Katha Pollitt Quotes
Until the last third of the nineteenth century, when it was criminalized state by state across the land, abortion was legal before "quickening" (approximately the fourth month of pregnancy). Colonial home medical guides gave recipes for "bringing on the menses" with herbs that could be grown in one's garden or easily found in the woods. By the mid eighteenth century commercial preparations were so widely available that they had inspired their own euphemism ("taking the trade"). Unfortunately, these drugs were often fatal. The first statutes regulating abortion, passed in the 1820s and 1830s, were actually poison-control laws.
Katha Pollitt, Poet, Essayist and Critic, “Abortion in American History”, The Atlantic, May 1997
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The drugs she referred to are "abortion pills" such as RU-486, used widely in France but restricted for import into the U. S.
Churches are political organizations too and are subject to the forces of their membership. In the case of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1971 they passed resolutions to assure the right of a woman to have an abortion to protect her health. The position on abortion changed steadily thereafter to even pass Constitutional amendments to ban abortions except to save the life of the mother. See {614356},54122, {614358}, {614359}, {614360}, {614361} for the dynamic history of the change.
See {592411} for Hardin’s reputation on abortion.
If a state or community legally decides that a fetus is a person, there are many situations where there is a conflict of interest between the mother to be and the fetus. A pregnant woman, having a single drink of alcohol, potentially dangers the fetus (called Fetal Alcohol Syndrome). Smoking is clearly hazardous to the health of the fetus (underweight babies and more infant mortality and even more SIDS deaths. A diet to keep a mother thinner may not be nutritious for the fetus, A few states and local government have started prosecuting pregnant women for their personal behavior that might be detrimental to the fetus—often the purpose is to assert the right of the state to regulate the behavior of the pregnant woman so that the state can control abortion.
Part of this maldistribution problem is a general health care distribution problem in rural areas. The larger part however, is the result of the religious and right to life pressures which tend to have more affect in rural areas than in cities and suburbs. One pressure is the fear that abortion providers have as a result of the many murders and assaults of the right to life forces.
The Zika, virus, when contracted by a pregnant woman, has a high likelihood of deforming the fetus so that if the fetus is carried to term, the baby will have a very small head with a raft of mental and physical impairments that go with that condition. The consequence of the 2016 Zika outbreak was many more women wishing to have abortions and a great dilemma for man abortion opponents.
Katha Pollitt is an American poet, essayist and critic. She is the author of four essay collections and two books of poetry. Her writing focuses on political and social issues from a left-leaning perspective, including abortion, racism, welfare reform, feminism, and poverty.
