rather than quantity motherhood, which in turn increased the demand
for abortion as middle-class couples tried to limit the number of children
they would have.

Doctors capitalized on eugenics arguments and provoked alarm
about the destructive potential of female sexuality in order to incite
public condemnation of conscious family limitation. Passage of the
Comstock Law in 1873 gave a boost to the doctors. This law, passed
without a word of discussion in Congress, banned obscene materials—
including literature about birth control or contraceptive devices—from
the mails. But it was only after concerted lobbying efforts by the AMA,
state medical societies, and their allies among Catholic and Protestant
clergy that state legislatures outlawed "criminal" abortions—abortions
not clearly required to save a woman's life. In New York state, for
example, the Medico Legal Society drafted a bill in 1872 which defined
providing or obtaining an abortion as a felony. It was adopted almost
verbatim by the state legislature. But until the doctors' campaign geared
up during the 1860s and 1870s, the practice of abortion before "quick-
ening" (approximately the end of the first trimester) was widely con-
doned. In fact, it was understood in just about the same way we
understand miscarriage today. Since pregnancy itself was not confirm-
able, the elimination of an unquickened fetus was considered a matter
of very little significance.

The AMA campaign against abortion, which aimed to change such
casual public attitudes as well as alter the law, was based on the
assumption that if doctors exerted authority over abortion decisions and
practice, they would exert more authority in general. The campaign
succeeded because doctors managed to convince male politicians—and
the middle-class male public—that abortion was a serious threat to the
maintenance of patriarchal authority. Controlling women's reproductive
choices through the innovative tactics of state regulation and criminaliza-
tion of abortion was, the doctors claimed, a necessary precondition of
social order itself.

Despite the new laws, women continued to terminate unwanted
pregnancies. As social and economic conditions compelled both mid-
dle-class and working-class women to limit their fertility, the birth rate
fell from an average of 7 births per woman in 1800 to 3.5 in 1900.
Although not all of this dramatic decrease was accounted for by abortion,
the well-publicized arrests of prominent abortionists and the booming
abortifacient business of the 1840s suggests that women sought abor-
tions in rising numbers during the first half of the 19th century.As late
as 1870, women could procure abortions in Boston or New York City for
as little as $10. But the spread of criminalization in the 1880s took

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