Marvin Olasky, professor of journalism at the University of Texas, editor of World magazine, and author of the widely noted book The Tragedy of American Compassion, here turns his attention to the history of abortion in America, arguing that although abortion was indeed practiced in significant numbers during the nineteenth century, it was never socially acceptable. Instead, Olasky demonstrates that abortion was limited to socially marginalized groups, was never legal, and was opposed by the vast majority of Americans, notably the press. This argument, he opines, will be disturbing to both sides of the current abortion debate—to abortion opponents because it admits that many abortions did take place in the nineteenth century, and to abortion advocates because it nevertheless denies that era’s popular acceptance of the practice.

Prior to 1800, abortions were rare in America for several reasons. In a comparatively rural society, networks of kinship and community entwined and connected the vast majority of the population. These connections put great pressure on the father of an illegitimate child to “do the right thing” and marry the mother of his offspring, usually before the delivery. Man’s sin-nature was by no means in abeyance during the eighteenth century, and among the sins committed was fornication. However, during that era in America, the children conceived in such illicit unions were almost always subsequently born to married couples—albeit not always couples who had been married for as long as nine months. Furthermore, to say that fornication took place is not to say that as much fornication took place as in other times and places. Specifically, prostitution was extremely scarce. William Byrd was unable to find a single prostitute in Williamsburg, capital of the far-from-Puritan colony of Virginia. This too was probably a factor not only of the greater strength of Christianity in American than in Europe but also of the predominantly rural/small town society in which it was less likely that individuals would flout the disapproval of their surrounding community by engaging in scandalous practices. Finally, surgical abortion in the eighteenth century was all but suicidal for the mother, and abortifacient drugs, herbs, potions, and the like offered no better than a 50% chance of killing the baby without also killing the mother. The few cases that did occur usually involved powerful men who, in the attempt to avoid scandal, forced abortion on the young women whom they had impregnated. Among desperate women, “betrayed, ruined,” etc., the disposal method of choice was infanticide.

During the early nineteenth century the industrial revolution came to America, and  though a positive development in many ways, it did bring urbanization and the attendant problems. One of those problems was the tearing loose of an ever-growing number of individuals from the natural fabric of kinships and community that had previously supported virtue and frowned on vice. The result was an increase in unwanted children in the womb and an increase in the killing of them by their unhappy mothers. Two different classes of women began to swell the numbers of American abortions as the century progressed.

In the city, far from the watching eyes of parents, young women who came to work in factories or as domestics were more easily seduced by dishonest men who falsely promised marriage. When pregnancy became the result of such fornication, the seducer-become-father might now urge an abortion and offer to pay for it, or he might simply abandon the woman to her own devices. In the latter case, the mother might see abortion as the easy way out. Such seduced and abandoned young women made up one of the two groups that produced almost all of the nation’s abortions early in the century.

The other group was the growing number of prostitutes. The relative anonymity found amid throngs of people in the big city allowed the trade to flourish, but imperfect methods of contraception meant that the average prostitute had, by Olasky’s estimate, 1.8 abortions per year. Lured into the business by the prospect of quick money or entrapped into it by sundry villainous means, prostitutes nevertheless led a life that was “nasty, brutish, and short.” Their average life-expectancy in the nineteenth century was four years after going professional. This was the result of rampant venereal disease and also of abortion, which still carried a 5-6% maternal mortality rate even by the end of the century, a result not of its illegality by rather of the lack of modern methods, especially penicillin. As a group, prostitutes accounted for the largest part of America’s nineteenth-century abortion business.

Near mid-century a third group, still outside the mainstream of American culture, added to the number of abortions taking place. This group was the spiritist movement. Besides seances, channeling, and the like, this group advanced the belief that marriage was superfluous at best and that sex was for any two people who found they had a “spiritual affinity.” They soon discovered a great many spiritual affinities and asserted the right to abort the children conceived thereby. Such children had no right to impinge on the spiritual fulfillment of their mothers and, anyway, would no doubt have lousy lives. The answer, of course, was killing them by means of abortion. Olasky estimates that by its peak in 1860, abortion was killing perhaps as many as 160,000 babies per year in the United States, a figure comparable, given population growth, to the 1.6 million who died each year in America during the early 1990s.

Contrary to the claims of some pro-abortion historians, these killings had always been felonies under common law, and as technological advances and societal changes made abortion more of a problem, various states passed laws to try to stop the practice. Such laws were limited by the medical technology of the day—rarely could pregnancy (and thus abortion) be proven with enough certainty to make a jury comfortable in convicting an abortionist if the penalty was severe. Even when punishments were only a few years in the penitentiary, abortion convictions proved frustratingly difficult to get. Still, the laws made life more difficult for the abortionist and thus helped make abortions less common than they would otherwise have been. Law also served as an instructor for those whose moral sense was not yet clearly developed on the subject.

Yet in addition to legal action—and this Olasky stresses heavily—nineteenth-century Americans resorted to other means of preventing abortions. These included principled physicians who refused to perform or refer abortions, courageous newspapermen who exposed and condemned abortionists, and compassionate men and women who founded the nineteenth-century equivalent of today’s crisis-pregnancy centers. The combination of legal and private opposition, along with the waning of the spiritist movement, substantially reduced the number of abortions—as a percentage of the population—by the end of the century.

The story of abortion in the twentieth century, like most aspects of American history, is a much less happy one. Near the beginning of the century ideas began to be bruited that would lead to the deaths of millions of children. Some intellectuals began to suggest that perhaps killing the child in the womb was not such a bad thing after all, especially in the “hard cases.” Meanwhile, on the front lines, so to speak, wealthy families placed heavy pressure on their physicians to perform or refer abortions for daughters who had “made a mistake” and “gotten into trouble.” Increasing numbers of doctors succumbed to the pressure, while newspapermen and other opinion-makers, coming more and more under the influence of the twentieth century’s brave new world of ideas helped prepare the way for a growing acceptance of abortion. On the compassion-front, professionally-trained (and frequently pro-abortion) social workers replaced many of the former pro-life volunteers at women’s shelters and the like.

Olasky brings his historical account down to the 1961 case of Arizona “Romper Room” (that’s a kiddy show, for you youngsters who might not remember) star Sherri Finkbein. The pretty, 29-year-old mother of three took thalidomide as a tranquilizer during the first trimester of her fourth pregnancy. Upon learning that thalidomide might cause birth defects, she sought a legal abortion in Arizona under a clause that allowed for exceptions to save the life of the mother (all states had such clauses). Since her own life was obviously not in danger, the medical board refused, though as Olasky points out, it might well have flouted the law in a case with a lower-profile. Finkbein and her husband then traveled to Sweden and there successfully procured the killing of their fourth child, even though there was an 80% chance that the baby was completely healthy and normal. No tests were ever performed to determine whether the murdered child was indeed a “thalidomide baby.” Press coverage in the United States depicted Finkbein as a victim of harsh and uncaring anti-abortion laws and helped set the stage for the Roe v. Wade decision, just over a decade later.

As always, Olasky’s writing is clear and flowing, a joy to read. Indeed, his work is a model of how social history should be conceived and written. I will, however, take issue with him a couple of areas.

Olasky resorts to demolishing a straw man when he asserts that his research will surprise and dismay abortion foes. These opponents of the process will, he implies, discover for the first time in these pages that a number of abortions did indeed take place in the nineteenth century and that, by implication, some would continue to occur even if the practice should be outlawed today. Does anyone actually believe the contrary? I seriously doubt it. In all my concourse with pro-life people over the years and all my reading about the movement I’ve never come across a single statement that implied otherwise. Clearly some people broke the laws against abortion in the nineteenth century, just as some people in those days broke laws prohibiting other types of murder. Just as clearly there are murderers today, notwithstanding laws against the murdering of persons who no longer have any part of their bodies inside the birth canal. And it is no less clear that some people will in future disobey the laws that may be made against the murdering of those still inside the womb. Since all this is undeniable fact that nobody can or does deny, why set up such a straw man and go to the exercise of knocking him to pieces? I would suggest that Olasky backed into the straw-man attack inadvertently in attempting to emphasize his fair and even-handed approach to the subject. His approach is indeed fair, and he would have done better to omit the straw man.

Another quirk is Olasky’s condemnation of the nineteenth-century abolitionists and his urging that modern abortion opponents eschew their approach. To back this up he states that William Lloyd Garrison and John Brown brought on the Civil War. His position in this is problematic in several ways. First, neither Garrison nor Brown was typical of the abolitionist movement any more than those who shoot abortionists are typical of the modern anti-abortion movement. As for starting the war, that was done by Southerners who preferred to break up the United States rather than see slavery limited and put, as Lincoln said, “in the place where the public can rest assured that it is in the course of ultimate extinction.” A peaceful end to slavery was not possible precisely because Southern slaveholders determined not to allow it. But this is not a matter pertaining to the history of abortion but rather to Olasky’s unfortunate resort to illustrating his point by making a comparison with a topic on which he was less well informed.

Notwithstanding these quibbles, I want to reiterate the great value of this book. It shows the modern pro-life movement how to be both wise and compassionate in the battle against the murder of children, therein putting history to some of its best practical use. Of interest specifically to the history profession and the good practice thereof, it demonstrates to the serious Christian historian not only that social history can be written in a lively and interesting style, but also that it can be sifted and analyzed intelligently within the framework of a Christian worldview and is not the exclusive preserve of those who endeavor to cook its data over the neo-Marxist fires currently stoked with the concepts of race, class, and “gender.” We may well hope and pray that where Olasky has shown the way in books such as this one and the Tragedy of American Compassion, many other thorough-going Christian historians will follow.

Steven E. Woodworth
Texas Christian University