{"id":215880,"date":"2019-12-26T12:46:46","date_gmt":"2019-12-26T18:46:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=215880"},"modified":"2019-12-26T17:52:31","modified_gmt":"2019-12-26T23:52:31","slug":"new-york-times-wrong-abortion-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/new-york-times-wrong-abortion-history\/","title":{"rendered":"New York Times writer gets history wrong, claims abortion was always widely accepted"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The New York Times has published an <\/span>interactive history of abortion in America<\/span><\/a> seeking to \u201cinform\u201d the reader that legalized abortion is no big deal because, in essence, it\u2019s always been socially acceptable. However, as one might expect, there are a number of false claims in the article.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to author Lauren MacIvor Thompson, a historian at Georgia State University and the author of a forthcoming history of Margaret Sanger and Mary Dennett, pro-lifers are ignorant of American history: \u201cThey wrongly argue that we have long thought about fetuses as people with rights. And they improperly frame Roe v. Wade as an anomaly, saying it liberalized a practice that Americans had always opposed.\u201d Let’s examine the author’s claims.<\/span><\/p>\n

False Claim #1: Abortion was widely accepted in the first decades of U.S. history.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Thompson says abortion was widely accepted in the early 1800s: \u201cAbortion in the early stages of a pregnancy was common and generally not considered immoral or murderous.\u201d She adds that Americans considered abortion just another method of birth control like \u201cbreastfeeding, abstinence, the use of the rhythm method, vaginal douching and the use of herbs like pennyroyal or savin.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>Yet the portrait Thompson paints is seriously distorted. <\/span><\/p>\n

As Marvin Olasky\u2019s <\/span>Abortion Rites: A Social History of Abortion in America <\/span><\/i>portrays, and is summarized by <\/span>Abort73.com<\/span><\/a>, the opposite was true. Although abortion was practiced on the \u201cfringes of society,\u201d mainstream opinion condemned it. As early as 1652, a Maryland man was convicted for intending to commit an abortion. A Virginia law passed in 1710, along with a Delaware law passed in 1719, both sought to protect the rights of the preborn by making abortion a crime. The Presbyterian church officially declared abortion \u201ca crime against God and against nature,\u201d and the American Medical Association campaigned for stricter pro-life laws and greater enforcement of existing laws. Mainstream media outlets also spoke out against abortion, with even The New York Times calling abortionists \u201cdisgusting ‘practitioners’ who continue to escape prosecution.\u201d By the 1870s, almost every state had criminalized abortion.<\/span><\/p>\n

In short, although some women procured abortions America\u2019s early years, the historical evidence does not support the claim that abortion was \u201cgenerally not considered immoral and murderous.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

READ:\u00a0Quotes from pro-life feminists: then and now<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

False Claim #2: Early feminists were actually closet pro-abortion activists.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

In Thompson\u2019s telling, early feminists were cryptically pro-abortion: \u201cMost women\u2019s rights activists in the 1800s did not openly embrace contraceptives or abortion as part of their national platform. They knew that doing so would have increased men\u2019s sexual access to women, while allowing them to escape responsibility for any consequences.\u201d She even goes on to imply, again without any evidence, that the contemporary pro-abortion notion of bodily autonomy was somehow at the forefront of early feminists\u2019 minds: \u201cReformers knew that women\u2019s right to bodily integrity, above even the right to vote, was the key to truly becoming full citizens.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet as Live Action News has <\/span>thoroughly<\/span><\/a> documented<\/span><\/a>, early feminists were explicitly opposed to abortion. Elizabeth Cady Stanton said, \u201cWhen we consider that women have been treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit.\u201d She deplored the \u201cmurder of children, either before or after birth\u201d as an \u201cevil\u201d that had become \u201cfrightfully prevalent.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Elizabeth Blackwell, America\u2019s first female doctor, spoke out against a female physician that committed abortions: \u201cThe gross perversion and destruction of motherhood by the abortionist filled me with indignation, and awakened active antagonism.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Susan B. Anthony\u2019s newspaper, <\/span>The Revolution, <\/span><\/i>refused to publish ads for abortifacients and often published editorials against abortion. When approached by a couple seeking an illegal abortion, Dr. Charlotte Lozier refused to commit the \u201cshameful, revolting, unnatural and unlawful\u201d act.<\/span><\/p>\n

False Claim #3: Pro-life physicians in the 1800s were motivated by racism and selfishness.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

According to Thompson, mid-19th century pro-life physicians were animated by racism: \u201cAmerican physicians drew on nativist and anti-immigrant fears to argue that the \u2018ignorant, the low-lived and the alien\u2019 would outbreed good, Protestant Americans and destroy the nation.\u201d She also argues that physicians were motivated by self-interest: \u201c[M]any viewed anti-abortion reform as the key to improving the public\u2019s perceptions of physicians and establishing their place as respected members of society.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Thompson\u2019s version of history here is not only wrong, it\u2019s completely backwards. The real racism came in the form of those like Margaret Sanger who advocated eugenics and paved the way for abortion on demand <\/span>targeting minority communities<\/span><\/a>. As Sanger, who notoriously addressed the Ku Klux Klan in 1926, infamously wrote in a 1939 <\/span>letter<\/span><\/a>, \u201cWe do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n