When a man makes a decision about a woman’s body...
The father of American gynecology fought to criminalize abortion in the 1850s
Horatio Storer’s legacy remains even after Roe v. Wade
▻https://timeline.com/horatio-storer-criminal-abortion-c433606491da
When does life begin? According to the anti-abortion movement, the answer is at conception. But when did that idea begin? It sounds biblical, but the notion was actually popularized by 19th-century surgeon Horatio Robinson Storer, who singlehandedly brought the American medical establishment into the fight against abortion. In fact, the laws restricting abortion that were passed at Storer’s urging were largely in place until being overturned by Roe v. Wade in 1973.
Often considered the father of American gynecology, Storer was a Boston-born, Harvard-educated obstetrician who studied abroad in Scotland before opening his own practice in his native city in 1855. Though primarily interested early in his career in experimenting with and administering anesthetic agents during childbirth, Storer quickly turned his attention to the question we now call fetal personhood. By 1857, he had begun the “physicians’ crusade against abortion,” a national campaign, and was lobbying the American Medical Association (AMA) to advocate institutionally against the practice.
The AMA had been formed in 1847 in order to professionalize the field of medicine and standardize its practices. But there was no mention of abortion in the group’s original Code of Ethics, and it wasn’t until Storer petitioned for the formation of the Committee on Criminal Abortion in 1857 that the organization took up the issue. The AMA made Storer chairman of that committee, and requested that he prepare a report on abortion in the U.S.