Coded Silences and Open Secrets
In 1873, Congress responded to the anti-abortion campaigners and, in particular, the pressure exerted by Anthony Comstock—a postal inspector and founder of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice—by passing an Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use. More commonly known as the Comstock Act, this legislation made it a crime to distribute material deemed “obscene, lewd, or lascivious” through the U.S. Postal Service. This included abortifacients and contraceptive devices, as well as information about how to obtain these items. The act threatened offenders with a fine of up to $5000 and a prison term of up to five years. Within this restrictive environment, manufacturers of abortifacients and others resorted to using strategic silences and coded language to communicate with their audiences.
The Physical Life of Woman: Advice to the Maiden, Wife, and Mother
George H. Napheys, M.D.
Philadelphia: G. MacLean, 1870 (c. 1869)
Napheys’ Physical Life of Woman serves as a useful example for understanding abortion in late 19th century America. Immensely popular on its first appearance—the book went through five reprintings in less than a year—it also articulated a recently developed view about the fetus among opponents of abortion: namely, that the fetus is a person “from the moment of conception.” Evidence that this was still very much a minority view among Americans follows in Naphey’s admission that abortion is nevertheless “fearfully prevalent,” with “hundreds of persons…devoted to its perpetration” in every major American city and whose clients are most often “mothers of families, respectable, Christian matrons, members of church, and walking in the better class of society.”
Chichester’s English Pennyroyal Pills
Philadelphia: Chichester Chemical Co., [ca. 1888]
The container displayed here would have been a familiar sight in the late 19th and early 20th century as tins of Chichester’s English Pennyroyal Pills would have been found in nearly every drugstore in America. Well-known as a much sought after abortifacient, Chichester’s pills very likely evaded prosecution under the Comstock Act by marketing themselves merely as an aid to those with irregular or “obstructed” menstruation. The Philadelphia-based Chichester Chemical Company was just one of many manufacturers of such pills, some of which branded themselves as “French” or “Indian” remedies, the former trading on popular associations between the French and sex and the latter on the superior herbal knowledge of Native Americans.
Relief at Last to All Suffering Women
[Philadelphia]: s.n., n.d.
The cover of this tiny red booklet promises unspecified “Relief At Last to All Suffering Women.” On the back, it advertises itself as “A SMALL BOOK From Which You May Obtain LARGE BENEFITS” and advises the owner to mail it to a friend in need. Inside, the vagueness continues in a series of cagey testimonials—all submitted by women identified only by their initials—to the benefits to be had from Chichester’s Diamond Brand Pennyroyal Pills, perhaps the best known and most widely available abortifacient of the late 19th and early 20th century. Cryptic about its contents and easily concealable due to its small size--a mere 1 ½ inches square--the book attests to the creativity of abortifacient manufacturers as they attempted to avoid prosecution under the Comstock Act while still providing needed and desired information to women.
The Country of the Pointed Firs
Sarah Orne Jewett
Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1896
In the post-Comstock era, even novelists might feel pressured to speak about abortion in coded ways. Without ever saying so, Sarah Orne Jewett hints that one of her most beloved characters—the widowed herbalist Almira Todd—provides the women of the small coastal town of Dunnet, Maine with abortifacients. Early in the novel we are informed that most of Todd’s customers “c[o]me at night as if by stealth” and that among the things she dispenses is “the Indian remedy,” a term regularly used in advertisements for abortifacients. Finally, in the chapter “Where Pennyroyal Grew,” Todd suggests that she too may have had an abortion when she reveals to the unnamed female narrator that she had a lover before she was married and that the scent of pennyroyal always reminds her of him.