Emphasizing how women in the past were able to exercise their bodily autonomy and how it became violable.
In early modern Europe, women were thought to have specific societal purposes, often informed by religious, social, and patriarchal values. Older women were villainised, and younger ones were pressured to fall into an appropriate category of production for society and developing empires. Unmarried women were often expected to engage in labour prior to marriage and, upon marriage, were expected to complete the labour of childbirth. Childbirth, however, was not medicalised in the same way as it is today. Therefore, it is necessary to look at the writings of midwives, physicians, and recipe book authors of this period to understand those differences. This assertion is not to say that childbirth and pregnancy were archaic pseudosciences during the early modern period. In fact, pregnancy was so closely investigated during this time that it may be more complicated than our contemporary standards. Often, early modern methods of investigation were done by midwives and physicians. However, pregnant women also had the ability to investigate suspicions of their pregnancy and make necessary choices based on their individual, societal pressures. While physicians and midwives were able to investigate pregnancy, infanticide, and abortion in the public sphere, pregnant women were able to manipulate the outcomes of their own pregnancies, either by carrying a pregnancy to term or eliminating a possible unwanted pregnancy through self-accessible methods. This becomes extremely important as it expands women’s reproductive agency into the private sphere, where the public one was previously emphasised.
Table of Contents from A collection of cases and observations in midwifery. By William Smellie, M.D. To illustrate his former treatise, or first volume, on that subject. Vol. II
One way in which women were able to eliminate a possible unwanted pregnancy was through abortifacients and contraceptive methods, whether medicinal, holistic, or herbal. The word “possible” is being used because the way in which we conceptualise what it means to be “pregnant” is much different than what it meant for early modern European society. In the 21st century, one who suspects they might be pregnant is able to take an at-home test and wait for coloured lines to deliver a result. The answer is almost always unquestionable. By contrast, many early modern European societies could only confirm pregnancy through what was known as the “quickening.”1 This refers to the sensation of a fetus moving within the uterus, which can only be felt after a pregnancy has developed for approximately three months. This is drastically different from today’s timeline, as one can confirm their pregnancy only ten days after conception. The purpose behind comparing the contemporary method of the “at-home” pregnancy test and the early modern “quickening” is that these two methods both are performed by women within the privacy of their own conscience without discovery by the public sphere. These two different timelines have evolved over time and thus show different definitions of what it means to be pregnant and what it means to have an “abortion”.
Contrary to popular belief, physicians, midwives, healers, and women were usually not ridiculed for carrying out “abortive” or contraceptive procedures. To further understand this, one must investigate the historical parameters under which “abortions” were defined. As previously mentioned, pregnancy was not widely acknowledged until the “quickening”; therefore, there was nothing to “abort” from the uterus before the beginning of the second trimester. As a result, many of the procedures that we would describe as “abortions” were more likely procedures to elicit menstruation. Furthermore, for early modern European women, menstruation was often described in illustrative ways such as “flowing of the flowers” or “bringing of throws”. Historian Laura Gowing notes that
“while these phrases can be read as euphemisms for early abortion, in the context of early modern prescription of pregnancy, they make sense on their own terms: what we recognise as early pregnancy could be perceived, then, as an obstruction in the menstrual flow” 2
As Gowing implies, these “euphemisms” were not to conceal the true intent of a recipe for an abortion; they simply were just not viewed as one. Understanding this nuance, the terms “abortive”, “abortifacient”, or “abortion” are being used as umbrella terms to refer to a variety of unique procedures or methods that women may have experienced in order to take maintain their reproductive health.
Catalogue of Lady Catchmay’s Receipt Book. Catchmay, Lady Frances (d.1629). Wellcome Collection. Public Domain Mark
We can see a “euphemistically” framed emmenagogic 3 recipe title in Lady Frances Catchmay’s recipe book titled “A booke of medicens”, where she details ingredients “for a woman that useth to lose her Burden”. It may be vague whether this is referring to aborting an unwanted pregnancy. Still, we can further confirm its purpose from authors of similar recipe books who also use rose or rosewater to provoke a missed menstruation like Lady Catchmay. As historian Jennifer Evans states, “it is apparent that the medical framework of the early modern period would not have automatically categorized these substances as wholly negative”4. If one further investigates Evans’ concept, abortifacients such as Lady Catchmay’s had few negative connotations and were seen as part of women’s collective sexual knowledge. Recipes like these utilise fairly accessible ingredients, which are published in domestic receipt books where the knowledge is public, but the practice is private. As recipe books are a form of media primarily consumed by women, they allow for the privatisation of contraception. With that in mind, it is easier to understand the concept of “abortion” as invulnerable to public ridicule.
This was most certainly true in early modern Italy, where most medical establishments could provide both women and men with the tools or ingredients necessary to carry out abortions or procure abortifacients. However, as Italy’s papal influence declined, the Counter-Reformational powers in Italy began to dig their heels into religious and moral matters. As a result, practitioners of abortive or contraceptive methods became a concern of the Catholic Church and Catholic physicians, and accessibility to abortifacients began to decline. As historian John Christopoulos notes, “Theologically minded medical authors increasingly pronounced on the sinfulness of procured abortion, depicted it as contrary to medical ethics, and urged healers to abstain from its practice for both their own souls and the spiritual and physical well-being of their patients.”5 Christopoulos states that even though abortion was not prohibited, it was regulated to be performed by physicians and only for medical necessity. Not would this bring women’s reproductive agency into the public sphere, but it totally strips her of it. Although some may argue that Counter-Reformation legislation displays that women didn’t have the ability to regulate their bodies in the private sphere, it is more likely that contraceptive action entered the private sphere further. Despite reactionary legislation, the unreliable methods of investigating pregnancy allowed healers and women to conceal the carrying out of an abortion. As Christopoulos further argues, “The ambiguities of the female body, uncertainties surrounding pregnancy, and the availability of purgative medicines complicated attempts to regulate abortion.” As a result, most legislation in early modern Italy that regulated abortion was not overwhelmingly effective at preventing abortion but most certainly brought it into the public eye. 6 While women could evade accusations of abortion or feign miscarriages, it did not come without scrutiny.
Early modern Italian women whose pregnancies were known to the public sphere were often blamed for miscarriages or stillbirths, and their private lives were often investigated as a result. However, scientific knowledge about pregnancy complications expanded, and this blame turned its attention to various external factors and away from women. Methods of scientific investigation that came into prominence in England countered much of the Italian theological politics of abortion. One prominent part of the expansion in gynaecology in England was the emergence of the male midwife. Male midwives emerged in the English countryside and villages and further appeared in cities under terms such as “physician” or “practitioner”.7 As a result of men’s access to medical knowledge and academia, men increasingly entered the gynaecological field. One place where one can see a progressive change in the perceptions of miscarriage is in eighteenth-century England, where the physician Williame Smellie detailed a stillbirth of a woman in 1749 that — as Smellie notes — was caused by emotional stress caused by an earthquake in London:
“In the instant of her terror, she felt the child bound unsurprisingly in her womb, a tremulous motion ensued, and after that minute she never felt it stir… Women often miscarry about the fourteenth or fifteenth day, after accidents, fevers, excessive fatigue… I have likewise known many women miscarry, though nothing extraordinary had happened, and no cause could be assigned for the death of the child.”8
This account from Smellie displays no specific blame on the woman but blames the extraneous factors that resulted in a spontaneous miscarriage. Smellie’s account shows progress in the persecution of pregnant women who had miscarried, as it implies that it was not by her own will or bodily failure that caused the loss of her pregnancy. Although progress was made in the expansion of gynaecological knowledge, not all midwives appreciated an increase in the survey of women’s bodies. In fact, some female practitioners of Smellie’s time criticised the newfound male midwifery as invasive. In 1737, English midwife Sarah Stone wrote in the preface of her compendium of midwifery cases that she would “not fill any part of this book, with needless discourses on the Parts of Generation, nor the Reasons of Conception… many Authors being copious on such Subjects.”9 (xviii). In this passage, Stone insinuates that male practitioners were unnecessarily colonising the survey of women’s bodies and providing social opinions — “the Reasons of Conception”— on an otherwise medical matter. In this statement, Sarah Stone is not rejecting progress for women’s reproductive awareness; she is merely criticising the kinds of progress that is brought to the table. This is very important to understand as it shows that women’s experiences were not universal and that reproductive and sexual health in early modern Europe was not monolithic.
Given that women were regulated by their reproductive status and that their agency was held on a rope whose slack was determined by religious, social, and patriarchal values, it becomes of the utmost importance that we understand how women in the past were able to exercise their bodily autonomy and how it became violable. Upon investigation, we can see that women found ways to manage their reproductive health with their learned sexual knowledge, either by provoking menstrual periods, dispelling an unwanted pregnancy or by whatever method was made available to them. In a post-Roe vs Wade era in the United States, this domestic knowledge once again becomes relevant. It mimics the pathway of Counter-Reformation Italy, where women look inwards to protect their bodily autonomy. As the public sphere tightens its grasp, the private sphere becomes crucial.
Christopoulos, John. Abortion in Early Modern Italy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2021.
Donaghy, Paige. “Miscarriage, False Conceptions, and Other Lumps: Women’s Pregnancy Loss in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century England.” Social history of medicine: the journal of the Society for the Social History of Medicine 34, no. 4 (2021): 1138–1160.
Evans, Jennifer. “‘Gentle Purges Corrected with Hot Spices, Whether They Work or Not, Do Vehemently Provoke Venery’: Menstrual Provocation and Procreation in Early Modern England.” Social history of medicine : the journal of the Society for the Social History of Medicine 25, no. 1 (2012): 2–19.
Gowing L. 2003, Common Bodies: Women, Touch and Power in Seventeenth-Century England, New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Riddle, John M. “Oral Contraceptives and Early-Term Abortifacients During Classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages.” Past & present No. 132, no. 1 (1991): 3–32.
Smellie, Williame. A Collection of Cases and Observations in Midwifery. London: D. Wilson and T. Durham, 1754.
Stone, Sarah. A Complete Practice of Midwifery. Consisting of Upwards of Forty Cases or Observations in that Valuable Art. London: Thomas Cooper
Wilson, Adrian. The Making of Man-Midwifery, Childbirth in England 1660–1770. HarvardUP, 1995.
Catalogue of Lady Frances Catchmay’s Receipt Book. Photograph. London, 1629. Wellcome Library.
Table of Contents from A Collection of Cases and Observations in Midwifery by Williame Smellie. Photograph. London, 1754.