Date of Award

2024

Document Type

Honors Thesis (Open Access)

Department

Colby College. Science, Technology and Society Program

Advisor(s)

Ashton Wesner

Second Advisor

Sarah Duff

Abstract

Abortion in the United States was accessible and widely practiced until the mid- nineteenth century. In 1857 the physicians’ crusade, an anti-abortion political movement led by prominent medical doctors around the country, instigated the widespread criminalization of abortion by the end of the century. I argue that physicians wielded their scientific authority to validate increasingly conservative attitudes about race and gender. They appealed to national xenophobic and sexist backlash that accompanied progressive changes like industrialization and the abolition of slavery, amplifying those fears and offering politicians a source of control over female sexuality and a growing immigrant population: the criminalization of abortion. My argument is supported by a literature review of existing scholarship on this period, as well as scholarship on methods of historical and STS analysis, and most importantly a comparative historical analysis of medical journal articles published on abortion before and during the physicians’ crusade. With the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, understanding the factors that changed the public perception of abortion when it was first criminalized might inform our understanding of contemporary attitudes about race and gender.

Keywords

The physicians' crusade, scientific authority, criminalization of abortion, Dobbs v. Jackson, science and technology studies

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