Bitchy History - Episode 2： How Did America Get Here - The Deeply Rooted History of Abortion

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Bitchy History, the American history podcast that dances with gleeful abandon on the grave of Phyllis Schlafly. 1.00

00:00:11.860 Welcome back, everyone. For today, we're leaving behind the story of the colonization of America and circling over to something a little more currently relevant. 0.55

00:00:19.480 I apologize for my voice sounding the way that it does.

00:00:22.160 I am currently getting over one hell of a cold, which has had its grips in May for over a week

00:00:29.140 now and has caused me to lose a little bit of my voice, as you probably know if you follow me on

00:00:34.120 TikTok. It's not exactly ideal to start recording a new podcast when you're this close to losing

00:00:38.840 your voice, but we're going to make this work. I'm going to be experimenting with different

00:00:43.960 approaches to how I do this show because honestly, it's been a really long time since I've done a

00:00:48.460 podcast. And the last one that I did, I actually worked as part of a duo, which has a very different

00:00:53.920 vibe than working on a show that's very much a solo effort. The less said about that show,

00:00:59.560 the better. It came from the very dark days when I was still working in conservative politics.

00:01:04.200 Look, we all made foolish decisions in our early 20s. And for what it's worth, I got the hell out

00:01:08.940 of all of that before Trump was ever made the GOP candidate. I definitely was never part of the

00:01:14.360 Trump GOP. Still, for all of the slightly cringe parts of that show's existence, I still had a lot

00:01:20.500 of fun working with my co-host Erica. We even had fun that one time at CPAC when the pro-life group

00:01:25.480 told us, unprompted, that they didn't think we were mentally deficient despite both Erica and I

00:01:30.440 being gay, which was appreciated, I guess. I've grown enough over the years to realize that 2015

00:01:38.180 gay Republican Meredith was little more than a stack of delusions at a trench coat, but at least 0.72

00:01:42.860 I can very much tell you I was never a pro-life type of Republican for all of my flaws. I was 0.97

00:01:47.640 one of those delusional Republicans who actually believed that conservatives were for small

00:01:52.000 government. And because of that, I viewed pro-life legislation as ultimately anti-conservative.

00:01:57.240 If we believe in small government, I argued, how can we push for legislation that inserts itself

00:02:01.540 into the medical decisions of an individual? If conservatives actually were the party of small

00:02:05.960 government, I'm sure that argument might have worked. Unfortunately, as I would come to find

00:02:10.040 out that was just one of the delusions stacked under the trench coat. It would soon become vastly

00:02:14.680 apparent to me that while I was a stack of delusions in a trench coat, the Republican Party

00:02:18.720 was by and large a large stack of red flags with a white circle and a little black symbol in the

00:02:23.160 middle in a trench coat, if you know what I mean. I'll let this one line from one of my favorite

00:02:28.060 movies of all time explain it in case you don't know what I mean. I believe he's making a connection

00:02:34.700 between you and Adolf Hitler.

00:02:37.480 Anyway, long story short, Donald Trump won the primary.

00:02:40.280 I spent months encouraging people to vote for Hillary.

00:02:42.600 Trump still won, and I went back to school to finish my history degree,

00:02:45.580 which brings us to where I am now. 0.67

00:02:47.740 Unfortunately, while in office, the great orange dope got to put in not one, 0.85

00:02:51.760 not two, but three Supreme Court justices, 0.74

00:02:54.240 which meant that even after he was catapulted out of office in 2020,

00:02:57.260 the damage was done.

00:02:58.120 And here we are, three years later, dealing with the ongoing fallout.

00:03:01.360 Which brings us to the topic of today's episode

00:03:04.680 I didn't just bring up my history as a pro-choice advocate

00:03:07.140 Or that run-in with a pro-life group at CPAC for fun

00:03:10.060 Though I always have fun with that 0.82

00:03:12.140 We don't think you're mentally deficient story

00:03:14.120 Because it was so out of pocket and utterly unsolicited

00:03:16.860 We'd never even talked to this group

00:03:18.800 And they just came up to us

00:03:20.400 And told us, don't worry, we don't think you're mentally deficient

00:03:23.920 It's like a guy telling you he's a nice guy

00:03:26.700 If you were, you wouldn't have to say it

00:03:31.320 But the real reason I bring all of this up is that today we're going to be talking about abortion,

00:03:35.380 more specifically the history of abortion.

00:03:38.280 It's hard to believe that it's only been a little over a year since the draft opinion of Dobbs v. Jackson was leaked to the public.

00:03:44.520 May 2nd, 2022, the draft of the majority opinion written by Justice Alito ended up in public hands by unknown means.

00:03:51.300 Now I could go on at length about the horrifying damage this will do and has already done to the health of women in this country

00:03:56.940 and the very concept of the right to privacy upon which so many other Supreme Court cases have been

00:04:01.600 based. But instead, today we are going to focus on one of the most absurd ideas in the entire

00:04:06.260 absurd opinion authored by Alito. Within this opinion, Alito makes the argument that a right

00:04:12.520 to abortion is not deeply rooted in the history and traditions of the United States, and not

00:04:17.000 implicit in the concept of ordered liberty. Now, this isn't the only reason that the draft opinion

00:04:21.500 concludes that Roe v. Wade was an unsound opinion in the first place, but I'll probably have an

00:04:25.880 entirely different episode dedicated to the nightmare that is this Supreme Court's views

00:04:29.580 on the 14th Amendment. Instead, this episode is going to focus on the deeply historically

00:04:34.740 illiterate idea that Alito has in this argument that abortion is not deeply rooted in our culture

00:04:39.660 and tradition. I'm pretty sure that the moment this decision was leaked, most historians who

00:04:44.260 even slightly involved with American social and cultural history felt like this.

00:04:48.380 I felt a great disturbance in the force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out. 0.98

00:04:53.400 Not deeply rooted my ass, I said, out loud, in a bar, where I was waiting to meet a friend. 0.98

00:04:59.520 I got some weird looks. I wasn't alone, though. Every other historian I knew was having that 0.99

00:05:04.140 exact same reaction. So today, instead of focusing on what the lack of abortion access means for

00:05:10.020 American women, let's talk about the deeply rooted history of abortion, specifically abortion in the

00:05:14.760 Western world in America. Because if I talk about it generally, we're going to end up with a really 0.88

00:05:18.780 long-winded discussion of Assyrian law and Sanskrit texts. And while those are interesting,

00:05:23.400 ultimately they aren't part of our quote-unquote western culture and traditions which is what

00:05:28.060 Alito is so obsessed with. To be honest though I still debated where I should start with the

00:05:33.460 history of abortion even under the constraints of American culture and tradition that Alito

00:05:37.360 is obsessed with. I could start with abortion in the Greco-Roman world but ultimately I didn't

00:05:41.760 want to play into that weird white supremacist historical illiteracy that leads them to think

00:05:45.660 that the Greco-Roman world is the basis of western civilization and dominated by the achievements 0.70

00:05:50.680 of white men. So instead, let's start with abortion and Native American cultures, 0.92

00:05:54.700 because that's far more important to the deeply rooted traditions of this continent.

00:06:00.580 Reproductive health care is a touchy issue for Native Americans historically. The history of

00:06:04.500 sterilizations and abductions by white Americans is objectively horrifying, and only made somehow 0.62

00:06:09.320 more horrifying by the tone-deaf way that some, mostly white women, tried to slyly suggest that

00:06:15.120 Native Americans set up abortion clinics on tribal land in order to circumvent bans after

00:06:19.420 the Dobbs v. Jackson verdict. Tacky. Let's never do that again, ladies. It's a bad look all around 0.99

00:06:24.880 to think that Native Americans are here to save us after all the shit we did to them. 0.99

00:06:28.960 There are 574 Native American tribes currently recognized by the federal government. 0.98

00:06:33.620 That's nowhere near the amount that existed before we stuck our European noses in,

00:06:37.540 but obviously it's too many for me to detail all their traditions about reproductive health,

00:06:41.440 even if I knew all of their traditions, which I don't. So I'll refrain from trying to claim

00:06:45.400 expertise on all Native American tribal reproductive traditions, but there are certainly tribes that

00:06:50.240 practiced birth control and used abortifacients to end pregnancies. Abaki Beck, a Blackfeet and

00:06:55.380 Red River Metis public health researcher, shares that plants had a role in the reproductive care

00:06:59.920 of women, including pregnancy and abortion in the Blackfeet tribe. The Shoshone people, among others,

00:07:05.180 used herbs like stone seed and dogbane for contraceptive purposes. The Shoshone, by the way,

00:07:09.700 are the tribe that gave America Sacagawea. Hard to get more rooted in tradition than that.

00:07:15.060 Many tribes viewed reproductive health and bodily autonomy to be an important component in their religious practices.

00:07:20.420 As a result, the idea of women being banned from autonomous health decisions for their own bodies

00:07:24.560 would be the opposite of some of the most extremely deeply rooted American traditions. 0.98

00:07:29.560 By the way, have I made the pointed use of quoting Alito's stupid phrase too many times already? 0.99

00:07:34.700 Probably. So, suck it up. It won't be the last time. I have nothing if not thorough when mocking someone. 1.00

00:07:39.780 But I suppose the culture of the colonized doesn't really matter much to Alito,

00:07:43.280 since it's not the basis of our legal precedent here in America.

00:07:46.460 So what did European colonists in America think about abortion? 0.55

00:07:50.020 Healers, midwives, and doctors have been using various herbal medicines

00:07:53.200 and physical methods to perform abortions for centuries.

00:07:56.260 Plants like juniper and red cedar were used by colonial European and Native women alike

00:08:00.500 to end unwanted pregnancy.

00:08:02.260 The methods available to women were recognized as both safe and effective at the time, 0.57

00:08:06.100 but the legality of the issue did differ depending upon which country controlled the colony a woman lived in.

00:08:12.060 For instance, if you were a woman of the 17th or 18th century living in a French or Spanish colony,

00:08:17.900 they would have been operated under the law of their home nation, where abortion was illegal.

00:08:22.000 However, British colonies had no such law against abortion if it was done before quickening,

00:08:26.880 or the first movement of a fetus in utero.

00:08:28.820 This is a really vague terminology, but it's usually around 16 to 20 weeks.

00:08:33.660 This had been English law since the 13th century,

00:08:36.100 as it fell in line with the current church teachings that stated that the soul did not enter the body until quickening.

00:08:41.480 The English law is particularly important in this context because English common law formed the basis for the law of the United States.

00:08:49.180 That's about as deeply rooted as it gets.

00:08:51.420 Once the American Revolution happened, America made no real major changes to these laws on a federal level.

00:08:57.100 From 1776 to the mid-1800s, abortion remained a legal practice in most states.

00:09:02.500 It wasn't until 1821 that any state in America would pass a law codifying any kind of ban on abortion.

00:09:08.380 and at that time Connecticut only reaffirmed the English law that abortion was legal up until that

00:09:13.960 very ambiguous line of quickening once again. So really it's the lack of legal precedent on this

00:09:20.120 issue that speaks more to the deeply rooted traditions of America than any law on the books

00:09:24.620 could. Pregnancy and everything else related to it was a woman's domain not men's and as something

00:09:30.440 that revolved around the lives and skills of women it's unlikely that most of the constitutional

00:09:34.520 Convention had any clue about these issues in the first place, let alone would have thought about

00:09:38.900 legislating them. Not that men in office today seem to know any more about anything related to

00:09:43.560 women's reproduction than they did in 1789, but I digress. So why would any of these men even

00:09:49.120 consider the need to legislate an issue that was purely the domain of women, women who barely

00:09:53.700 existed as legal persons in the eye of legal precedent at the time? Under common law, women 0.99

00:09:58.500 were considered covered persons under the English concept of coverture, which meant that their legal 1.00

00:10:03.140 and political roles were defined within the household by either the voice of their husband

00:10:06.580 or the voice of their father. Which is a whole other topic I could do an entire episode on,

00:10:11.100 and I probably will. But the important part is that it shows how little the law ever considered

00:10:15.540 women at all, and women's reproduction would have been of even less importance to the law.

00:10:19.920 That was the private sphere, governed by the home. The government was the public sphere. 0.99

00:10:24.060 It's not as if abortion didn't happen, it just wasn't the purview of the court. Cases concerning

00:10:28.460 abortion rarely came before the courts, and even then, the cases generally weren't concerned with

00:10:32.980 the abortion as it related to the life of the fetus. Instead, they used the abortion as evidence

00:10:37.660 of prior sin, meaning premarital sex or affairs. Of course, you might ask, how do I even know

00:10:43.460 abortions were happening? You might say, well, professor, maybe the rarity of abortions coming

00:10:47.640 before a judge just means that women weren't having abortions back then very much. And yeah,

00:10:52.080 sure, that's a nice theory, but it simply doesn't hold up with the reality of the evidence from the

00:10:56.520 period. Recipes for restoring menstruation for women were commonplace, some safer and more

00:11:01.960 effective than others. Restoring menzies or menstruation was the common term for abortion

00:11:06.280 in the 18th and 19th century. Restoration was needed when something had blocked or suppressed

00:11:11.100 the normal flow of menstrual blood, usually a pregnancy. In 1748, future founding father

00:11:17.080 Benjamin Franklin would publish an American version of a British textbook called The Instructor.

00:11:21.420 This was a manual that taught everything from mathematics to letter writing to horseshoeing.

00:11:25.760 Franklin had decided to adapt the British text for an American audience, which involved making

00:11:30.180 some edits here and there, removing things that weren't useful to an American and adding things

00:11:34.560 that he thought were. Some of this was just Americanizing the text, but one major change

00:11:39.160 was adding John Tennant's Every Man His Own Doctor or The Poor Planter's Physician to the end of the

00:11:44.140 text. Franklin advertised that his edition was the whole better adapted to these American colonies

00:11:49.620 than any other book of the like kind. In the preface, he specifically mentions his swapping

00:11:54.360 out of certain sections, insisting that in the British edition of this book, there were many

00:11:58.660 things of little or no use in these parts of the world. In this edition, those things

00:12:02.740 are omitted, and in their room, many other matters inserted more immediately useful to

00:12:07.460 us Americans. John Tennant was a doctor in Virginia who had written his medical guide

00:12:11.820 in 1734. The pamphlet contained a lot of guides for how to cure common ailments that rural

00:12:16.800 people might suffer from in the Americas, everything from stomach ache to baby colic

00:12:21.340 to epilepsy. I would not recommend trying any of his cures for anything, especially

00:12:27.020 not epilepsy, but the important thing is that these were common cures that anyone would have

00:12:32.220 been able to make and use for themselves in rural areas where there wasn't a doctor available.

00:12:37.800 On page 40 of this pamphlet, he writes a guide for how to cure the suppression of the courses, 0.89

00:12:43.340 where he says, now I am upon female infirmities to touch upon a common complaint among unmarried

00:12:49.160 women, namely the suppression of the courses. This disparages their complexions and fills them 1.00

00:12:54.120 besides with sundry disorders for this misfortune you must purge with highland flag a week before

00:12:59.240 you expect to be out of order and repeat the same two days after the next morning drink a quarter

00:13:04.580 of a pint of penny royal water or decoction with 12 drops of spirits of heart's horn and as much

00:13:09.940 again at night when you go to bed continue this nine days running and after resting three days

00:13:14.480 go on with it for nine more ride out every fair day stir nimbly about your affairs and breathe as

00:13:20.180 much as possible in the open air. Tennant then follows this with instructions on how to avoid

00:13:24.680 this complaint in the future, including that women must not long for pretty fellows or any other trash 0.97

00:13:29.960 whatsoever. So in other words, don't put out if they won't put a ring on it or you'll just have 1.00

00:13:34.560 to do this whole mess over again. But not one word of the instructions given by Dr. Tennant seems

00:13:39.700 judgmental or shaming. The suppression of courses is just a common complaint among unmarried women 1.00

00:13:44.480 and he's helping you solve it. And before you make the claim that perhaps this was just self-serving

00:13:49.500 for Franklin, man whore that he very much was, let us remember that Franklin counseled men to 0.97

00:13:54.440 have their affairs with older women because there is no hazard of children which irregularly produced 0.99

00:13:59.300 may be attended with much inconvenience. He wrote a whole pamphlet titled In Praise of Older Women.

00:14:04.780 No, really, he did. That wasn't just a scene in Assassin's Creed 3. I swear to God, it's a real

00:14:09.860 pamphlet he wrote. Concerning what? The benefits of taking an older woman as a lover.

00:14:15.580 really this i'd like to hear first and most obvious they're wiser and so this makes for

00:14:27.320 far more stimulating conversation makes other things more stimulating as well but more on that

00:14:34.060 in a moment that is literally the only cut scene i will never skip in this game i laugh my ass off

00:14:41.840 every single time. Google In Praise of Older Women by Benjamin Franklin after this episode 0.57

00:14:46.420 and enjoy the read. Really, seriously go read it. It's wild. John Tennant and Benjamin Franklin

00:14:52.420 weren't the only people publishing guides to help women with this problem either. In William

00:14:56.520 Mather's Young Man's Companion, which was written in 1699, a recipe for provoking a period is

00:15:02.440 included. Unfortunately, this particular one is horribly ineffective, but what do you expect from

00:15:07.100 a book called The Young Man's Companion? Most men today still think women pee out of the same

00:15:11.740 hole the baby comes from. The most important thing about all of this is that these books 0.73

00:15:15.940 were common, unremarkable, and not controversial to own in the slightest. The knowledge was

00:15:20.680 available to anyone that could read and do math, which was also taught by the book in

00:15:24.640 question. No one was burning copies of The Instructor in bonfires or arguing at school

00:15:29.320 board meetings that they needed to be banned. So I feel we've established my main point,

00:15:34.000 which is that from a legal and cultural perspective, abortion is very much deeply rooted in our

00:15:38.500 country. So where did this whole debate even come from? Two places. Men and religion. Surprise,

00:15:45.300 surprise. We'll start with men. They love going first anyway. In all ways. And as a brief aside, 0.99

00:15:53.460 if you're getting sick of any of the, you know, anti-man jokes going on in this show, 0.75

00:15:58.160 I do ask that you remember that the title of this show is Bitchy History. You knew what you signed 0.92

00:16:04.140 debt for. The first laws banning abortion in America were not put on the books until the 1860s.

00:16:09.520 Laws which made it illegal even before quickening began to appear around this time. This was

00:16:13.820 specifically pushed by a group of men who had organized the brand new American Medical Association

00:16:18.120 and felt that female medical practitioners like midwives were a problem that they needed to get 0.91

00:16:22.840 rid of. This group was led by a doctor named Horatio Storer. In 1860, governors of every

00:16:28.600 single state in the United States received a letter from the recently established AMA

00:16:32.720 written by Storer in which he says the evil to society of this crime i.e. abortion is evident

00:16:39.480 from the fact that it in its instances in this country are now to be counted by hundreds of

00:16:44.760 thousands by the moral law the willful killing of a human being at any stage of its existence is

00:16:49.920 murder this is the person that introduces the idea to the American legal system that the child

00:16:55.460 is alive from the moment of conception thanks a lot Horatio and before you say but that's what

00:17:01.140 religion says to be patient. We'll get to religion in a second. Why did Storer care about banning

00:17:06.620 abortion? Well, let's just say that Horatio and Tucker Carlson would have gotten along

00:17:11.340 really well. I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become

00:17:16.780 literally hysterical if you use the term replacement. If you suggest the Democratic

00:17:22.160 Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots with new people, 1.00

00:17:28.560 more obedient voters from the third world but they become hysterical because that's that's 0.84

00:17:32.600 what's happening actually let's just yeah storer was basically peddling replacement theory a solid

00:17:38.500 84 years before renard camus was even born amazing see the birth rate for protestant white women had 0.69

00:17:44.860 been declining over the course of the 19th century white people are going to be replaced by immigrants

00:17:49.500 from europe and asia and then how are white people going to fulfill their god-given right to control 0.63

00:17:53.760 everything. So abortion clearly needed to be banned, for the good of manifest destiny, you see. 0.69

00:17:59.020 Midwives get slandered as uneducated, unsanitary, and immoral. The only right doctor to go to is a 0.97

00:18:05.220 college-educated male doctor, because they certainly know more about the female body than a 0.97

00:18:09.540 woman who has probably overseen the childbirth of every one of those college-educated men. 0.59

00:18:14.300 That makes total sense. But regardless of how silly this all sounds, Storer's plan worked.

00:18:19.460 A few years into the campaign, some states began passing laws outlawing or restricting abortion

00:18:24.340 entirely. In 1860, Connecticut would change their law to get rid of that quickening rule they'd put

00:18:29.900 in place in 1821 and make abortion a crime. This was punishable for both the abortionist and the 1.00

00:18:35.160 woman by a fine and imprisonment. Over the next few decades, these laws would be passed in most

00:18:39.840 states, helped along by a Union Civil War veteran named Anthony Comstock. Comstock, for anyone that

00:18:46.280 cares, is included very high on my list of historical figures who I would travel back

00:18:50.720 in time to kick in the groin repeatedly if I ever had access to a time machine.

00:19:00.960 Personally, I think it's a noble cause, and I'm waiting for my chance.

00:19:05.040 I won't go into too much detail here, since Comstock is going to feature in another episode

00:19:09.380 somewhere down the line, but he's very relevant here, because not only was he against abortion,

00:19:13.760 he was also the leader of the anti-birth control movement of the 19th century.

00:19:18.120 In 1873, Comstock began lobbying Congress to pass anti-obscenity laws.

00:19:22.900 There had been a rise in new forms of birth control, like diaphragms and rubber condoms.

00:19:27.000 This lobbying led to the passage of the Comstock Law,

00:19:29.520 which made it illegal to send sex toys, pornography, contraception, abortion drugs,

00:19:33.780 or even information about contraception and abortion through the United States Postal Service.

00:19:38.940 As a side note, it was a Comstock Law that Griswold v. Connecticut came up against in

00:19:43.320 1965. That Supreme Court case, also based on the right to privacy in the 14th Amendment that Roe

00:19:48.740 v. Wade was based on and Dobbs overturned, was what made it illegal to ban contraception on the

00:19:53.640 state level. Just FYI, the 14th Amendment matters. Information about abortion was included in this

00:19:59.840 ban, and so sending information about abortion became a federal offense, punishable by a $5,000

00:20:04.920 fine and up to 10 years in prison. And so, because of one very racist doctor, a campaign against

00:20:10.760 abortion swept the nation. But maybe we should give Horatio the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he

00:20:16.260 wasn't a racist, right? I mean, maybe he was just deeply religious and actually believed that the

00:20:20.940 soul was in the body from the point of conception onward. Well, first, I don't think I need to tell

00:20:25.560 you this, but I will anyway. Or rather, I'll let Anna Kasparian from The Young Turks tell you.

00:20:30.700 I don't care about your goddamn religion. I'm so tired of having nonstop conversations about what 0.99

00:20:37.920 the bible says but that being said i'll indulge your curiosity here because religion somehow

00:20:43.520 became the cudgel behind the anti-abortion movement and this is where the history of

00:20:47.320 anti-choice politics gets really interesting in my opinion see it's not actually true that

00:20:52.940 christianity just automatically believed the soul was in the fetus from conception

00:20:56.740 most early moral debate on the acceptability of abortion revolved around religious interpretations

00:21:02.080 of when the fetus gained a soul the debate occurred over and over in catholic and protestant

00:21:07.040 churches for centuries. In the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas believed that the intellectual

00:21:11.320 soul was not given until birth, while the Southern Baptist Convention in 1999 resolved that the soul

00:21:16.700 was there from conception. But here's the thing, that 1999 ruling was a pretty big change for the

00:21:22.540 SBC, because back in 1971, that same convention passed a resolution calling to legalize abortion

00:21:28.500 in many circumstances. This resolution said, we call upon Southern Baptists to work for legislation

00:21:34.360 that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence

00:21:40.020 of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the

00:21:44.960 emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother. This was a decision that the SBC reaffirmed

00:21:50.240 in 1974, the year after the conclusion of the Roe v. Wade legal battle. When the Roe decision was

00:21:56.400 handed down, W.A. Criswell, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas and sometime president of the

00:22:01.700 Southern Baptist Convention issued a statement praising the ruling. I have always felt that it

00:22:06.700 was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an

00:22:11.500 individual person, and it has always, therefore, seemed to me what is best for the mother and for

00:22:16.860 the future should be allowed. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, acknowledged in 1973 that

00:22:23.100 the Bible was silent on the matter, and therefore it was plausible for an evangelical to believe that

00:22:28.140 a developing embryo or fetus was not regarded as a full human being. The SBC reaffirmed their

00:22:34.160 support of abortion again in 1976. So what changed between 1976 and 1999? I'll tell you what changed.

00:22:42.740 Bob Jones University. In a 1983 case before the Supreme Court, the court determined that the IRS

00:22:49.080 could deny tax-exempt status to any institution whose policies are contrary to established public

00:22:55.260 policy, even if those policies are based on religious beliefs. What policy at Bob Jones

00:23:00.280 University was contrary to established public policy? Why, they're race-based admission and 0.96

00:23:05.820 association policies, of course. You see, Bob Jones University didn't admit black students

00:23:11.240 until the 1970s, and then for a 30-year period after that, interracial dating by college students

00:23:17.360 at that school was prohibited. Bob Jones Sr., the founder of the university, was a real character.

00:23:23.880 It was his view that 20th century blacks should be grateful to whites for bringing their ancestors

00:23:28.820 to this country as slaves. If that had not happened, Jones wrote in 1960, they might still

00:23:34.120 be over there in the jungles of Africa unconverted. Integrationists, according to Jones, were wrongfully

00:23:39.880 trying to eradicate the natural boundaries that God himself had established between the races.

00:23:44.900 When classes began at this university in 1927, admission of students was officially restricted 0.74

00:23:50.760 to only members of the white race. Bob Jones Jr., the son of Senior, continued the racist policies

00:23:57.180 of his father. During his tenure, he even bestowed honorary degrees on people like George Wallace

00:24:02.300 and Strom Thurmond, so we can see where his loyalties lay. Under his son, Bob Jones III,

00:24:09.880 and really, Bob Jones is a bad enough name to give to one child, but to continue that on for

00:24:15.140 generations is just weird. Anyway, Bob Jones III, as the head of the university, was finally forced

00:24:24.440 to admit black students, but they still restricted interracial dating, despite the fact that, you

00:24:28.880 know, Loving v. Virginia had made interracial relationships legal in all 50 states four years

00:24:33.660 prior to this. It was this practice in particular that got the IRS involved in 1976 and resulted in

00:24:40.040 them revoking the tax-exempt status at Bob Jones University, retroactive to 1970. So what does

00:24:46.040 racism have to do with abortion, you might ask? Have you even been paying attention? When have

00:24:51.100 laws against abortion not been about race? Horatio Storer started that trend in 1860.

00:24:55.840 Be real here. The IRS went after segregation academies as well, many of which were sponsored 0.87

00:25:01.340 by churches like the one opened by Jerry Falwell in 1967. Paul Weyrich, a conservative political

00:25:06.960 activist in the 1970s realized that maybe racial segregation wasn't the vibe anymore, and using it

00:25:12.700 to motivate the religious base politically wasn't going to work so well. It was out of style. No one

00:25:17.520 cool was a segregationist anymore. What to do? What to do? We need a new topic to energize the

00:25:23.120 evangelical voter and get them to the polls. Oh, we know. Abortion. It had been a Catholic issue

00:25:29.060 before this, but with the right tweaks, it could be a Protestant evangelical talking point for the

00:25:33.520 next election. Weirich realized this during the midterm election of 1978 when Catholic anti-abortion

00:25:39.340 activists managed to swing a low turnout election by leafleting church parking lots with anti-abortion

00:25:44.520 pamphlets the weekend before the election. So that was it. The life of the unborn. That's a

00:25:50.520 respectable issue. That'll energize evangelicals and rally them to vote Republican. We have to

00:25:55.140 protect the babies. So as it turns out, when we look at the history of this issue, only one of

00:26:01.060 the two options of pro-choice and anti-abortion is deeply rooted in the history and traditions of

00:26:06.260 the United States. And that's being pro-choice. It dates back to the founding fathers. In fact,

00:26:12.080 before the founding fathers. Anti-abortion rhetoric, whether it's Horatio Storr in 1860

00:26:17.660 or the Republican Party in 1980, just boils down to being the desperate attempts of white men to

00:26:23.400 hold on to political power in a changing society. And I suppose that is deeply rooted in the

00:26:29.140 traditions of America, but I don't think it should be. So there it is, how America got to where it is

00:26:34.880 today on the issue of abortion. It's both disappointing and predictable that it's all

00:26:39.340 wrapped up in white men terrified of losing their power, both then and now. Let's all be a bit more 0.98

00:26:45.160 like the founding fathers on this, and mind your own business. My lady parts are between me and my 1.00

00:26:49.820 midwife. Thanks for showing up to listen to me bitch about history today. I hope you enjoy the 1.00

00:26:54.980 first of many How We Got Here episodes that will be a regular part of bitchy history. 0.99

00:26:59.140 For those of you looking for more information on what's going on today with abortion in

00:27:02.660 America, as opposed to today's historical deep dive, I suggest subscribing to Jessica

00:27:06.960 Valenti's Abortion Every Day substack, which you can find at AbortionEveryday.com.

00:27:11.500 Her work is highly detailed and will keep you up to date with current events about reproductive

00:27:14.900 health in America.

00:27:16.160 You can also follow her on TikTok under the username at Antikilljoy.

00:27:19.940 Tell her I sent you.

00:27:20.820 She is still not my mutual on TikTok, and that makes me very sad.

00:27:24.700 You can also follow me on TikTok or join the Discord group for this podcast if you follow the Linktree link in the show's description.

00:27:32.280 I'll see you back here on Monday where we're going to pick up where we left off last Monday with the colonization of the New World.

Bitchy History - May 18, 2023

Episode 2： How Did America Get Here - The Deeply Rooted History of Abortion

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