History of abortion controversy

by Rishi Wed Mar 20, 2013 11:07 pm

Mike

Abortion has been an issue for centuries.

A good place to study the history of the abortion issue is in textbooks of Medical Jurisprudence that are used in law schools.

It was not long ago that abortion was illegal in every state in the United States.

It also was not long ago that if a young woman became pregnant out of
wedlock her life was ruined. She was made to feel overwhelming shame.

One of the secrets of the old textbooks on Medical Jurisprudence was the
very high incidence of suicide among young women who became pregnant
out of wedlock.

A textbook that I used over 40 years ago when I was in college and wrote a paper on this issue is:

Medical Jurisprudence by Professors Wharton and Stills of Harvard University, published in 1905.

One of the methods of suicide that the authors described was young women
particularly in steel mill towns where sulfuric acid is used in the
steel mills for finishing steel and was readily available as a means of
committing suicide.

The authors included autopsy photographs of the internal organs of the
young women. The Esophagus is badly eroded and has holes burned in it by
the sulfuric acid.

To commit suicide the woman would drink a glass of sulfuric acid. How
anyone could drink any sulfuric acid is beyond me. It is extremely
painful just to come in contact with it.

On the way down the esophagus it burns the lining of the esophagus all the way to the stomach.

Once the sulfuric acid reaches the stomach it causes violent vomiting.
The acid coming back up the esophagus burns the esophagus even more.

The death is an agonizingly painful slow death.

The esophagus swells and in some cases causes asphyxiation because the
Esophagus is so badly swollen that the person cannot breathe.

Also the acid erodes the esophagus over a period of hours until it
erodes the blood vessels. The blood vessels burst and the person bleeds
to death.

This occurs over a period of 10 to 20 hours

Until the 1960's the subject of abortion and the suicides of young women
was a taboo subject and was not discussed publicly although it was a
topic of serious discussion particularly in the Medical Schools and Law
Schools.

Finally The Supreme Court acted when The Court made The Decision in Roe
vs Wade that it was a violation of The Constitution of The United States
to permit abortion to be outlawed.

This is material from a paper that I wrote for a political science class when I was in college over 40 years ago.

This made such an impression on me, I remember it like it was yesterday.

Source(s):

Medical Jurisprudence by Professors Wharton and Stills. Published in 1905 by Harvard University

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