| View Larger Image | When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867-1973 | Paperbackby Leslie J. Reagan (Author)
| List Price: | $24.95 | | Price: | $21.46 | | You Save: | $3.49 (14%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | University of California Press | | Page Count: | 400 Pages | | Publication Date: | September 21, 1998 | | Sales Rank: | 278,968th |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
Marking the 25th anniversary of ROE v. WADE, it's crucial to look back to the time when abortion was illegal. Leslie Reagan traces the practice and policing of abortion, which although illegal was nonetheless available, with risk to both doctor and patient. For those today who have never known that abortion was once a crime, this work offers chilling and vital lessons. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.5 based on 10 reviews)
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Revisionist history. by Lawrence M. Andrews (Seattle, WA USA)  1 Stars
March 07, 2009
What a joke to listen to the positive reviews of this book. It doesn't take a nuclear scientist to figure out that murdering children is wrong. Millions of abortions since Roe v. Wade are not the act of desperate women in back-alley abortions or married women who can't feed their 11th child... why do so many YOUNG 'single' women choose to kill their children?... Social engineering seems to be the more correct answer. We have never condoned abortion as a nation or a people before Roe v. Wade... and we still don't... that's why books like this are needed to create revisionist history to fool and confuse people, and keep the abortion mills in work. With 35 years of Roe v. Wade, birth control pills, and liberals teaching our children how to use a condom have not alleviated the suffering and subjugation of women, but caused it to explode. You want to read real history from a real historian, read:'Dispelling the Myths of Abortion History' by Joseph Dellapenna. Wake-up.
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When abortion was a crime, I would have sought one by Judith J. Brown (Santa Monica CA)  5 Stars
February 21, 2007
I've just ordered this book, because it's theme is not just history for me, it was a frightening part of my life. When I was a teenager abortion was a crime: and the choices that forced on women was another crime. Two of my young friends got pregnant while in high school, one at 14 and one at 16, "A" students both, they were forced to drop out of high school, marry, and face the world with a 9th and 10th grade education. Oh, the 14 year-old was "allowed" to come back and take her freshman finals: very possibly because a 14 year old, 9 months pregnant, was meant to be a frightening an object lesson, and one that successfully prevented me from having sex until I was 19. Which meant that my first love at 17 left me after a year of frustration for both of us. Another of my friends was sent to Arizona to live with her Aunt for her "asthma" -- I now believe to have a baby in a home for unwed mothers. Which was another object lesson in our town, a home for unwed mothers, from which troops of teenage unwed mothers marched to the local mall together. To a lower-middle class girl like myself, sex was frightening, because it meant I might not escape the fate of my friends" a furnished basement "apartment" in their parents's home, a new baby, a teenage husband, and no education. When I made it to state college, I began to have sex with another long-term boyfriend, still frightened, watching another friend get pregnant at 19, and drop out of college for another baby and teenage husband. My fear was only partly relieved by a local campus character we all called "Crazy Charlie" for what-seemed to be tall tales of his exploits. But I was ready to take on face value what Crazy Charlie said one day: that he knew a doctor in Philadelphia, who would perform an abortion for $200. (To give you an idea of how much money that was 35 years ago, it was 1/10 of my yearly tuition and board at state college.) But if I had gotten pregnant, I would have spent that money, and trusted my health and fate to a Crazy Charlie, and the man he claimed was a doctor, who could have been a nurse, mid-wife, or have no medical training whatsoever, all because I wanted to have a future. I would have risked my life for my future, at a time when the New York Daily News printed photographs of women who had died in a pool of blood, after illegal abortions. My sister, four years younger than I, also had a friend who got pregnant at 16, while abortion was still a crime. But she lucked upon an underground railroad of authority figures that included ministers and doctors, who found doctors to perform abortions for women in need, the forerunners of the doctors, ministers and others who pressured the courts for Roe vs. Wade, because they were sick unto death, of dealing with the ugly aftermath of illegal abortion: the suicides of pregnant women, the botched abortions that killed or maimed thousands of women a year in the United States. Because they were also aware of another dirty secret: that upper middle class and wealthy women were routinely and discretely given D&Cs at the clean and safe hospitals of their leafy suburbs, that those with money were also able to send their daughters to Puerto Rico for abortions masked as "vacations." That only lower middle class and poor women were forced to face murder and maiming through illegal abortions. In the states which restrict abortion, so-called "Abortion Wards" are returning, filling with women maimed by illegal abortions -- and again, damn few are daughters or wives of money. Today, my sister's friend who had an abortion at 16 has gone on to marry, have two children, and become a pharmacist (and I doubt that she's one of those pharmacists who deny patients birth control, or emergency birth control.) None of my friends who got pregnant in high school came to our ten year reunion -- I heard that one said she was still "ashamed" that she'd never graduated. All who would support the elimination of legal abortion, keep in mind the tragedies you'd guarantee: maimed and murdered women, lives stopped short, more unwanted children in the world. There are 500,000 children in the foster care at this moment -- how many million more do you want? Many of those children are adoptable, but will not be adopted -- why don't "pro-life" advocates step forward to adopt them now? Do you want the forced return to warehouse orphanages for still more unwanted children? Do you want women sent to prison for seeking an abortion, and doctors also jailed, when we already have a shortage of doctors in this country? And nurses jailed, when we have a shortage of nurses in this country? How much damage and destruction of life will you support to force the rest of us to subscribe to your "religous" views? I've never heard a so-called "pro-life" advocate answer those questions honestly. Making abortion illegal will not stop abortions, it will just stop safe abortions, as is the reality in the few civilized countries in which abortion isn't legal, but their abortion wards are full to bursting with maimed women, and whose morgues overflow with dead women.
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A Much Needed Work by John R. Guthrie (Simi Valley, CA) 5 Stars
March 24, 2006
I am retired from the practice of family medicine, and witnessed the remakabe anguish and hardship that unplanned pregnancy constituted for so many women of all ages and stations. Dr. Reagan's work is a much needed one that provides an accurate and scholarly review of the history of abortion in the United States and the ways in which they were obtained before Roe vs. Wade. In an era when the greater majority of the population is too young to remember the bad old days when abortions were illegal, this is particularly important. Further, while some charge that opponents of a women's right to choose are deluded and ignorant religious fanatics, I do not believe this is necessarily true. Given accurate information such as that provided by "When Abortion Was A Crime," most people can and will make reasoned choices. I found this to be particulaly true when a daughter or wife or other family member is involved.
This book is a meticulously researched derivation from Reagan's doctoral dissertation, and has received numerous awards that include "Outstanding Book of the Year by Choice," the "President's Award from the Social Science History Association," and the "Law and Society Association's James Willard Hurst Prize for Best Book in Legal History."
--Dr. John R. Guthrie
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reading the religious by z 1 Stars
January 29, 2006
Anytime anyone stands up and writes logically about abortion, the people who want to change the laws based on their religious beliefs start slandering both the facts and the character of the writers.
Read this book for yourself, then check out the historical facts.
Abortion is not for everyone. Banning abortion is not for everyone. Each religious organization should set standards for their own adherants. The rest of us do not have to follow them.
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When abortion was a crime by book lover (Los Angeles, CA) 5 Stars
September 02, 2004
In summary:
*Don't read this book if you are pro-life and you want data to support your beliefs.
*Do read this book if you are pro-choice and you want data to support your beliefs.
*Do read this book if you need to do historical research on abortions and if you need specific examples of how abortions were performed in the early 1900's.
****
Most of the reviewers who have given this book a negative review seem to be pro-life and seem to be basing their opinion off of their political beliefs. I can see why they're disappointed. With a title like: When Abortion Was A Crime, they were probably expecting something that would support their political beliefs. If you want to read a book to support your pro-life beliefs, don't read this one. It is very obviously pro-choice.
Reagan starts off with a premise that although the law and the church were against abortion, women in the general public were not. She covers historical periods both before and after birth control was widely available. Before birth control was available, the majority of women who had abortions were married and already had children. Some of them felt like they had no other option than to abort a child. If they had sex with their husband, they would eventually get pregnant. If they got pregnant, how would they feed their eleventh child?
I read this book for a specific reason. I was trying to find out what a woman experienced if she had an abortion in 1910. This book was perfect for that. It talked about the different options she had available (midwives and doctors), the different procedures she could have gone through. Before I read this book, I thought that all experiences with abortion when abortion was illegal were similar to what women went through in the fifties. Highly illegal, dangerous, and dirty. I was quite surprised to find out that between 1900 and 1920 fewer women died from abortions than in 1950, and that number was adjusted for population growth. The women still died in 1910. It was still a dangerous procedure, and a doctor could still perforate a woman's uterus, pull out her intestines and kill her while performing an abortion. The woman could still die of septic infection. But there were much better places to go earlier in the century because the public was more accepting.
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