{"id":2131,"date":"2018-08-03T09:00:47","date_gmt":"2018-08-03T14:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/?p=2131"},"modified":"2018-08-01T16:56:58","modified_gmt":"2018-08-01T21:56:58","slug":"abortion-providers-before-roe-v-wade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/trot\/2018\/08\/03\/abortion-providers-before-roe-v-wade\/","title":{"rendered":"Abortion Providers before Roe v. Wade"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by Debra Sweet, Flickr CC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With the appointment of a new Supreme Court Justice looming, <\/span>Roe v. Wade<\/span><\/i> — 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 <\/span>Roe v. Wade<\/span><\/i>, choosing to perform abortions was usually illegal and dangerous. Despite this precarity, many providers risked their lives to ensure women had access to abortions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Abortion didn\u2019t 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 \u201cnatural\u201d purpose — to reproduce. Many doctors remained opposed to abortion into the mid to late 1900s, but not all. These others doctors — known as \u201cdoctors of conscience\u201d — performed illegal abortions, often requiring the women they served to wear blindfolds so they could not identify the doctors if they were later arrested.<\/h5>\n