Chapter 5 The History of Abortion in America
As Thomas Winslow would write to Dr. Wilbur Larch, there were wealthy Winslow and Bradford families living in the greater Boston area—where he and Constance came from, where they’d grown up.
They were sent to private secondary schools; they were boarding students at Pennacook Academy and at Abbot Academy.
(Abbot was a school for young women in Andover, Massachusetts.)
First a fishing village, later a Boston bedroom community—in the summer months, Marblehead was mostly a sailing and tourism town.
Both Constance Bradford and Thomas Winslow would remember the sailboats in Marblehead Harbor, though they were not sailors.
Those two were always reading. When the summer kids in Marblehead were sailing, those two readers remained on shore.
That’s how Constance and Thomas met. In Marblehead, and all around Marblehead Harbor, it’s possible those two were the only ones their age who were reading.
“Right you are, Connie—poor Wilmot was found guilty of reading, and they hanged her for it!” Thomas told his teenage sweetheart.
“In other parts of the world,” Dr. Wilbur Larch would one day write to Thomas Winslow, “what you and your wife were thinking and feeling when you were teenagers might be entirely your own business. But here in St. Cloud’s, we need to know what you two were like at that age—before we commit one of our young teenagers to your safekeeping. ”
This was why the Winslows wrote Dr. Wilbur Larch and told him everything; they began by telling him they weren’t real Marbleheaders.
As the Winslows would further explain, they were just a couple of kids who started a summer romance; it happened only because they were reading instead of sailing.
Those two would spare the doctor no detail; their story of the one witch hanged in Marblehead made Dr. Larch imagine that Wilmot Redd must have been a relative of the Bradfords or the Winslows, and that poor Wilmot had been hanged for reading.
Constance waxed lyrical about Abbot Academy and her schoolgirl days.
Constance said she was inspired by Abbot’s Latin motto: Facem Praetendit Ardentem—She Holds Aloft a Burning Torch.
“No, I was not inspired to be an arsonist,” Constance wrote to the orphanage physician, “but I aspired to a higher education—and to more reading!” Constance couldn’t restrain herself from branching out beyond her teenage years.
“I have a master’s in library and information sciences,” she wrote Dr. Larch, “and Tommy has a master’s in English literature. ”
Not to be outdone, Thomas Winslow regaled Dr. Larch with his thoughts concerning Pennacook Academy’s Latin motto: Finis Origine Pendet—The End Depends Upon the Beginning.
“My schoolmates, all boys, weren’t inclined to divulge their innermost feelings to me, and none of us had any actual experiences worth sharing,” Thomas Winslow wrote the orphanage physician in St. Cloud’s.
“It was the brave young characters in the novels I loved who shared their innermost feelings (and harrowing experiences) with me—those characters in literature taught me who I was.” The English teacher named certain characters, beginning with Pip in Great Expectations and including Catherine Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights.
Thomas was just getting started. Dr. Larch had to hear all about Ishmael in Moby-Dick—then it was James Steerforth in David Copperfield, and Thomas got carried away with the indomitable Jane Eyre.
It’s a wonder Thomas remembered to tell the doctor about the philanthropy of the Bradford and Winslow families—the wealthier members of their respective families, the ones who made much more money than a schoolteacher and a librarian.
Thus was Wilbur Larch informed about those Winslows who were coming to St. Cloud’s. When he wrote back to the Winslows, confirming their appointment at the orphanage, Dr. Larch was brief and to the point.
“Here in St. Cloud’s, I believe we have a young woman who might meet your needs—most certainly, she will benefit from your family’s educational guidance and support,” the doctor wrote.
“Pay no attention to our stationmaster if you meet him when you disembark or board your train. He’s a religious fool—he believes in Judgment Day,” Dr. Larch added.
“Goodness gracious, Tommy,” was all Constance could say.
Despite the Judgment Day stationmaster in St. Cloud’s, she was looking forward to getting out of Pennacook—chiefly to get away from the Town Talks.
Thomas wasn’t the only member of the academy’s English Department to contribute a talk or two.
The one on Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the later Romantics was well attended.
Almost no one came to the one on literature in translation; Dante, Cervantes, Balzac, and Zola were virtually alone.
The two talks by faculty members in the History Department were a similarly mixed bag.
The one on the colonial era of the United States was more popular than the one on the American Civil War, although Thomas Winslow would complain to his two colleagues on the Pennacook faculty; he found fault with both historians.
They should (at least) have mentioned, he told them, that abortion was widespread and not illegal between the 1620s and the mid-nineteenth century.
“Well, Thomas, I wouldn’t say abortion is germane to the colonial era of the United States,” one of the historians replied.
“Well, George, if you were a pregnant woman who didn’t want a baby, abortion might be germane to you—in any era,” Constance said, jumping into the conversation.
“Right you are, Connie,” Thomas told her.
“Well, Constance—and you, too, Thomas—I can assure you that the availability of abortion was of no relevance to the American Civil War,” the Civil War historian said.
“Well, Frank, if you were a pregnant widow whose husband had been killed in the First Battle of Bull Run, the availability of abortion might matter to you,” Thomas told him. (You could not marginalize the abortion subject around the Winslows.)
The problem with the Town Talks, as the Winslows would figure out, was that no young people came to them. Thomas should have been talking to teenage girls and women in their early twenties—the ones with the most to lose because of an unwanted pregnancy.
No Town Talk was as sparsely attended as the one Thomas Winslow gave on the history of abortion in America; that one was the most unpopular of all the Town Talks, ever.
Not one faculty member from the History Department showed up; there were only a few from the English Department.
Among the ladies of the town, only the churchwomen were represented, and they had come to cause trouble.
“In the time of the Puritans, America’s deeply religious founding fathers, abortion was permissible beyond the first trimester—up to four or five months,” Thomas began.
The churchwomen’s lips were pursed, their eyes already narrowing.
“For more than two centuries—beginning when the Pilgrims landed in Plymouth, Massachusetts—abortion was largely allowed,” Thomas Winslow went on.
“With the help of midwives, the choice to have an abortion or a child belonged to the woman who was pregnant,” Thomas told his meager audience, mostly women.
The only men (not counting the few from the English Department) were doctors—just three doctors.
Constance sat there, same as usual, still as a stone; she knew the part about the doctors was coming.
Then one of the churchwomen stood shakily, like a reluctant schoolgirl called on in class.
Constance whispered the woman’s name—so quietly only Thomas could hear her.
“Aren’t you overlooking the child in the womb, Mr. Winslow?
” the churchwoman asked. “The child in the womb is a human being, too.” She suddenly shouted: “The child in the womb has a soul, you know!” The word soul should do it, Constance thought to herself.
“Respectfully, Mrs. Sweeney, if you believe an unborn fetus has a soul, you shouldn’t have an abortion—no one’s making you have one,” Thomas told her. Surely Mrs. Sweeney was beyond childbearing years; no one could imagine her having a baby or an abortion.
“Even you have a soul, Mr. Winslow—everyone has a soul from the moment of conception!” Mrs. Sweeney cried.
“But, Mrs. Sweeney, if I don’t believe I have a soul, I don’t believe an unborn fetus has one,” Thomas told her.
Constance pushed back her chair and stood; she went straight to her Tommy, in front of the podium, taking the microphone from him.
For such a small audience, those two Winslows didn’t need a microphone.
“Women have always been undermined by men in power—back then, in the case of abortion, the men who did the undermining were doctors,” Constance said; she made a point of not looking at the three doctors, only at Mrs. Sweeney, who was at a loss for words. Mrs. Sweeney just stood there.
“Right you are, Connie. I think the microphone is unnecessary,” Thomas added. Constance put the microphone on the podium and returned to her chair. Mrs. Sweeney just went on standing.
“Beginning in the 1840s, doctors sought to gain control of the reproduction business,” Thomas Winslow began again—this time speaking to the three doctors, ignoring Mrs. Sweeney.
“Doctors were establishing their new profession; midwives were their competition. The doctors wanted the money the midwives were making,” Thomas said.
Constance tried to stop wishing Mrs. Sweeney would faint and fall down, thus distracting the three doctors.
“Maybe the doctors underestimated how great the need for abortion was. We know what the doctors wanted, and they achieved it—doctors drove midwives out of the abortion business. But we don’t know the doctors’ reasons for making abortion illegal,” Thomas Winslow went on.
That was when the first of the three doctors stood up and started to leave.