Brief History of Abortion

A Brief History of Abortion

The practice of induced abortion—the deliberate termination of a pregnancy—has been known since ancient times. Various methods have been used to perform or attempt abortion, including the administration of abortifacient herbs, the use of sharpened implements, the application of abdominal pressure, and other techniques. A naturally occurring abortion that ends a pregnancy sometimes is described as a "spontaneous" abortion or, with the more frequently used popular euphemism, "miscarriage", to distinguish a difference between an induced abortion and a naturally occurring one, but medically, abortion is the terminology applied to either natural or induced.

Abortion laws and their enforcement have fluctuated through various eras. In much of the Western world during the 20th century, abortion-rights movements were successful in having abortion bans repealed. While abortion remains legal in most of the West, this legality is regularly challenged by anti-abortion groups. The Soviet Union under Vladimir Lenin is recognized as the first modern country to legalize induced abortion on demand.^[2] China used induced abortion as a state ordered birth control method during an effort to reduce the population in the twentieth century.

Women who have had abortions walk with thousands of pro-life demonstrators as they participate in the annual March for Life on January 27, 2017.

 Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

When the March for Life, the largest annual pro-life event in the country, starts on Friday, don’t be surprised if there are a few Black Lives Matter signs in the crowd.

While anti-abortion activism has attempted to link abortion to racism for decades, the argument that abortion poses a unique threat to black lives has seen an increase in attention in recent years, the result of a collaboration between the conservative black church, black anti-abortion activists, and some white anti-abortion organizations.

These claims speak to real fears about racism in the medical system, calling back to the unethical harms of the Tuskegee study and the days when women of color were forcibly sterilized by state eugenics programs.

It’s an apt comparison in the eyes of black anti-abortion activists, many of whom argue that Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger was a supporter of eugenics who, some say, worked to intentionally lower the black birth rate. (Sanger’s history isn’t as clear-cut — she certainly did support a form of eugenics, but her work on birth control in the black community was not viewed with alarm by prominent African-American community leaders.)

That black women are far more likely than women of other races to get an abortion (accounting for roughly one-third of those undergoing the procedure according to one commonly cited study) is, to the black anti-abortion movement, proof that something is amiss.

In connecting abortion access in the present to the harms of the past, black pro-choice advocates say the black anti-abortion movement ignores women’s agency. And while polling doesn’t fully capture the complex viewpoints a large segment of the public has about abortion, in polls of the issue, black Americans still overwhelmingly say that abortion should be legal in most cases.

Even so, the black anti-abortion movement has landed on a provocative argument, one that award-winning filmmaker Yoruba Richen says proved ripe for exploration.

lackgenocide argument when she stopped by an anti-abortion protest while working on a different project. “I went to [an] abortion center and there was a protest, and there were signs out there that talked about Margaret Sanger being a racist,” she says. Looking further at the protesters themselves, she found “it wasn’t just people from the sort of traditional, mostly white anti-abortion space; it was a sector of black folks from the black anti-abortion movement.”

After researching the issue, she quickly realized not only how potent the argument could be in parts of the black community, but how it had spread much further, becoming a common talking point of anti-abortion politicians. With the backing of PBS Frontline and the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute, Richen set out to better understand how the black anti-abortion movement operates, speaking to a number of people on both sides of the issue and releasing a short film on the topic, “Anti-Abortion Crusaders: Inside The African-American Abortion Battle,” in December.

I spoke with Richen about the film and medical racism, how the anti-abortion movement moved faster on racial outreach than some reproductive rights groups, and why black anti-abortion activists embraced the election of Donald Trump.