Last year, when I taught a course on the moral and social aspects of studying history, I posed several questions about this phenomenon to my students: Who decides what history is important? What responsibilities do we have toward the dead? And, do our subjects have the right to be forgotten?
As someone who has extensively researched and written about women who have had and sometimes died from illicit abortions in the first half of the 20th century, I have often pondered on the ethics of what I do: dig through archives to write and tell stories of women’s experiences, stories about which they likely felt shame.
Since women themselves have never wanted to talk much about the procedure—abortion stigma still exists today, even though times have changed—archives reflect medical authorities’ and law enforcement agencies’ investigations, rather than women’s experiences and feelings. Historians such as Leslie Reagan and myself have noted that in the 19th and early 20th centuries, many women had illegal abortions, and they shared information about how to access the procedure through close networks of friends, family, medical providers, and druggists. But word-of-mouth does not produce a historical record as robust as the paperwork produced by professional medical societies or law enforcement.
This paucity of sources raises questions about what we think is worthy of, or important to, remember. When we glorify stories like Horace Poole’s, we commemorate individuals for their exceptionalism. When we deal with widely-shared but controversial experiences such as death and abortion, we sweep stories under the rug. When I tell people I meet that I wrote a book about the history of illegal abortion, they usually respond with raised eyebrows, arms crossed in front of the chest, or some apologia—pro or anti-abortion. They’re uncomfortable. I’m (slightly less) uncomfortable. We move on to another subject.
As much discomfort as these stories may bring, they are worth sharing. Otherwise, we contribute to historical amnesia—a historical amnesia that might lead some Supreme Court justices to opine that “abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and tradition”—which simply isn’t true. For centuries, abortion was a pervasive, personal, and painful practice in the United States, and a common, shared experience that the historical record neglected, while elevating the random and seemingly extraordinary feats of otherwise inconsequential men—like Horace Poole’s illuminated dive.