Abortion in the American Imagination: Before Life and Choice, 1880-1940

203 Pages·2014·1.451 MB·English

by  Karen Weingarten

Abortion in the American Imagination

Abortion in the American
Imagination
Before Life and Choice, 1880–1940
karen weingarten
Rutgers University Press
new brunswick, new jersey, and london
library of congress cataloging-in-publication data
Weingarten, Karen, 1980–
Abortion in the American Imagination : Before Life and Choice, 1880–1940 /
Karen Weingarten.
pages cm. — (American Literatures Initiative)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8135-6530-9 (hardback)
ISBN 978-0-8135-6529-3 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-0-8135-6539-2 (e-book)
1. American literature—History and criticism. 2. Abortion in literature. I. Title.
PS169.A28W45 2014
810.9’355—dc23
2013040900
A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available
from the British Library.
Copyright © 2014 by Karen Weingarten
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without
written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106
Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is
“fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law.
Visit our website: http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu
Manufactured in the United States of America
A book in the American Literatures Initiative (ALI), a collaborative
publishing project of NYU Press, Fordham University Press, Rutgers
University Press, Temple University Press, and the University of Virginia
Press. The Initiative is supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
For more information, please visit www.americanliteratures.org.
For CJF

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1 The Biopolitics of Abortion as the Century Turns 14
2 The Inadvertent Alliance of Anthony Comstock
and Margaret Sanger: Choice, Rights, and Freedom
in Modern America 38
3 The Eugenics of Bad Girls: Abortion, Popular Fiction,
and Population Control 66
4 Economies of Abortion: Money, Markets, and the Scene
of Exchange 96
5 Making a Living: Labor, Life, and Abortion Rhetoric 118
Epilogue: 1944 and Beyond 139
Notes 147
Works Cited 171
Index 185

Acknowledgments
The support of many colleagues and friends made this book possible,
and I am grateful for their belief in me and my work. I owe particu-
lar thanks to the institutional support I received from Queens Col-
lege, City University of New York, and from the PSC-CUNY Research
Foundation, whose grants made much of my summer work and travel
possible. I am also thankful to the Woodrow Wilson Women’s Studies
Fellowship, which funded this project at an early stage. I hope the fel-
lowship will be available to many more young scholars in women, gen-
der, and sexuality studies. I am grateful for the help of several archives
and libraries, including the Wertheim Room at the New York Public
Library and especially the support of Jay Barksdale, the Sophia Smith
Archives at Smith College, the UCLA film and television archive, the
Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences, the Performing Arts Library at the New York Public Library,
and the library at the New York Academy of Medicine. An earlier ver-
sion of chapter 2, “The Inadvertent Alliance of Anthony Comstock
and Margaret Sanger,” was published in Feminist Formations 22, no.
2 (Summer 2010): 42–59, and a shorter version of chapter 3 was pub-
lished as “Bad Girls and Biopolitics: Abortion, Popular Fiction, and
Population Control” in Literature and Medicine 29, no. 1 (Spring 2011):
81–103. My expanded discussion of abortion rhetoric in Edith Whar-
ton’s Summer, which I briefly touch on here in chapter 1, was published
as “Between the Town and the Mountain: Abortion and the Politics
x / acknowledgments
of Life in Edith Wharton’s Summer” in Canadian Review of Ameri-
can Studies 40, no. 3 (Autumn 2010): 351–72. The editors of all three
journals and the anonymous reviewers gave me invaluable advice and
insight that ultimately helped shaped the entire manuscript. They were
examples of how peer review works at its very best.
Ultimately, I owe the biggest thanks to individual people who guided
me along the way. I couldn’t ask for better colleagues and friends at
Queens College. Amy Wan, Gloria Fisk, Kevin Ferguson, Jason Tou-
gaw, Caroline Hong, Carrie Hintz, Talia Schaffer, Steven Kruger, and
Glenn Burger either read pieces of the manuscript or gave me invalu-
able advice along the way. I’ve also been fortunate to work with Andrea
Walkden, Annmarie Drury, Sian Silyn Roberts, Veronica Schanoes,
Seo-Young Chu, Nicole Cooley, Kimiko Hahn, Ryan Black, John Weir,
Harold Schechter, Hugh English, and Miles Grier at Queens College. I
am grateful to have such a welcoming and supportive work environ-
ment. Outside of Queens, I can’t say enough to express my gratitude
and appreciation for the members of my writing group, Lauren Klein,
Sarah Blackwood, and Kyla Schuller. I could not wish for a smarter
and more dedicated group of writing friends. I also owe many thanks
to David Kazanjian, Hildegarde Hoeller, and David Reynolds for help-
ing me at various stages along the way. My dear friend and colleague
Diana Colbert isn’t alive to see this book in print, but my conversa-
tions with her echo in its pages. My community of academic friends,
now scattered across North America, has also been invaluable to this
process. There are so many people to thank, but in particular Karen
Weiser, Lily Saint, Heather Latimer, and Rebekah Sheldon are models
for me of intelligence, kindness, and political commitment to mak-
ing the world a smarter, more thoughtful place. Dale Bauer’s and the
anonymous reader’s comments on the manuscript in its later stages
were also invaluable and made this book better. Katie Keeran at Rut-
gers University Press has been a model editor. I owe her innumerable
thanks for bringing this project to fruition. Finally, at the end stages of
this project, where detail matters, I am grateful for the careful atten-
tion provided by Tim Roberts and Carol Sickman-Garner.
My family, spread across the Atlantic, on the other coast, and up north
in Canada, has cheered me on and only occasionally pestered me with
the question, “So when will that book be done?” I am so grateful for their
love and support. I also owe so much to many friends who cheered me
up and cheered me on. Joanna Sondheim, Laura Davis, Tali Horowitz,
Olivia deBree, MK Babcock, Arielle DePaolo, Solvej Schou, Lilla Töke,