and singular competition, and if they could get rid of the quacks and the charlatans, they

could reign supreme in the field of birth, which meant usurping not just these hucksters,

...