'Good Genes,' Anti-Abortion Laws, Declining Birth Rates, and What They Have in Common

From American Eagle’s campaign with Sydney Sweeney to the Trump administration’s efforts to limit access to birth control to the US birth rate hitting an all-time low, there has been a lot of noise online this summer, and every time something takes center stage, people come out of the woodwork telling us to not get distracted. To stay focused.

And I get it. I do. It’s a lot.

But we can’t just overlook one headline in favor of another, because in America, promoting good genes and limiting access to birth control and abortion are inextricably tied by two threads: white supremacy and the patriarchy. And they have been for more than 150 years—ever since the first time abortion was criminalized in America in the late 1800s.

In the words of Leslie Reagan (author of When Abortion Was a Crime): “White male patriotism demanded that maternity be enforced among Protestant women.”

When he wrote of American westward expansion, he asked: “Shall [these regions] be filled by our own children or by those of aliens? This is a question our women must answer; upon their loins depends the future destiny of the nation.”

Back in 2022, when Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women’s Health rolled back the protections granted by Roe v. Wade, the justices claimed to have reached the majority ruling, in part, because abortion rights weren’t “deeply rooted in the country’s history and traditions.” But here’s the thing: America had a long-standing tradition of abortion before it became widely outlawed in the late 1800s. In fact, for much of American history, terminating a pregnancy during the first four months wasn’t even considered abortion. It was simply an attempt to “restore menses.”

Before the end of the 19th century, a regular menstrual flow was considered essential to a woman’s health. Herbalists, midwives, and physicians recommended childbearing people sip herbal emmenagogic teas (teas that stimulate menstrual flow) in the days leading up to and throughout the course of their periods to maintain regularity and to restore menstruation if it arrived late.

It was this tradition that politicians and some doctors of the era (specifically those who were a part of the newly-created American Medical Association) wanted to eliminate.

The AMA was founded in 1847, creating a professional group for college-educated doctors (all men at the time). They were faced with a problem: The medical profession was still establishing itself, and so AMA doctors weren’t well-respected in America, but midwives, one of their primary competitors in the field, were. One of the many reasons for this was that midwives were willing to provide abortion services, something AMA-recognized physicians were unwilling to do because they claimed it violated the Hippocratic Oath.

One particular physician, Horatio Robinson Storer, saw abortion as an opportunity to help accredited physicians gain respect: If they could turn abortion into a moral issue, they could destroy public respect for midwives—allowing AMA physicians to take over the field of gynecological health and establish themselves as both the moral and scientific authority on medicine.

With the AMA at his back, in 1857 Storer started a campaign to change the way America thought about abortion—sending letters to physicians and newspapers, publishing books, and eventually working with legislatures to criminalize the practice.

What else was happening in 1857? The lead up to the American Civil War, which we all know was fueled by white supremacy. Not only was much of America fighting for the right to enslave people, they also feared being outnumbered by the very people they were trying to enslave. And with the declining birth rates among white, Protestant women, it was a well-founded fear (and one that wasn’t only limited to the South, especially with the influx of immigrants in northern cities).

Storer used this fear to his advantage.

When he wrote of American westward expansion, he asked: “Shall [these regions] be filled by our own children or by those of aliens? This is a question our women must answer; upon their loins depends the future destiny of the nation.”

The argument was a powerful one—one that changed the way America viewed abortion for 100 years. How did they do it? By destroying the concept of quickening, thereby reclassifying the restoration of menses as abortion and criminalizing those who practiced it. They stated quickening was little more than a feeling, and a feeling wasn’t medicine. This in turn discredited childbearing people as the ones who knew their own bodies best.

The AMA’s efforts culminated in the Comstock Law in 1873, which made the public discussion of birth control and abortion illegal by banning it as obscenity, and by 1880, every state had laws restricting abortion. Early-term abortion, which had once been considered an essential part of women’s healthcare, was labeled evil (and criminal) and midwives were rebranded as abortionists. These views of abortion continued for 100 years until Roe v. Wade gave people with uteruses the right to an abortion, and it’s clear they’ve persisted in the decades since.

Now, to be clear, most doctors today recognize abortion as healthcare. This isn’t meant to demonize modern-day physicians. But as we look to today’s headlines when it comes to the health of childbearing people, it’s almost impossible not to draw parallels, and keep this reality in mind as we fight to regain the rights the Supreme Court has stripped us of.