We have never been pro-life

[lucybeebee]

As a culture, that is. I’ve noticed that many people state that, “society has lost its reverence for life” or some other variation on that theme. I’m going to be so bold as to say that our society has never had a reverence for life - at least not in the ideal sense that the pro-life movement is trying to work towards. The lives of blacks and the disabled were never valued very highly. The fact that abortion and ABC was relatively rare in the past has more do with a lack of reliability that a desire to be faithful to the Church.

Until the 1950s, when the procedure was medicalized, there was no reliable way to get an abortion without dying. Given those circumstances, most women would chose giving birth over death. Now, you can get pills that induce abortion in the privacy of one’s own home. That’s a big difference. Similarly, before the advent of the pill, ABC generally meant employing dubious devices from the equivilent of the town hag. I have no doubt that if modern reproductive technologies were around in, say the Middle Ages, that the people would have used them (can you imagine how much fun Henry VIII would have had with artificial insemination?).

 

[bilop]

As a culture, that is. I’ve noticed that many people state that, “society has lost its reverence for life” or some other variation on that theme. I’m going to be so bold as to say that our society has never had a reverence for life - at least not in the ideal sense that the pro-life movement is trying to work towards. The lives of blacks and the disabled were never valued very highly. The fact that abortion and ABC was relatively rare in the past has more do with a lack of reliability that a desire to be faithful to the Church.

Until the 1950s, when the procedure was medicalized, there was no reliable way to get an abortion without dying. Given those circumstances, most women would chose giving birth over death. Now, you can get pills that induce abortion in the privacy of one’s own home. That’s a big difference. Similarly, before the advent of the pill, ABC generally meant employing dubious devices from the equivilent of the town hag. I have no doubt that if modern reproductive technologies were around in, say the Middle Ages, that the people would have used them (can you imagine how much fun Henry VIII would have had with artificial insemination?).

I disagree. Prior to 1930, every organized Christian group in the U.S. opposed abortion, as well as birth control.

Only a small eugenics movement, led by Sanger and the Planned Parenthood predecessor favored sterilization and birth control for blacks, the poor, and the disabled.

God Bless

 

[puzzleannie]

I disagree. Prior to 1930, every organized Christian group in the U.S. opposed abortion, as well as birth control.

Only a small eugenics movement, led by Sanger and the Planned Parenthood predecessor favored sterilization and birth control for blacks, the poor, and the disabled.

God Bless

most states had no laws whatever regarding abortion, or contraceptive or abortificant pharmaceuticals, prior to the mid 19th c, when lobbying for such laws begain – wait for it – as part of the feminist agenda of early women’s rights reformers. who knew?

 

[SoCalRC]

Only a small eugenics movement, led by Sanger and the Planned Parenthood predecessor favored sterilization and birth control for blacks, the poor, and the disabled.

You do the Western Eugenics movement a disservice. Madison Grant, co-founder of the American Eugenics Society was a close personal friend of Herbert Hoover’s and Teddy Roosevelt’s.

The Supreme Court test of eugenics law based forced sterilizations was the Carrie Buck case, sterilized under Virgininia’s eugneics law (modelled after Harry Laughlin’s model law, just as the Nazi ethnic purity law was).

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., himself a student of eugenics, wrote the opinion in Buck v. Bell. Oklahoma’s eugenics law was struck down by the Supreme Court in 1942 (Skinner v. Oklahoma), on the grounds that the law was inequally applied. But Buck v. Bell has never been formally overturned. 33 States have had eugenics laws at one point or another, and about 60,000 forced sterilizations (a mortal sin for Catholics) occured under them up until the 1970s.

There was also a strong xenophopic anti-immigration/bias involved in the movement. For example, Harry Laughlin was a founder of the Pioneer Fund, and a frequent ‘expert’ used by Congressional committees on immigration. That political legacy is actually alive and well with us today.

For example, the Tennessee State GOP finally dumped James Hart in 2006, though Hart had taken 86% of the primary vote in 2004. Hart had drawn a lot of criticism for some of his remarks regarding women and homosexuals, but it was reportedly his relentless public support for a return to eugenics sterilizations laws to properly control the “lesser races” that finally got him the boot.

 

[SoCalRC]

most states had no laws whatever regarding abortion, or contraceptive or abortificant pharmaceuticals, prior to the mid 19th c, when lobbying for such laws begain – wait for it – as part of the feminist agenda of early women’s rights reformers. who knew?

Abortion services were openly advertised in newspapers until the middle of the 19th century, and then discretely advertised (much as prostitution is advertised in phone books, etc. today) for decades more.

All the opinion pieces and debates about abortion prohibition that I have read from the period appear to be centered on women’s health. That is, there was seemingly great concern for the abortion related maternal deaths. If there is a “feminist agenda”, I cannot find it. If anything, it seems more of a medical profession agenda, since many of the pieces rail against mid wives and home birth in general, not just abortion practices.

 

[lucybeebee]

Abortion services were openly advertised in newspapers until the middle of the 19th century, and then discretely advertised (much as prostitution is advertised in phone books, etc. today) for decades more.

All the opinion pieces and debates about abortion prohibition that I have read from the period appear to be centered on women’s health. That is, there was seemingly great concern for the abortion related maternal deaths. If there is a “feminist agenda”, I cannot find it. If anything, it seems more of a medical profession agenda, since many of the pieces rail against mid wives and home birth in general, not just abortion practices.

Indeed. The first pro-life movement of the 19th century was spearheaded by the newly formed AMA. It’s primary concern was not that of killing innocent life, but of people (particularly midwives) practicing medicine without a license. Similarly, the fight to decriminalize abortion in the 1950s and 1960s was also started by doctors who frowned upon “backalley abortionists.” Although feminists were heavily involved in the abortion debate of the mid-20th century, it was doctors who were the major players. There was actually friction between the two groups, since doctors felt like abortion was a medical procedure that should be handled by professionals, whereas feminists believed that abortion should be a “female-centered service” that should be grassroots and done by women for women.

 

[gam197]

originally posted by SoCalRC
Abortion services were openly advertised in newspapers until the middle of the 19th century, and then discretely advertised (much as prostitution is advertised in phone books, etc. today) for decades more.

All the opinion pieces and debates about abortion prohibition that I have read from the period appear to be centered on women’s health. That is, there was seemingly great concern for the abortion related maternal deaths. If there is a “feminist agenda”, I cannot find it. If anything, it seems more of a medical profession agenda, since many of the pieces rail against mid wives and home birth in general, not just abortion practices.

Since the invention of the printing press, there have been more romance novels, soft porn and free love pamphlets, physiology books mostly published in Europe that made their way to America.

I think the first amendment in the Bill of Rights, the freedom of the press took us down the wrong path as there was no way any restrictions could be enforced on obscenity material and someone always wants to make a buck.

History…

One of the first books, Aristotle Masterpiece, came to the colonies in 1684. The question in 1750 was not whether the doctor’s office or women could read it but whether males should read it as what was “unclean to be read” .Concern over male/female masturbation and corruption of youth is addressed

In 1727 in England, Edmund Curl was prosecuted for publishing Venus in the Cloister and Nun in her Smock. English courts extended the notion of criminal libel to include obscenity.

Prior to the early eighteenth century, ecclesiastical courts and the secret judicial body of the Crown, the Star Chamber had exercised oversight. The spreading of printing could no longer be contained by the licensing of the Crown and in 1787, King George II issued a proclamation against vice, urging the public to suppress all publications but it was largely ignored.

Fanny Hill(sodomy) is published in 1748 and makes it way to America.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Hill

In the early 1800’s, as more economical American printed books, pamphlets, newspapers were circulated, concern arose about obscenity.

Around 1829, Charles Knowlton writes a book Fruits of Philosophy dealing with contraception, using a female syringe to insert certain substances after relations. In 1829 the Hall of Science was opened and books on physiology and birth control were distributed and it was a daily intellectual center for freethinkers.

Prior to the Civil War, police powers were understood belonging to the states and through them to the local community. States relied on English common law - “Blackstone Commentaries on the Laws of England”.

Abortion was advertised in some papers as there have always been some back alley newspapers and that is why the Massachusetts and Connecticut obscenity and anti-contraception laws and the federal Comstock laws were passed to prevent this material from going through the mail. Comstock confiscated 24 tons of paper material.

 

[Verisimilitude]

It is one thing when individuals. local communities or even organizations promote either a pro-life or pro-abortion position, but quite another when the federal government does so. Mush like when a mandatory maximum 55 mph speed limit was imposed on the nation, abortion on demand as instituted by Roe v Wade has taken the jurisdictuion away from the people to make their own choices.

Now the individual, community, and organizations must abide by the federal law despite it being against the majority; funding such practices by forced taxation and an ever growing central government.

The federal government used to be restrained by the Constutution but we have not elected leaders to uphold that ideology much lately. We may not have ever been formally pro-life as a nation, but we used to be pro-liberty for the individual. When we were, we were killing a lot less babies in the womb.

 

[Holly3278]

most states had no laws whatever regarding abortion, or contraceptive or abortificant pharmaceuticals, prior to the mid 19th c, when lobbying for such laws begain – wait for it – as part of the feminist agenda of early women’s rights reformers. who knew?

Yes but what about the Comstock Law? It was a national law wasn’t it? Oh what I wouldn’t do to see a return to the Comstock Law.

 

[gam197]

As the puritan religion lost its hold, the religious movement which touched literature was transcendentalism which is an offshoot of Unitaranism. Brook Farm(1841) (Emerson, Alcott, Hawthorne, Thoreau) was a haven for Transcendalists.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brook_Farm

**The Comstock law was a federal or national law passed in 1873 and is still on the books and is still used **according to wikipedia but the problem remains defining obscenity. I would imagine the English department at high schools and colleges, librarians, artists and musicians would be filing lawsuit after lawsuit if they tried to enforce it.

This was during the Purity Movement where women were demanding the elimination of the double standard in sexual matters

. During his career, Comstock clashed with Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger. In her autobiography, Goldman referred to Comstock as the leader of America’s “moral eunuchs”. Through his various campaigns, he destroyed 15 tons of books, 284,000 pounds of plates for printing ‘objectionable’ books, and nearly 4,000,000 pictures.[citation needed] Comstock boasted that he was responsible for 4,000 arrests and 15 suicides.en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anthony_Comstock&printable=yes

In the 1900’s a resurgence of writers(Fitzgerald, lesbian Gertrude Stein, Hemingway),some with bohemian roots influenced America.

cambridge.org/uk/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521827515

There are two separate laws which get confused. The Supreme Court reversed the Connecticut Court’s decision on Griswold repealing the state of Connecticut legislative anti-contraceptive Law of 1879.

 

[gam197]

We were pro-life at one time during the nineteen century.

What we didn’t understand was that some people felt repressed by it and therefore wanted a whole new society.

There are many who believe that change can only come from within when society becomes closer to God’s standard.

While I understand that, I also think that at times we have to take the leading role and change laws like Comstock did. Some people will always hate that and fight against it but I would rather live in a society where some are discontent then live in a society where porn, corruption and abortion are an everyday occurrence.