Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Blogging Dellapenna: Midwives and Abortion Before ProLife Laws

I am so happy that LTI is doing this series.

I had vague daydreams of doing the same thing, but Dispelling the Myths of Abortion History is an elephant of a book, not easy to summarize.

In today's blogpost, Jay Watts cites Dellapenna to debunk the feminist myth that abortion was both common and accepted before statutes criminalized it in the 19th century:

Why did being of good character require an oath not to participate in abortions? Quoting Dellapenna, “By the nineteenth century, the moral reputation of midwives had become so suspect that they were often characterized by novelists as 'drunken incompetent slattern[s].' That such an unsavory reputation arose in large measure from the association with abortion and infanticide belies the claim of abortion rights activists that abortion was socially accepted until the late nineteenth century.”

Of course it is not the only point that refutes the feminist myth.

It's an elephant of a book. I expect more will come.