Taking the Trade: Abortion and Gender Relations in an Eighteenth-Century New England Village
1991; Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture; Volume: 48; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/2937996
ISSN1933-7698
Autores Tópico(s)Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes
ResumoI N I742 in the village of Pomfret, perched in the hills of northeastern Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Sarah Grosvenor and twenty-sevenyear-old Amasa Sessions became involved in a liaison that led to pregnancy, abortion, and death. Both were from prominent yeoman families, and neither a marriage between them nor an arrangement for the support of their illegitimate child would have been an unusual event for mid-eighteenth-century New England. Amasa Sessions chose a different course; in consultation with John Hallowell, a self-proclaimed practitioner of physick, he coerced his lover into taking an abortifacient. Within two months, Sarah fell ill. Unbeknownst to all but Amasa, Sarah, Sarah's sister Zerviah, and her cousin Hannah, Hallowell made an attempt to Remove her Conseption by a manual opperation. Two days later Sarah miscarried, and her two young relatives secretly buried the fetus in the woods. Over the next month, Sarah struggled against a Malignant fever and was attended by several physicians, but on September I4, I742, she died.1 Most accounts of induced abortions among seventeenthand eighteenth-century whites in the Old and New Worlds consist of only a few lines in a private letter or court record book; these typically refer to the taking of savin or pennyroyal-two common herbal abortifacients. While men and women in diverse cultures have known how to perform abortions
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