'Thank the lord, I have been relieved': the truth about the history of abortion in America
t our rural county’s historical society, the past lives loosely in bulletins, news clippings, maps and handwritten index cards. It’s pieced together by pale, grey-haired women who sit at oak tables and pore over old photos. Western sun filters in, half-lighting the women as they name who’s pictured, who has passed on. Other volunteers gossip and cut obituaries from local newspapers.
I was sent here by hearsay. For years, my neighbour has claimed that the old cemetery in the low-lying field on my Wisconsin property contains more bodies than the scant number of tombstones indicates. The epic flood of 1978 washed away the markers of the nameless – civil war soldiers, he says. I want to know who the dead were in life. After many walks through the cemetery, I’m familiar with the markers that remain. One narrow footstone reads simply: “MAS”. Three marble headstones rest at odd angles among the box elder trees. Stained, eroded and lichen-crusted, the stones belong to a boy and two baby girls who died in the 1850s and 60s. On the boy’s is a relief of a weeping willow; on the sisters’ are rosebuds. Signs of young lives cut short.
I’m sitting at one of the oak tables when Carol, the historical society’s assistant curator, hands me a binder of cemetery records. A stranger has just sat beside me, her husband opposite us. I study the list of those buried on my land. I recognize the children’s names. I don’t see any men’s names. But there’s the name of a woman I’ve never heard of. I read it aloud: “Nancy Ann Harris.”
The stranger says: “She was married to Benjamin Franklin Harris, who’s my husband’s great-great-great uncle.” She nods to her husband, who nods in confirmation.
Astonished, I turn to face her. “How do you know that?”
“She died of an abortion,” the stranger adds. “Apparently, she’d had a lot of them.”
“How do you know that? ”
“Her death record.”
“Why would they put that in the public record?”
Carol, standing nearby, says: “It was a different time.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/12/thank-the-lord-i-have-been-relieved-when-abortion-was-safer-than-childbirth
This is a long read, but its very interesting.
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