Five things for Friday
Review of book on abortion in early modern Italy: When Abortion Was a Necessary Sin: The history of abortion in Catholic Italy as described by Christopoulos was largely familiar from what I already knew about Protestant England, Germany, and the United States. These western contexts, which share a larger history of medical practice and Christian heritage, have much more in common than not. As Christopoulos briefly points out in his introduction, the contemporary Catholic church makes historical arguments based in modern politics and theology, not history. In contrast, his book is a rigorous, multilayered social history of abortion. Weaving individuals’ experiences of pregnancy and abortion throughout, the book’s chapters address abortion as medical practice, the theology and church governance of abortion, and legal treatment of abortion. Christopoulos paints a world in which abortion was seen as sinful yet sometimes necessary and understandable. A woman could be theologically and legally excused for aborting if it were the lesser of two evils: to preserve her life and health, to avoid bringing the shame and scandal of nonmarital sex onto her family, or to preserve the moral and social order by removing the evidence of disorderly sexual conduct. These were not rare circumstances. Abortion was a regular practice and a practical necessity. But at the same time, it was stigmatized, and women, their partners, and their care providers faced spiritual jeopardy and- in extreme cases- criminal liability.
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‘Prickles down the neck’: project reveals unsung female heroes of Sutton Hoo dig.
My archivist blood ran cold at the line ' left in a plastic bag at the reception of the National Trust site Sutton Hoo by a mystery donor'; but in fact the mystery donor was eventually revealed and did make a formal donation. Phew.
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‘Importuning men’: Sex work and the male trade (from material that has ended up in The National Archives): The language in these records can be complex and nuanced; queer-friendly clubs were raided as ‘disorderly houses’, a charge that often related to brothels. Whereas men importuning or soliciting for sex in the records can often just mean men looking for sex, rather than men looking for people to pay for or sell sex. The criminalisation of homosexual acts between men mean it is often hard to differentiate in the records between sex where money is exchanged, and sex where it was not, because all of it was subject to the law in some way. As with other sex workers in our collections, much of the evidence is statistical and impersonal in nature, but with surprisingly revealing stories littered throughout.
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This is an older piece (dated 2000) but I think it bears recirculating: “The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion”: When the Anti-Choice Choose: Many anti-choice women are convinced that their need for abortion is unique - not like those “other” women - even though they have abortions for the same sorts of reasons. Anti-choice women often expect special treatment from clinic staff. Some demand an abortion immediately, wanting to skip important preliminaries such as taking a history or waiting for blood test results. Frequently, anti-abortion women will refuse counseling. Some women insist on sneaking in the back door and hiding in a room away from other patients. Others refuse to sit in the waiting room with women they call “sluts” and “trash.” Or if they do, they get angry when other patients in the waiting room talk or laugh, because it proves to them that women get abortions casually, for “convenience”. A few behave in a very hostile manner, such as calling clinic staff “murderers.”
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One of the lesser-known early C20th pioneers for sexual enlightenment and reproductive rights (whose papers I consulted in the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe, lo, many years ago): The Sex Education Pamphlet That Sparked a Landmark Censorship Case: Women’s rights activist Mary Ware Dennett was arrested in 1929 for mailing a booklet deemed “obscene, lewd or lascivious”: “One of the reasons the Dennett case hasn’t gotten the attention that it deserves is simply because it was an incremental victory, but one that took the crucial first step,” says Laura Weinrib, a constitutional historian and law scholar at Harvard University. “First steps are often overlooked. We tend to look at the culmination and miss the progression that got us there.”
I depose that a number of influential cases in this area were far from famous victories, but in the longer perspective, yes, they WON.
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