Pregnancy And History

[debrand]

My grandmother's mother was a midwife. Great Grandmother must have been born in the late 1800's because my grandmother was one of her younger children.(Nan was born 1919)

Nan told me that her mother once said that women were a hair's breadth from death every single time that they went into labor. Considering that she practiced during a time before the creation of antibiotics, I understand why great grandma might have said that.

People who are quiverful believe that taking precautions against pregnancy prevents god from having control. However, using the other advents of modern medicine to prevent needless deaths and suffering to pregnant women doesn't circumvent god's will.

I can't help but wonder how these people ignore history. What do they think about the fact that women used to die-sometimes in horrible pain- during labor? They must know that pregnancy and labor was more dangerous than it is now. Do they think that god only works in modern women's lifes and that he willed for some of their foremothers to die agonizing deaths but not them?

Michelle Duggar would have been dead if she lived in the Victorian Age. Yet, I think that Jim Bob would be shocked if she died. Although I would be sad if she died, I wouldn't be shocked. It seems common sense that this woman is risking her life and the life of her children with each new pregnancy.(Hopefully she and Kelly Bates can not have more children)

I know that I am preaching to the choir but sometimes the illogical nature of quiverful beliefs really stumps me.

Any exquiverful on this site? How did you view the deaths of women before the knowledge about antibiotics and handwashing?

[debrand]

And I decided to add this. My grandmother told me that her mother used a plant to bring on a woman's period. Isn't that an abortion? My great grandmother was a religious woman who often worked to assist the doctor. Her activity was apparently not frowned upon or considered that big a deal.

[Sola]

Of course its an abortion. If you look at newspaper adverts from prior to WW2, you would regularly see adverts for pills or herb mixes to solve 'blocked menstrual flow'. They couldn't be advertised as abortifacients, so instead they were advertised as for the relief of menstrual blockages.

[debrand]

Of course its an abortion. If you look at newspaper adverts from prior to WW2, you would regularly see adverts for pills or herb mixes to solve 'blocked menstrual flow'. They couldn't be advertised as abortifacients, so instead they were advertised as for the relief of menstrual blockages.

This has always fascinated me. Making abortions illegal will not end them. My own family's history is proof of that. And I am certain my great grandmother knew that she was helping women to have an early abortion.

If she had seen women die during labor, it doesn't surprise me that she might give something to an unhealthy woman with several kids to 'bring on their periods.

I think that being quiverful is a luxury of our modern world. Women don't usually die during labor, nor does poverty in America usually mean that parents will watch their children starve to death.

[mulepetter]

I think that being quiverful is a luxury of our modern world

This is an exceptional insight and I agree completely. I've never thought about quivering from this perspective . . . but you're spot-on.

[MadameX]

I think that it was more common for women to die after birth from fever or hemorrhage from the birth than actually in labor.

If you are interested in the history of pregnancy and childbirth, there was a really interesting iTunes U podcast on midwifery in Arkansas a few months ago.

[Visionoyahweh]

My grandmother told me that her mother used a plant to bring on a woman's period. Isn't that an abortion?

Pennyroyal tea, most likely. Yes, it can end a pregnancy. Even if abortion is banned women will just go back to less reliable herbal means, or coat hangers. :cry:

[saraelise]

Recently, in one of my classes, we were told the story of a upper middle class woman who died as a result of her 30th birth, at the age of 30 (obviously, she didn't have 29 living children). This was in the middle of the 19th century, before birth control became widely available. I knew that conditions were bad, but it really shocked me that they were so bad. :cry: This is one of the reasons the current Conservative stance on birth control is so scary to me.

[fundifugee]

Not just in history, but currently in places not as wealthy as ours. In the place where I lived for two years in East Africa, the perinatal mortality rate was 10%. (If I remember correctly, public health stats define perinatal mortality as death of mother or child within six months of childbirth). That is one in ten chance of mother or baby or both ending up dead as part of the birth process; and given since there is an average of 9 pregnancies per woman, that makes for a pretty common experience of perinatal death. And that is with pretty good knowledge of handwashing, and some access to antibiotics.

Yes, I do think that quiverful is a new, bourgeois value. I also wondered in a post last night on a different thread if our whole belief in the intrinsic value of human life, and shock and horror of death, is all a new luxury relative to human history.

When I try to picture one of the women I knew in East Africa or South America holding a funeral for a tampon or a miscarried fetus, it becomes terribly obvious how ridiculous and self-absorbed this ideology is, rather than just laughable and snarkable.

[julie paradox]

saraelise: are you sure about those figures? Because even if they were all 7-monthers following immediately that would take 17 years (and I haven't included a gap between birth and ovulation). Thirtieth pregnancy I could accept, but I'm not sure most of them would count as births.

[shesinsane]

Even if abortion is banned women will just go back to less reliable herbal means, or coat hangers. :cry:

And there you have the problem that the Pro-life/forced birth crowd doesn't understand - even if abortion is illegal, it still happens. Abortion is illegal in Brazil, but (I think) they have the highest per capita abortion rate in the world.

I hope that abortion will never be made illegal in our lifetime, but even if it is, that will not stop women from attempting to end unwanted pregnancies. Abortion predates modern surgery, but the "right to life"rs like to ignore that fact and pretend abortion didn't happen in the US until Roe V. Wade.

As usual, the people that could learn the most from history will never study it. This stuff is not in the Bible.

[saraelise]

saraelise: are you sure about those figures? Because even if they were all 7-monthers following immediately that would take 17 years (and I haven't included a gap between birth and ovulation). Thirtieth pregnancy I could accept, but I'm not sure most of them would count as births.

Sorry for not being clear, I'm pretty certain it was 30 pregnancies and not 30 births, just that she died on the 30th. There's no way they would have all been carried to term, obviously. I can't source it, because it was just something my teacher mentioned in passing.

[Guest Anonymous]

Pennyroyal tea, most likely. Yes, it can end a pregnancy. Even if abortion is banned women will just go back to less reliable herbal means, or coat hangers. :cry:

A ban on abortion will simply turn pregnant women into medical haves and have-nots. The haves will either fly to another country where abortion remains legal, or pay exorbitant sums to have abortions by licensed, but underground, obstetricians. The have-nots will risk, and often lose, their lives and health, with back-alley or do-it-yourself abortions. That, or they'll be forced to carry their pregnancies to term regardless of health risks, personal circumstances, rape or incest.

[Visionoyahweh]

A ban on abortion will simply turn pregnant women into medical haves and have-nots. The haves will either fly to another country where abortion remains illegal, or pay exorbitant sums to have abortions by licensed, but underground, obstetricians. The have-nots will risk, and often lose, their lives and health, with back-alley or do-it-yourself abortions. That, or they'll be forced to carry their pregnancies to term regardless of health risks, personal circumstances, rape or incest.

Oh sure. I was just thinking about the more desperate of the have nots. Don't forget there's also 'studying abroad' for 9 month, having the baby, then coming back home. At least Michelle Duggar woudl get to bring home a nice white baby for #20 with no questions asked.

Also, as far as history goes, women of Jesus' day regularly aborted, and he didn't say anything about it. Hell, his friends were prostitutes, so it's not like he didn't know about abortion. Fundies never really bring that up!

[Guest Anonymous]

Oh sure. I was just thinking about the more desperate of the have nots. Don't forget there's also 'studying abroad' for 9 month, having the baby, then coming back home. At least Michelle Duggar woudl get to bring home a nice white baby for #20 with no questions asked.

Also, as far as history goes, women of Jesus' day regularly aborted, and he didn't say anything about it. Hell, his friends were prostitutes, so it's not like he didn't know about abortion. Fundies never really bring that up!

Of course they wouldn't.

[Hane]

Debrand, your post reminds me of an article written by a local woman some years back. She told of her grandmother, who was a visiting nurse during your great-grandmother's time. She recounted seeing a desperately poor woman dying during premature labor, leaving a distraught husband and several small children. The event convinced this conservative, religious woman of a very real need for legal, safe contraception and abortion.

[fundifugee]

Debrand, your post reminds me of an article written by a local woman some years back. She told of her grandmother, who was a visiting nurse during your great-grandmother's time. She recounted seeing a desperately poor woman dying during premature labor, leaving a distraught husband and several small children. The event convinced this conservative, religious woman of a very real need for legal, safe contraception and abortion.

A similar thing happened to my own great grandmother. Her husband dumped the five surviving kids at the Children's Aid Society and went off and joined the merchant marine. My grandfather remembered being dropped at the orphanage, he was five years old. The kids were treated like crap, lots of chores, lots of beatings, not enough food. He was subsequently sold for a few hundred bucks to an infertile farming family who needed a "son" to help on the farm. When they got pregnant and had their own kid, my grandfather was relegated to live in the barn. Beatings, rape, and long work days with minimal schooling were the norm; and kids were a burden and a source of free labour. This was all less than 100 years ago. (Probably one of the "godly eras" that these historical whitewashers like Dougie describe).

[SealFan1963]

My great-grandmother was born in 1896. She gave birth to my grandmother in December 1915, after having been pregnant for a year (my great-grandparents got married in January 1915 and my gr-grandmother never had a period after the wedding night).

When my grandmother was born after 4 days of labor, she weighed 13 pounds and my great-grandmother's uterus was past her cervix.

My gr-grandfather swore then and there that his wife would never have another baby.

Despite their being careful, my gr-grandmother did get pregnant again and had at least two abortions. She would have willing gone through with the pregnancy, but my gr-grandfather wouldn't risk her life like that again (of course that didn't keep him from having sex with her).

Women have always had abortions and they always will. Wish the religious right could just figure that out.

[dawn9476]

It would also be unlikely that Jim Bob and Michelle would have so many kids who have made it to adulthood or close to adulthood if they were practicing Quiverfull 100 years ago.

[samurai_sarah]

Isn't there a French proverb or saying that roughly translates to "a pregnant woman is a woman with one foot in the grave"? Sorry, can't remember the original saying right now, it just always chilled me, because it used to be so true.

Even in the 1950s, my grandmother nearly died of childbed fever twice. She was extremely lucky, and extremely grateful when contraception became more widely available. She also had the habit of taking me to the graveyard with her, as a child, to point out different headstones to me. It was morbid, because she invariably would show me the gravesites of children and young mothers. I don't know why she did that, but I got the picture that being pregnant, or being a child, was dangerous.

What is more is that she would also pretend to tell stories. I say "pretend", because she wasn't a good story-teller, and I can't remember a single story, but I do remember the more or less hidden lessons. That's to say, I vividly remember her telling me about someone miscarrying a baby, because they'd eaten ergot-infested grain (incredibly dangerous), or how this or that herb (pennyroyal, parsley etc) were "bad" for pregnant women. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what to do with such info, if needs be. Thankfully, by the time I reached my early teens, abortion had become legal. By the way, my grandmother was also a strict Catholic, but she caught the tail-end of the "good old days", and appreciated progress.

[MadameX]

Of course they wouldn't.

They totally do. They bring it up to show how he can change people. (Vom.)

[bananacat]

History is a vast era so it's impossible to make a generalization about "what they used to think", but it has been common throughout many periods and cultures for people to not consider a fetus alive until "quickening", which is when the pregnant woman could start to feel it move. I'm sure it has been rare to consider life to begin at conception. There have even been plenty of cultures that believed life begins at birth. There was never a universal "olden days" like the fundies believe. Abortion was common and matter-of-fact. Many cultures didn't think it was wrong so it wouldn't have even been sneaky or shameful. It was just a part of life.

[Tee-Tee]

And it kills me, kills me, that the same group of people in the U.S. trying to take away a woman's right to an abortion are frequently the same group of people that want to do away with public housing, assistance for those below the poverty line, WIC, etc.

Women who seek abortions are frequently young and poor. What the hell are these young women supposed to do with their offspring with no help from a potential government that refused to help them out of their pregnancies when they were able and refuse to help them once the child is born! Compassion my ass...

Grrr! :evil:

[samurai_sarah]

And it kills me, kills me, that the same group of people in the U.S. trying to take away a woman's right to an abortion are frequently the same group of people that want to do away with public housing, assistance for those below the poverty line, WIC, etc.

Women who seek abortions are frequently young and poor. What the hell are these young women supposed to do with their offspring with no help from a potential government that refused to help them out of their pregnancies when they were able and refuse to help them once the child is born! Compassion my ass...

Grrr! :evil:

That makes me want to shake some sense into every one of those people, individually. How difficult is it for them to understand that a) a desperate woman will take desperate measures, and b) taking away any kind of support such a woman might have to actually raise an unwanted child, will lead to a)? I have held the hands of pregnant friends in abortion clinics, and it was nothing my friends did for the fun of it. And I'm fairly certain that I'm not the only woman who has been a few days late, has taken several pregnancy tests, praying to whatever deity might be listening, because even with state support, there was no way in HELL, I could go through with a pregnancy and then raise a baby on my own.

Oh, wait, I'm sure those people would call my friends and I "sluts", and say that we deserved it, because babies are supposed to be a punishment. How Christian is that? Wasn't Christ big on loving children/women/sinners of all sorts, and feeding the poor? :evil:

[crazyforkate]

My great-grandmother was born in 1896. She gave birth to my grandmother in December 1915, after having been pregnant for a year (my great-grandparents got married in January 1915 and my gr-grandmother never had a period after the wedding night).

When my grandmother was born after 4 days of labor, she weighed 13 pounds and my great-grandmother's uterus was past her cervix.

My gr-grandfather swore then and there that his wife would never have another baby.

Despite their being careful, my gr-grandmother did get pregnant again and had at least two abortions. She would have willing gone through with the pregnancy, but my gr-grandfather wouldn't risk her life like that again (of course that didn't keep him from having sex with her).

Women have always had abortions and they always will. Wish the religious right could just figure that out.

My great-grandmother also had an illegal abortion in the 1920's due to health complications. Even though she couldn't carry the pregnancy, the abortion went wrong and destroyed her health. She was never able to have another child, and she died in her early 40s. Fortunately my grandmother had already been born by then, but she was faced with losing her mom pretty young. So sad.

Has anyone here read "The Cider House Rules"? That book makes a solid case for legal abortion.