I found out today that I am an "Originalist" when it comes to abortion

[underpants]

"Originalist" meaning a belief in what the Founding Fathers meant and what world they lived in at the time the Constitution was written.

Who knew?




Abortion Was Legal

Abortion has been performed for thousands of years, and in every society that has been studied. It was legal in the United States from the time the earliest settlers arrived. At the time the Constitution was adopted, abortions before "quickening" were openly advertised and commonly performed.

Making Abortion Illegal
In the mid-to-late 1800s states began passing laws that made abortion illegal. The motivations for anti-abortion laws varied from state to state. One of the reasons included fears that the population would be dominated by the children of newly arriving immigrants, whose birth rates were higher than those of "native" Anglo-Saxon women.

Medical Practice
During the 1800s, all surgical procedures, including abortion, were extremely risky. Hospitals were not common, antiseptics were unknown, and even the most respected doctors had only primitive medical educations. Without today's current technology, maternal and infant mortality rates during childbirth were extraordinarily high. The dangers from abortion were similar to the dangers from other surgeries that were not outlawed.

The Medical Establishment
The strongest force behind the drive to criminalize abortion was the attempt by doctors to establish for themselves exclusive rights to practice medicine. They wanted to prevent "untrained" practitioners, including midwives, apothecaries, and homeopaths, from competing with them for patients and for patient fees.

The best way to accomplish their goal was to eliminate one of the principle procedures that kept these competitors in business. Rather than openly admitting to such motivations, the newly formed American Medical Association (AMA) argued that abortion was both immoral and dangerous. By 1910 all but one state had criminalized abortion except where necessary, in a doctor's judgment, to save the woman's life. In this way, legal abortion was successfully transformed into a "physicians-only" practice.

http://www.prochoice.org/about_abortion/history_abortion.html#legal

[REP]

1. I think that's why I love you (and your entire undergarment family!)

Kick!

[underpants]

7. Aw

:loveya:

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. Wow. So much for the "sanctity of life!"

What hypocrites.

K&R

[underpants]

8. I always thought it was odd that they didn't mention it

now I see why.... well at least they did cover it in the 9th and 10th Amendments which were the basis of the Roe ruling.

[appal_jack]

3. Excellent info. Thanks!

I did not know all this history. I always figured that after any of the Founding Fathers got over their shock at even being asked the question they would reply, "Of course the government should not interpose itself between a woman and her own medical decisions about her own body."

I am an "Originalist" about choice, and much else about our Bill of Rights. It is a liberal document, meant to be interpreted liberally as an expansive shield against the government intruding into areas of life where citizens can best govern themselves.

OF COURSE, it's even better now that these rights do (or at least should) explicitly apply to the poor, people of color, and women. But you've got to hand it to our Founding Fathers: even as a group primarily concerned with the rights of propertied white men, they were pretty goddam visionary, and yet also wonderfully practical.

k&r

-app

edit to remove a double-negative / improve clarity

[underpants]

5. Actually I read a letter in The New Yorker

I looked it up. I did not know that either

[Libertas1776]

9. I think, as far as the Founding Fathers go,

they probably would have considered the matter a very private thing and refused to have talked about it in public but probably wouldn't have found it a repugnant thing like today's fundies do. Although, I don't know about Ben Franklin considering he manufactured probably the first abortion debate in America.

A rival printer had published a serial of encyclopedic articles, one of which included innocently enough "abortion." Franklin, writing under the pen name of a concerned country woman, as he often did, with feigned outrage replied in his own newspaper saying: "If he proceeds farther to expose the secrets of our sex in that audacious manner, women would run the hazard of taking him by the beard in the next place we meet him." He did this not because he had any strong feelings on the subject, but rather because he knew it would sell newspapers.
http://books.google.com/books?id=oIW915dDMBwC&pg=PA61&lpg

[appal_jack]

11. also interesting

When I said "shock at even being asked the question," I meant that the Founding Fathers' concept of liberty was so strong and absolute that they would be horrified that people were even debating a government being so intrusive as to start making life-changing medical decisions for people.

Although, I suppose that you are right, and they also would be SHOCKED! at public discussion of reproduction/sex/feminine naughty-bits/etc.

And naturally, old Ben would have taken advantage of such shock, in the name of salacious salesmanship. Thanks for that link and bit of history too Libertas!

-app

[Libertas1776]

4. Interesting how back then

they drew the line at "quickening" or basically when the pregnant mother could feel the fetus moving. Now the fundies of today go so far as to say that life begins when...well, you know...the "batter slides into home plate."

[underpants]

6. The number of abortions appears to have stayed constant with the population

it is clearly something that is just needed. It IS health care.

[Solly Mack]

10. K/R

[Mithreal]

12. Good find, K&R.