ABSTRACT
Opposition to abortion was motivated, not only by concerns for status enhancement, but also by broader medical and social anxieties regarding gender and class. These seemingly disparate anxieties became inextricably entwined in the process of medical assertion and professionalization. The experience of Ohio reflects the influence the medical profession had attained within the legislature. Their campaign against abortion was rewarded by laws which made illegal what was believed to be the economic basis for the practice of medicine by the irregulars. Attaining the moral high ground with the new ethics of reproduction not only allowed the regulars to suppress the irregulars and quacks, but also concomitantly elevated the stature of regular medicine. To begin mapping the social investment of questions of reproduction, and the female reproductive system specifically, this chapter attempts to introduce aspects of the biopolitical and medical changes that occurred in the nineteenth century.
