Witches and ‘Welfare Queens’: The Construction of Women as Threats in the Anti-Abortion Movement

While today’s anti-abortion movement has been empowered by the recent fall of Roe v. Wade, the original ‘right-to-life’ movement dates to the mid-nineteenth century. In the mid-1800s, physicians began to take over the practice of childbirth from midwives and the medical specialty of obstetrics developed. The movement to medicalize women’s reproductive health made use of […]