Misogyny And Abortion Analysis

Misogyny’s Role in Quickening the Shift in Perspectives on Abortion from 1860 to 1970 The abortion controversy is undoubtedly one of the most controversial social issues in politics today. In the historic presidential election of 2016, many conservative voters cited their desire for an anti-abortion Supreme Court justice nominee as reasoning for supporting Donald Trump despite dissatisfaction with other characteristics and policies of the Republican presidential candidate. Though the practice of abortion has been documented as early as ancient Greece, the abortion dilemma has been a prominent part of American public policy debate since the nineteenth century’s push for criminalization of abortion. Philosophers saw within the ethical dilemma
J.M. Toner in 1861 provides a primary source from the second half of the nineteenth century at a time when a wave of abortion criminalization laws had just been passed in the United States. In his article titled “Abortion in its Medical and Moral Aspects” published in the Medical and Surgical Reporter, Dr. Toner writes that abortion is definitively immoral under any circumstances due to God’s decree against the killing of another person and points out the prevalence of this illegal activity through anecdotal evidence. His main purpose for writing on this controversy is to shed light on the immorality of abortion and call for increased enforcement of abortion criminalization laws. Dr. Toner writes, “In regard to these matters I hope to see a higher moral tone disseminated among the people, acted up to more conscientiously by the [medical] profession, and a willfully causing of abortion declared by law to be murder, and rigorously punished as such by the legal tribunals” (Toner 443). In order to advance his argument, Dr. Toner asserts that abortion is an evil that is more prevalent than should be desired in society, citing the Biblical commandment that “thou shalt not kill” while asserting that “all large cities have dens of wickedness and crime where premature labor, with its concomitant evils, is frequently produced. In fact, it has become a regularly-established money-making trade” (448). Dr. Toner, dismayed at the reality of affairs despite
George Walter wrote an article in the periodical Obstetrics and Gynecology that provides some personal commentary as a primary source from the late twentieth century at a time when the United States was moving toward legalization of abortion. Titled “Psychologic and Emotional Consequences of Elective Abortion,” Dr. Walter’s article reviews the research done on the responses of women who chose to have an abortion and explores the question about the safety of abortions in terms of psychological harms. While common knowledge assumed that induced abortion would result in a traumatic psychological burden on the woman afterward, a line of reasoning for criminalization of abortion to deter women for their own protection, Dr. Walter found through his literature review that there is no data to support this, and “in fact, for the healthy woman with a happy marriage, abortion is most often truly therapeutic” (Walter 487). In addition to his conclusion on the psychologic aftermath of abortions, Dr. Walter places his own argument within the historical context of increased support for abortion and the idea of voluntary motherhood (Gordon 95), a term coined by the feminist movement in the 1870s but did not gain traction until “the vacillating pendulum of public practice has swung toward a more liberal approach to induced abortion in recent years” (Walter 482). In 1970, abortion was legalized up until the twenty-fourth week in New York and