The Other Crime: Abortion and Contraception in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Utah
April 28, 2020Dialogue 53.1 (Spring 2020): 33–47
In this essay, I discuss this history, present evidence that Latter-day Saint men sold abortion pills in the late nineteenth century, and argue that it is likely some Latter-day Saint women took them in an attempt to restore menstrual cycles that anemia, pregnancy, or illness had temporarily “stopped.” Women living in the twenty-first century are unable to access these earlier understandings of pregnancy because the way we understand pregnancy has changed as a result of debates over the criminalization of abortion and the development of ultrasound technology.
“Planted: Belief and Belonging in an Age of Doubt” is written by Patrick Mason and is a joint venture between the Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship and Deseret Book. Patrick Mason is the Chair of Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate College and a Mormon historian.
