The Fog of Choice
Dispelling the Myths of Abortion History
by Joseph W. Dellapenna
Carolina Academic Press, 2006
(1,300 pages, $95.00, hardcover)
reviewed by Christopher Tollefsen
The sinews of his stones are wrapped together.” So the Book of Job speaks of Behemoth, sometimes understood to be Satan. Some have held this to mean that Satan can literally entrap us in sin, leaving us damned if we do, and damned if we don’t. But a different reading is possible: By snaring us in one sin, Satan inevitably snares us in many.
Joseph W. Dellapenna’s new, and immense, history of the laws, mores, and technologies of abortion is, in essence, a 1,300-page summary of much of the empirical evidence of Satan’s capacity to ensnare us. For Dispelling the Myths of Abortion History, written by a Unitarian professor of law at Villanova University, shows how one of the twentieth century’s great violations of the moral law, abortion, corrupted everything and everyone with which it came into contact.
Dellapenna’s major focus in chronicling this corrosive effect of abortion is the work of twentieth-century historians who allowed advocacy for abortion to overshadow their commitment to truth and intellectual integrity. In the course of promoting, and then defending, abortion on demand in the United States and elsewhere, such historians as Cyril Means before Roe v. Wade, and James Mohr afterwards, established an almost unquestioned orthodoxy on the history of abortion rights.
This orthodoxy posits four theses: (1) that abortion was not a crime at common law before the nineteenth century; (2) that it was common and relatively safe through that time period; (3) that abortion statutes enacted in the nineteenth century were passed for the purpose of protecting maternal, not fetal life; and (4) that such statutes were enacted as part of a social movement to put “irregular” and mostly female practitioners of medicine, such as midwives, out of business altogether.
False Theses
Scholars have known for some time that all four of these theses are false. Consider, for example, the English case of Regina v. Webb. Webb was indicted in 1599 for self-abortion with poison “to the most pernicious example to all other wrongdoers in similar cases, against the peace of the said lady the Queen,” according to the court record.
The case is important, though not unique, in showing the falsity of the orthodox claim that abortion was only a crime when imposed upon an unwilling woman. A bit of reflection on this case also illustrates a number of facts that must be taken into consideration by any historian of abortion, facts neglected by the orthodox historians.
It does not take much imagination to recognize the difficulty Webb must have faced in attempting a successful abortion. The list of substances consumed by women for abortifacient purposes throughout history is long, and includes anise, cardamom, celery, chicory, ginger, horseradish, and mint. These clearly did not accomplish their desired ends.
Then there are the toxic alternatives. Mild poisons, like camphor, castor oil, and mandrake root, and highly poisonous substances like absinthe, hellebore, nightshade, ratsbane, and later kerosene and Lysol, have all been taken to induce abortions. In low doses, these would likely have been ineffective, but taken in quantities capable of causing abortions, they would also be capable of killing the mother.
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