This past August, the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, a labor union for prisoners, began a nationwide strike to protest against inhumane conditions, the use of solitary confinement, and precarious work in U.S prisons. Fighting prison conditions and labor precarity has been a long-standing struggle for prisoners in the United States and around the world, and social science research explains the dynamics underlying this struggle.

As ‘total institutions” prisons provide poor substitutes of basic needs, or limited access to basic items, services, and comforts like hygiene items, clean clothing, nutritious food, education, and health care services.  Consequently, prisons end up depriving inmates of their wellbeing, autonomy, sense of self-worth, and control over their fates. In the United States, the indignities of prison conditions range from major maltreatments, such as the abuse of long-term solitary confinement, to minor cruelties, such as restricting the use of showers and toilet paper (imagine being limited to just one roll per month), in overcrowded facilities.

• Erving Goffman. 1961.  Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books.
• Keramet Reiter. 2016.  23/7: Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long-Term Solitary Confinement. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Heather Ann Thompson. 2017. Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy. New York: Pantheon.

The specific conditions of prison labor reflect long-standing contradictions. On the one hand, social science evidence suggests that providing jobs to inmates has a positive effect and can reduce their involvement in future crime activities. On the other hand, prison labor has also led to abuse and exploitation. Correctional facilities use prison labor to serve private industries, to perform cleaning and maintenance functions within facilities, or even to repair public water tanks and fight wildfires. Prison labor has also served as an instrument of economic policy in the labor market. In the 1990s, for example, rates of unemployment declined when a massive number of able-bodied working age men went to U.S. prisons.

• Christopher Uggen. 2000. “Work as a Turning Point in the Life Course of Criminals: A Duration Model of Age, Employment, and Recidivism.” American Sociological Review 65(4): 529-546.
• Phillip Goodman. 2012. “‘Another Second Chance’: Rethinking Rehabilitation through the Lens of California’s Prison Fire Camps.” Social Problems 59(4): 437-458.
• Bruce Western and Katherine Beckett. 1999. “How Unregulated is the US Labor Market? The Penal System as a Labor Market Institution.” American Journal of Sociology 104(4): 1030-60.
• Joshua Page and Joe Soss. In Progress. Preying on the Poor: Tough on Crime as Revenue Racket. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Imprisonment often has devastating consequences for inmates, their families, communities, and society at large. Even though certain policies like prison labor may involve potential benefits, their positive effects only occur when there is a genuine effort to achieve inmates’ social inclusion. Inmates’ struggles to achieve effective changes in their living conditions therefore require sustained and special attention from the public and policy makers.

This post was created in collaboration with the Minnesota Journalism Center. 

From FiveThirtyEight to the front page of the local paper, data journalism is on the rise at media outlets worldwide. As early as 2012, Columbia Journalism Review published reports featuring examples of local and regional outlets beginning to publish stories with graphs, charts, and visualizations online. In the case of New York City news media in particular, data, analytic, and platform-based positions now account for nine percent of all media jobs — marking considerable growth since 2010. Studies also show that, in today’s journalistic job market, entry-level journalists are often expected to have skills in data journalism, social media, and analytics in addition to traditional reporting and editing skills. Social science research shows how social forces contribute to this shift. 

Legacy media organizations including the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post produce news at breakneck speed in a 24/7 news cycle, and are constantly innovating to find the most profitable and efficient methods to distribute news to the public. Not only are online media able to host the results and illustrations of large data analysis, but some media outlets utilize computational and/or algorithmic processes and programs that automatically convert batches of data into news stories for publication.

• Matt Carlson. 2014. “The Robotic Reporter.” Digital Journalism 3(3): 416-431.
• Angèle Christin. 2018. “Counting Clicks: Quantification and Variation in Web Journalism in the United States and France.” American Journal of Sociology 123(5): 1382-1415.
• Phaedra Daipha. 2015. Masters of Uncertainty: Weather Forecasters and the Quest for Ground Truth. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

The rise of data journalism is also self-reinforcing: As data becomes a central fixture in newsrooms worldwide, higher education institutions are developing programs to train journalists in data, analytics and programming. Established data journalism programs at higher education institutions include Columbia Journalism School and the University of Missouri’s M.S. in Data Science & Analytics, while other institutions offer data journalism courses taught by part-time, adjunct, and/or visiting instructors who specialize in the field. Not surprisingly, social scientists are beginning to track and analyze these programs.

• Baharah R. Heravi. 2018. “3WS of Data Journalism Education.” Journalism Practice 0(0): 1-18.
• Greg Treadwell, Tara Ross, Allan Lee, Jeff Kelly Lowenstein. 2016. “A Numbers Game: Two Case Studies in Teaching Data Journalism.” Journalism & Mass Communication Educator 71(3): 297-308.
• Deb Halpern Wenger, Lynn C. Owens, Jason Cain. 2018. “Help Wanted: Realigning Journalism Education to Meet the Needs of Top U.S. News Companies.” Journalism & Mass Communication Educator 73(1): 18-36.

The recent treatment of superstar tennis player Serena Williams provides plenty for discussions of discrimination against women of color in sports and more broadly, in public. Even before this most recent incident involving her technical violations for supposedly “aggressive” behavior against the match’s umpire, Williams received a violation in the French Open for her black athletic catsuit, despite numerous instances of white players sporting similar wear at the French Open in prior years. Serena Williams’ experience is not only familiar to adult women of color, but also to girls of color. Social science research highlights how enduring patterns of policing and regulating racial minorities begins at an early age — often within educational institutions

Schools have long served as sites for social control and discipline that hinder the educational attainment of minority youth. Girls of color experience a unique set of institutional discriminatory practices that are coded in both racialized and gendered controlling images. All too often, these images depict girls of color as overly aggressive, hypersexual, and too adult-like. One two-year ethnographic study showed that while some teachers appreciated Black girls’ assertiveness in the classroom, by and large, teachers and administrators discouraged Black girls from talking in “loud” or aggressive manners, especially when such behaviors threatened teachers’ authority. They attempted to incentive Black girls into more quiet and docile behavior in order to achieve status as young “ladies” — a status shrouded in ideals of white female innocence.

• Kelly Welch and Allison Ann Payne. 2018. “Latino/a Student Threat and School Disciplinary Policies and Practices.” Sociology of Education 91(2): 91–110.
• Edward W. Morris. 2007. “‘Ladies’ or ‘Loudies’?: Perceptions and Experiences of Black Girls in Classrooms.” Youth & Society 38(4): 490–515.

Dress code enforcement serves as one of the primary ways educational institutions police girls of color. In one study, girls were told, “Don’t come in here with no hoochie-mama dress all tight up on your butt!” Similar remarks demanded that girls “Close [their] legs” and act like ladies. At times, girls resisted these policies and the racialized and gendered stereotypes that emerged alongside them. Still, girls also participated in the regulation of their female peers’ clothing by degrading those who wore “sleazy clothes.” Such policies and practices reinforce educational institutions as sites that perpetually reproduce simultaneous race, gender, sexuality, and class inequalities.

• Rebecca Raby. 2010. “‘Tank Tops Are Ok but I Don’t Want to See Her Thong:’ Girls’ Engagements With Secondary School Dress Codes.” Youth & Society 41(3): 333-356.
• Edward Morris. 2005. “‘Tuck in That Shirt!’ Race, Class, Gender, and Discipline in an Urban School.” Sociological Perspectives 48(1): 25-48.

Originally Posted October 19, 2016.

The rain and wind of Hurricane Matthew may have stopped, but much of North Carolina is still under water. The hard work of repairing and rebuilding has begun across the southeastern U.S. and the Caribbean, particularly in Haiti where they are still reeling from the 2010 earthquake. Hurricanes – so called natural disasters –  are not simply the result of the weather but become “disasters” because of how society shapes people’s risks and how people prepare, adapt, and respond.

Extreme weather events like hurricanes often become problems because of the ways society has changed the environment, such as locating cities in areas at risk of flooding, filling in wetlands for development, and building homes on eroding coastlines. Government policies are also major factors in where, why, and when an event becomes a human disaster because development policies have contributed to creating risky areas while response plans are often inadequate.

• David L. Brunsma, David Overfelt, and Steven J. Picou. 2007. The Sociology of Katrina: Perspectives on a Modern Catastrophe. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
• Raymond J. Burby. 2006. “Hurricane Katrina and the Paradoxes of Government Disaster Policy: Bringing about Wise Governmental Decisions for Hazardous Areas.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 604:171–91.
• Susan L. Cutter, Bryan J. Boruff, and W. Lynn Shirley. 2003. “Social Vulnerability to Environmental Hazards.” Social Science Quarterly 84(2):242–61.

The risks and burdens of disasters are not evenly distributed. Communities with the least economic, social, and political power often face the greatest threats from natural disasters and are also the least able to prepare, evacuate and rebuild. Socio-economic status affects where people live and the quality of their housing. Poor and working class communities also tend to bear greater physical, emotional, and psychological impacts of displacement and have fewer resources and government support to rebuild and recover after a catastrophe.

• Piers M. Blaikie. 1994. At Risk: Natural Hazards, People’s Vulnerability, and Disasters. London; New York: Routledge.
• Alice Fothergill and Lori A. Peek. 2004. “Poverty and Disasters in the United States: A Review of Recent Sociological Findings.” Natural Hazards 32(1):89–110.
• Walter Gillis Peacock, Betty Hearn Morrow, and Hugh Gladwin. 1997. Hurricane Andrew: Ethnicity, Gender, and the Sociology of Disasters. London ; New York: Routledge.

Economic inequality and race also contribute to different levels of vulnerability and resiliency between countries around the globe. Communities of color are more likely to be threatened by environmental disasters and be less prepared, while government evacuation and reconstruction programs tend be limited for these communities. Researchers who studied Hurricane Katrina point to how experiences of the storm were shaped by institutional racism and how the effects exacerbated racial and class inequalities. For example, government aid was slower to reach African American communities who also spent more time in shoddy temporary housing and had more trouble rebuilding their neighborhoods.

• Robert D. Bullard and Beverly Wright. 2009. Race, Place, and Environmental Justice after Hurricane Katrina: Struggles to Reclaim, Rebuild, and Revitalize New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.
• Kristin Ann Bates and Richelle S. Swan. 2007. Through the Eye of Katrina: Social Justice in the United States. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.

Women and children also bear a greater burden and risk from disasters because they tend to have fewer resources. Women typically have more responsibilities of caring for children and aging relatives, yet they have also been leaders in the recovery process after countless disasters, organizing their communities to rebuild and demanding a government response. Natural disasters have a large impact on children due to the trauma, displacement, and disruption of their lives. Research found that childrens’ ability to respond and adapt after Katrina was related to their family’s race and class, with more vulnerable children experiencing greater detrimental effects on their well-being after the storm.

• Emmanuel David and Elaine Pitt Enarson. 2012. The Women of Katrina: How Gender, Race, and Class Matter in an American Disaster. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press.
• Elaine Pitt Enarson and Betty Hearn Morrow. 1998. The Gendered Terrain of Disaster: Through Women’s Eyes. Westport, CT: Praeger.
• Alice Fothergill and Lori A. Peek. 2015. Children of Katrina. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

Recently, Trump advisor Stephen Miller announced plans to bar documented immigrants from citizenship if they or their families have ever used social assistance programs such as food stamps or welfare. Such action reflects stereotypes about who uses social assistance — in the United States, people of color take the blame. Not only are these stereotypes often incorrect, they are also deeply rooted in a long history of race and racism in America.

It is important to understand that racial minorities and immigrants do not necessarily use more public resources than native-born whites. Racial minorities and immigrants do tend to have lower incomes and levels of education than native-born whites, but research shows that they do not excessively use social assistance programs when compared with other groups.

• Sandra K Danziger. 2010. “The Decline of Cash Welfare and Implications for Social Policy and Poverty.” Annual Review of Sociology 36: 523-545.
• Andrew Cherlin, Bianca Frogner, David Ribar, and Robert Moffitt. 2009. “Welfare Reform in the Mid-2000s: How African American and Hispanic Families in Three Cities are Faring.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 621(1): 178-201.

Americans’ attitudes towards welfare — particularly myths that certain groups overuse programs such as welfare and food stamps — are heavily rooted in politics of race and racism. In fact, several scholars have illustrated how political and ideological opposition to social spending are shaped by racial appeals. Even in the post Civil Rights era, political figures use implicit messaging and coded language to attack social spending programs and recipients of these programs, subtly implying racial minorities overuse such programs, thus perpetuating these racist narratives.

• Sanford Schram, Joe Soss, and Richard C. Fording. 2003. Race and the Politics of Welfare Reform. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
• Joshua J. Dyck and Laura S. Hussey. 2008. “The End of Welfare as We Know It?Durable Attitudes in a Changing Information Environment.” Public Opinion Quarterly 72(4): 589-618.
• Ian Haney López. 2014. Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class. New York: Oxford University Press.

Miller’s plan to bar citizenship for immigrants who have used social spending programs must also be understood as a consequence of historical racism in the American welfare state. During the 19th and 20th centuries, white working-class immigrants from a variety of European countries accessed social spending programs, opportunities for home ownership, and union membership due to their racial privilege.  On the other hand, Blacks and other non-white groups — including non-white immigrants– were denied the same opportunities. This heightened racial inequality while simultaneously validating racist beliefs about minorities and immigrants. In short, while Miller’s plan seems to primarily focus on immigration, it most certainly also about race.

• Cybelle Fox. 2012. Three Worlds of Relief: Race, Immigration, and the American Welfare State from the Progressive Era to the New Deal. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Ira Katznelson. 2005. When Affirmative Action was White. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
• Vilna Bashi Treitler. 2013. The Ethnic Project: Transforming Racial Fiction into Ethnic Factions. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.

Originally Posted September 14, 2016.

It’s September, which means students are zipping up their backpacks and sharpening their pencils for a new school year. For many kids, however, disciplinary actions like suspension and detention make school feel less like a place of learning and more like a minefield for getting into trouble. Some schools are experimenting with restorative justice practices to address disruptive behavior in lieu of more traditional means that often mean missing class. These new policies tend to take a lot of time and effort to implement, and very little research has been done regarding the efficacy of these restorative justice initiatives. However, research points to an array of problems with the more traditional, exclusionary methods educators have relied on in the past. 

Many schools have increased their use of punitive discipline and zero tolerance policies, despite drops in school-based delinquency. A shift in school disciplinary procedures would likely result in fewer days of missed tests and lectures for African American students, who are the most likely to receive suspension as a punishment in schools, especially in more racially diverse schools. Research shows that black students are more likely to receive the brunt of disciplinary action when overall delinquent behavior in school is low because teachers and administrators perceive them as threatening day-to-day proceedings.  

• Tamela McNulty Eitle and David James Eitle. 2004. “Inequality, Segregation, and the Overrepresentation of African Americans in School Suspensions.” Sociological Perspectives 47(3): 269-287.
• Kelly Welch, and Allison Ann Payne. 2010.  “Racial Threat and Punitive School Discipline.” Social Problems 57(1): 25-48.

Educators often evaluate certain behaviors and mannerisms like punctuality, quiet voices, and particular styles of dress as indicative of being good students. These perceptions of good behavior often stem from teachers’ raced and classed biases regarding what a model student looks like. But many of the characteristics that teachers think make bad apples, like tardiness and attendance inconsistencies, are in fact the same red flags that a student is at risk of dropping out of school. And new research finds that exclusionary punishments like detention and suspension lead to lower test scores and increased tensions between teachers and students.

• Brea Perry and Edward W. Morris. 2014. “Suspending Progress: Collateral Consequences of Exclusionary Punishment in Public Schools.” American Sociological Review 79(6): 1067-1087.
• Edward W. Morris 2005. ““Tuck in That Shirt!” Race, Class, Gender, and Discipline in an Urban School.” Sociological Perspectives 48(1): 25-48.

Recently, Utah and Idaho legalized public breastfeeding, finally making the practice lawful in all parts of the United States. Yet, even where public breastfeeding is legal — and has been for some time — breastfeeding mothers still face stigma. For instance, a pool patron and a staff member recently asked a breastfeeding mother in Mora, Minnesota to cover herself while at a public pool. Many have pointed out the contradictions between observers’ acceptance of women’s skin in certain public domains (like at the beach or on the cover of a magazine) and the public shaming women receive when their skin is exposed during breastfeeding.

In U.S. society especially, breasts are sexual symbols. And since motherhood is not highly sexualized, public breastfeeding presents a cultural contradiction in the United States. Because of these shared understandings of breasts as sexual, mothers must consciously negotiate spaces where they can breastfeed. For example, mothers report they engage in a variety of behaviors, like avoiding breastfeeding in certain spaces where they might face scrutiny or draping a blanket over the baby to hide their breasts, in order to not be viewed as sexual while breastfeeding.

• Cindy A. Stearns. 1999. “Breastfeeding and the Good Maternal Body.” Gender & Society 13(3): 308-325.
• Nicole Owens, Shannon K. Carter, Chelsea J. Nordham, and Jason A. Ford. 2016. “Neutralizing the Maternal Breast: Accounts of Public Breastfeeding by African American Mothers” Journal of Family Issues 39(2): 430-450.
• Michele Acker. 2009.  “Breast is Best…But Not Everywhere: Ambivalent Sexism and Attitudes Toward Private and Public Breastfeeding.” Sex Roles 61: 476-490.

In other words, one reason people respond to public breastfeeding with discomfort and sometimes hostility is that breasts have a particular meaning within U.S. culture and breastfeeding in public challenges that meaning.

The word “rave”evokes different responses depending upon one’s generation. For many it symbolizes fun all-night dance parties with friends. While the public may be quick to associate rave culture with youth delinquency, social science explores the broader range of social, spiritual, and cultural elements of raves and electronic dance music (EDM). Raves began in 1980s Britain and quickly spread to the United States. Youth created these anti-establishment and and underground events to celebrate peace, love, unity, and respect — otherwise known as “PLUR.” However, heavy drug consumption resulted in media scrutiny and government crackdowns of these underground locations in the 1990s and early 2000s, pushing raves into more formal spaces like clubs.

• Tammy L. Anderson. 2009. “Understanding the Alteration and Decline of a Music Scene: Observations from Rave Culture.” Sociological Forum 24(2): 307-336.
• Tammy L. Anderson. 2014. “Molly Deaths and the Failed War on Drugs.” Contexts 13(4): 48-53.
• Shadi Kardan. 2003. “The Government’s New War on Drugs: Threatening the Right to Dance!” New England Journal on Criminal and Civil Confinement 29(1): 99-124.

Social scientists have explored raves and the electronic dance music scene from two different perspectives. The cultural perspective emphasizes a sense of community and empathy for its members as the roots of the scene. From this perspective, drug use enhances these experiences. The rave has been portrayed as a youth cultural phenomenon, characterized by belonging, self-expression, acceptance, camaraderie, escape, and solidarity, and where drugs — particularly ecstasy or “E” — are often central to the scene or tools in rebellion. From the public health perspective, excessive drug use is the defining feature of rave culture. Here raves and the electronic dance music scene are perceived as dangerous drug subcultures that increased drug-related health problems in the United States. However, some debate these claims and argue that the effects of ecstasy itself are linked to feelings of closeness and solidarity at raves.

• Philip R. Kavanaugh and Tammy L. Anderson. 2008. “Solidarity and Drug Use in The Electronic Dance Music Scene.” The Sociological Quarterly 49(1): 181-208.

While typically not linked to public perceptions of rave culture, some scholars connect raves and electronic dance music culture (EDMC) to religion and spirituality. In particular, scholars point to the non-Christian religiosity of rave’s dance “ritual,” likening it to the non-denominational “new church.” Further, EDM inherits its ritualistic, chanting, and percussive elements from African, Asian, and Indigenous cultures in North America, and African American, Latino, and gay communities in Chicago and New York City in the 1970s and 1980s. Thus, youth promoted raves as place of growth, sacredness, and unity, where youth were not divided through class, ethnicity, and gender.

• Graham St. John. 2004. “Introduction.” Pp. 1-15 in Rave Culture and Religion, edited by G. St. John. London and New York: Routledge.
• Graham St John. 2006. “Electronic Dance Music Culture and Religion: An Overview.” Culture and Religion 7(1): 1-25.

Though the shape and form of raves and rave culture continues to change, both cultural and public health scholars agree that these events are much more than sporadic, all night dance parties.

Despite the stressful experiences and the poverty that often accompany immigration, social science research shows that Hispanics as a whole fare better in health outcomes than non-Hispanic Whites. The ‘Hispanic Paradox’ refers to the fact that these good health conditions in Hispanic populations represent a curious puzzle for researchers. This is because Hispanics also exhibit low-income status, disproportionate exposure to stress factors associated with the immigration process such as learning a new language, adapting to an unfamiliar environment, and encountering persistent discrimination — factors associated with poor health outcomes.

• John M. Ruiz, Patrick Steffen, and Timothy B. Smith. 2013. “Hispanic Mortality Paradox: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of the Longitudinal Literature.” American Journal of Public Health 103 (3): 52-60.
• Linda C. Gallo, Frank J. Penedo, Karla Espinosa de los Monteros, and William Arguelles. 2009.”Resiliency in the Face of Disadvantage: Do Hispanic Cultural Characteristics Protect Health Outcomes?” Journal of Personality 77 (6): 1707-1746.

Some studies explain the ‘Hispanic Paradox” based on Hispanic culture-specific features that act as protective factors of health and wellbeing. They include the cultural emphasis in the development of social resources, family ties, and religious affiliations. Hispanic mothers in the United States, for example, enjoy favorable birth outcomes due to their close relationships with family, friends, and community members who provide a protective network of informal prenatal care. However, new research has found that Hispanic mothers’ adaptation to the norms of U.S. society — known as acculturation — erode these healthy behaviors.

• Michael S.McGlade, Somnath Saha, and Marie E. Dahlstrom. 2004. “The Latina Paradox: An Opportunity for Restructuring Prenatal Care Delivery.” American Journal of Public Health 94(12): 2062-2065.
• Ana F. Abraido-Lanza, Maria T. Chao, and Karen R. Florez. 2005. “Do Healthy Behaviors Decline with Greater Acculturation?: Implications for the Latino Mortality Paradox.” Social Science & Medicine 61(6): 1243-1255.

Notably, the Hispanic Paradox may not remain consistent when researchers consider the specific composition of Hispanic populations living in the United States, compared to Hispanic populations in their places of origin. For instance, Hispanics who migrate may have better health conditions than those who stay in their home countries, known as the ‘healthy migrant effect’. On the other hand, less healthy Hispanics may be more likely to return to their home countries and thus less likely to participate in research studies, what is called ‘the salmon bias’. A study of Hispanics tested both the ‘healthy migrant’ and ‘the salmon bias’ effects among Cubans (for whom returning to their home countries is not feasible), Puerto Ricans, and U.S.-born Hispanics (whose deaths are recorded in the U.S. national statistics). Findings reveal that lower mortality for Hispanics remains constant, even when controlling for these alternative hypotheses.

Alberto Palloni and Elizabeth Arias. 2004. “Paradox Lost: Explaining the Hispanic Adult Mortality Advantage.” Demography 41(3): 385-415.

Ana F. Abraido-Lanza, Bruce P. Dohrenwend, Daisy S. Ng-Mak, and J. Blake Turner. 1999. “The Latino Mortality Paradox: A Test of the” Salmon Bias” and Healthy Migrant Hypotheses.” American Journal of Public Health 89(10): 1543-1548.

Studies on the Hispanic Paradox shine a light on how ethnicity can affect health outcomes. However, concerns about health outcomes among minorities require both strengthening the benefits and preventing potential harmful consequences of being Hispanic in the United States.

With the appointment of a new Supreme Court Justice looming, Roe v. Wade — the landmark legislation that legalized abortion across the United States — faces an increasing threat of being overturned. While we often talk about the women who have or seek abortions, we tend to forget about the providers who perform them. Abortion providers today certainly face many challenges to performing this service, but before Roe v. Wade, choosing to perform abortions was usually illegal and dangerous. Despite this precarity, many providers risked their lives to ensure women had access to abortions.

Abortion didn’t always receive public concern. In fact, prior to the mid 1900s, abortion was considered a strictly medical matter. In the late 1800s, medical professionals began advocating for the criminalization of abortion, arguing that women who sought them were medically ignorant about pregnancy. And, at a time when a growing number of immigrant groups seemed to threaten the dominance of White, Anglo-Saxons, doctors vehemently opposed abortions for White, Anglo-Saxon women who defied their “natural” purpose — to reproduce. Many doctors remained opposed to abortion into the mid to late 1900s, but not all. These others doctors — known as “doctors of conscience” — performed illegal abortions, often requiring the women they served to wear blindfolds so they could not identify the doctors if they were later arrested.

• Kristin Luker. 1984. Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood. University of California Press.  
• Nicola Beisel and Tamara Kay. 2004. “Abortion, Race, and Gender in Nineteenth-Century America.” American Sociological Review 69: 498-518.
• Carole Joffe. 1995. Doctors of Conscience: The Struggle to Provide Abortions. Beacon Press.

It was not only trained medical professionals who performed illegal abortions. Some providers had little to no legitimate medical training. For example, members of the underground abortion service in Chicago — known as “Jane” — sought training so they would not need to rely on outsiders to perform services. Surprisingly perhaps, many clergy used their status and privilege of confidentiality with clients to provide referrals and assistance to women seeking abortions through an organization known as the Clergy Consultation Service (CCS).

• Laura Kaplan. 1995. The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service. University of Chicago Press.
• Kelly Suzanne O’Donnell. 2017. “Reproducing Jane: Abortion Stories and Women’s Political Histories.” Signs 43(1): 77-96.

The CCS alone estimates that the abortion providers they worked with were able to supply hundreds of thousands of women with abortion services before Roe v. Wade. And this was only possibly through the collaborative efforts of individuals who formed organizations and networks, and used their privileges and resources to help women who sought their assistance. Today women continue to fight for reproductive rights, and with the possibility of Roe v. Wade‘s overturning, many worry that women will once again need to rely on providers like doctors of conscience to meet their reproductive needs. 

This episode of the podcast, Criminal has more about the Clergy Consultation Service.