Thread by @jskilesskinner

The court claims a right to abortion is not "deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition."

Is that true? I searched 18th century newspapers because I wanted to learn how people really felt about abortion at America's founding.

Answer: they *loved* abortion. Thread! 🧵

How much would you guess that people in the 1770s used the word "abortion"?

I guessed zero. I was wrong! They talked about abortion ALL THE TIME in early America.

They talked about both
1.) literal abortion, and
2.) abortion as a metaphor

In 1752 a man had some "too familiar conversations" with a milkmaid. They needed some abortion herbs. Because he wanted to keep this quiet from his wife, he didn't trust a midwife. He got the herbs from "two idle Fellows of the Town" instead.

newspapers.com/clip/25588544/…

Sadly, the "herbs" were arsenic and the milkmaid died. The man was charged with poisoning her, as were the sketchy herb salesmen.

But no one was charged with the crime of abortion. Why? Because it was perfectly legal and common. Abortion was only reported on when it went wrong.

Most mentions of abortion from the period are metaphor. It was a shockingly common comparison!

A 1774 political critique:
"unless our ministry are such skillful midwives as to procure an abortion, we will shall be surprised with something monstrous"

newspapers.com/clip/25588837/…

From this we learn that abortion was:
* skilled work, done by midwives
* intentional
* seen as good
* protection from "monstrous births"

This last is a reference to a medieval Christian belief that some babies are hell-sent monsters, needing to be aborted.

OK, this is where it gets amazing, folks. Abortion metaphors weren't just common *in* America.

ABORTION WAS A COMMON METAPHOR FOR AMERICA HERSELF

That's right! Abortion is as American as the Statue of Liberty, the bald eagle, or an old bell with a crack in it.

My favorite example of this was written by a woman with the astonishing pseudonym PHILO-SAPPHO in a 1774 poem in the Hartford Courant.

She compares the opponents of the freedom to monstrous births, and the American Revolutionary War to abortion.

newspapers.com/clip/73602290/…

In this poem, abortion is freedom. In fact, Abortion = Freedom was a common metaphor at the time!

Abortion in 1700s America symbolized wars of liberation, it symbolized getting rid of bad laws and bad leaders. Not unlike "abort the court" today.

You might be wondering at this point: is the poet's name "Philo-Sappho" – meaning lover of Sappo, an ancient Lesbian poet – as obviously gay as it seems?

Answer:
🏳️‍🌈YES IT IS. IT IS EVEN MORE GAY THAN YOU PROBABLY THINK. 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈

Historians think Philo-Sappho was a woman named Anna Dix from Great Barrington, Mass. When she was young she got pregnant.

She wasn't married, so she was charged with the crime of fornication. She had to pay a large fine. Seemingly this made her feel positive about abortion!

In 1771 she divorced a short-time husband, moved to rural Mass, and started writing joyful, glowing poems about Sappho, signing them "Philo-Sappho & Company"

We don't know exactly who "company" is, but, I don't think it's a stretch to say Anna found a girlfriend

Sappho can "raise our raptured breast." Anna rhapsodizes Sappho's beauty and power. She considers Sappho the 10th muse.

"glorious Sappho melts us all away/
Her charms like fate command us to obey"

newspapers.com/clip/42665012/…

She was not a bystander. Anna aided the Americans in the Revolution. A tavern she ran was the base of operations for rebels in Shays's Rebellion in 1787. She sold horses and knives to soldiers.

In 1792 she became the first female litigant before the US Supreme Court!

She was there because she "with force and Arms unlawfully and wickedly did presume to keep a Tavern"

Her weapons-dealing tavern business ran afoul of authorities. Anna went before SCOTUS in 1792 and again in 1798 to fight for her right to stay in business.

CONCLUSION: abortion-loving sapphic freedom-fighters have been speaking truth to power in our nation's highest court SINCE THE BEGINNING.

Anna and her fellow Americans enjoyed the right to abortion since the beginning. Women forcefully took their rights since the beginning.

The right to abortion is not new. It is older than 1973. The right to abortion is deeply rooted in this nation’s history and tradition, and people at the time of America's founding were proud of it. Abortion is patriotic.

PS: Anna Dix founded a freedom-fighting dynasty. Her great niece was Dorothea Dix, Superintendent of Army Nurses during the Civil War. After the war she advocated for the mentally ill, changing the way we treat and view mental illness in America today.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothea_…

Lots of people are pointing out that feminist scholars studied this kind of stuff for a long time. Which is true! And great! Obviously I am but an amateur. Jacqueline Antonovich is one amazing voice on this!

https://twitter.com/jackiantonovich/status/1541153288497909761

Corrections on my understanding of the poem: the war was a year away, so it's about pre-war conflict. The noun abortion designates the expelled birth (opponents of freedom) so it would be more correct for me to say it's celebrating that expulsion.

I wanna do right by Philo-Sappho, so, I must come clean I'm now uncertain in my poem reading. It could be she's just calling opponents of freedom monsters -- the kind of thing that tends to get aborted or miscarried. But not really comparing anything to the *act* of abortion?

Thank you to carful readers like @BerkeleyEve and @avram who called into question my read of the poem. Intellectual honesty makes us stronger.

Finally: we SHOULDN'T HAVE TO CARE what 1700s people thought about abortion. Many were idiots who owned slaves and died from unnecessarily bloodletting.

The fact remains they embraced it, and SCOTUS is lying

h/t @AzieDee for the link!

npr.org/2022/05/18/109…

I wish I could redirect the appetite for the type of writing in this thread to actual scholars who have far greater accountability than I do to get the details correct:
@michelebgoodwin
@lmacthompson1
@jackiantonovich
@ProfJLMorgan

Follow them instead of retweeting this.

Seriously, I don't want to have to keep seeing search results that are this bad