Abortion : a history

Author / Creator

Fissell, Mary Elizabeth, author

Available as

Physical

Summary

"An ancient entertainer unable to work while pregnant; a medieval holy woman performing a 'miraculous termination'; a Reformation-era abortion provider prosecuted as a witch; a Victorian midwife sa...

"An ancient entertainer unable to work while pregnant; a medieval holy woman performing a 'miraculous termination'; a Reformation-era abortion provider prosecuted as a witch; a Victorian midwife saving her patients from the workhouse. Women have always sought to end pregnancies, and long succeeded. This book tells their stories. From enslaved and Indigenous herbal knowledge on Europe's colonial plantations to Planned Parenthood's unlikely alliance with postwar churches, Mary Fissell reveals abortion's long politics, tracing how Western societies have policed the practice--or chosen not to"--

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