I've just finished reading an article in the New Oxford Review on the history of the fight over abortion in the 19th century. It is in their November issue and, unfortunately, is not yet posted on their website: http://www.newoxfordreview.org. It is by Frederick N. Dyer and is titled: The Physicians' Crusade Against Abortion. But anyone seriously interested in the history of this issue ought to read it:
To summarize it: Abortion was virtually the only method of birth control available to women in the early 1800's -- a period when most families had 6 or more children and maternal death during childbirth was quite common. Considering the state of medicine at the time, the even more radical intervention of abortion was even more dangerous. However, many women sought it as their only escape from the burdens of a time when life was hard to begin with (no central heating, no supermarkets, no appliances, etc., etc.) Imagine doing laundry for a family of 8 in the middle of winter in 1804.
By the 1850's, abortion had become a serious concern of many physicians, and one Horatio Robinson Storer became the leader of a physicians' crusade against abortion that climaxed in the passage of restrictive laws against abortion on a state by state basis that stood until Roe v. Wade. Feminist voices like that of Susan B. Anthony, who called abortion "child murder," also contributed strongly to this crusade.
The main thrust of the physicians' crusade was education and persuasion on a patient by patient basis, chiefly among married Protestant women where the practice was more common. They found allies in this effort among Catholic priests who had the forum of frequent confession to reach Catholic women as the practice spread into their ranks.
These efforts were more successful among married women than among the unmarried for whom pregnancy was a huge social stigma at the time. However, it was this combination of education, persuasion and legislation that made the 19th Century crusade so successful. Indeed, it was still going strong into the mid-20th Century until Margaret Sanger broke down public resistance through her counter-crusade during the 1920's and '30's.
Today, relatively few physicians strongly counsel their patients against abortion, and the Catholic practice of seeking frequent confession and spiritual guidance has all but disappeared. Indeed, it is the rare parish where the topic is even discussed from the pulpit more than once every few years. The clergy themselves seem to have been very much influenced by the new "spirit of the times."
Meanwhile, the pro-life movement has tragically become a largely a political one, and pro-life education is limited to a few organizations like my own (www.movementforabetteramerica.org) that actively promote discussion and dialogue as the best means of promoting understanding of the inexorable consequences of the wholesale extermination of unborn children.
Politics alone will never solve this problem. What is needed is more honest, open discussion and the beginnings of a profound moral, spiritual, and cultural change. Sadly we're not getting either from the medical profession or from most of the clergy. "If the salt lose its savor, wherewith shall it be salted." It seems we will have to convert the churches first.
What is mind-blowing to think about is that if the 19th century abortion wave had not been stunted by this crusade, cumulative population growth in the U.S. would have been dramatically hampered, and there is no way we could have become the industrial leader of the world and the arsenal of democracy in two World Wars. Instead, we might very well have ended up as an outlying colony of the Third Reich.
Like it or not, history is ultimately determined in the bedroom and the cradle. Only God knows where we will end up given the birth dearth in the U.S. and Europe and the continuing population explosion in the Muslim world.
The main reason for our approaching defeat in the Iraq War is that there is no way we can win a war of attrition against a population whose young men of military age outnumber our forces by 40 to 1. They are having the babies and we aren't.