Attempts to gain power mostly fueled Arizona’s near-total abortion ban in 1864, as male physicians sought to dominate health care over midwives and anti-abortion advocates felt threatened by immigrants, historians said.
The Civil War-era law — which the state Supreme Court this week ruled was enforceable — was enacted at a time when women did not have the right to vote and before Arizona, then a territory, became a state.
Back then, midwives predominantly performed abortions, using herbs or metal instruments, which caused resentment among male physicians, said Karissa Haugeberg, who teaches history at Tulane University in Louisiana.
“Physicians marked midwives as competitors,” Haugeberg said. So they began campaigning to be the authorities on reproductive rights and health care.
In 1847, a small group of physicians formed the American Medical Association, largely to quash competition from midwives and other nonlicensed providers while boosting their standing as a trustworthy and well-regulated guild, said Christopher Griffin, the director of empirical and policy research at the University of Arizona.
Haugeberg said, “A lot of this was this, like, behind-the-scenes battle of physicians trying to corner the market on obstetrical care and put the decision-making power of abortion in their hands.”
At the same time, rising birthrates among an influx of Catholic immigrants, coupled with dramatically falling birthrates among American-born women, sparked “replacement theory” concerns.
“There was a huge fear, a very xenophobic fear,” Haugeberg said. “Part of it was truly to control the fertility of American-born women.”
Some abortion restrictions were already in place at the time Arizona’s passed, said Jill Wieber Lens, a University of Arkansas law professor who studies reproductive rights.
Before the state’s near-total ban, abortions were illegal there only after women started to feel fetal movement, which Lens said could begin between 16 and 21…
Read the full article here
