Articulating Life’s Memory: U.S. Medical Rhetoric about Abortion in the Nineteenth Century

Articulating Life’s Memory offers a unique view of the history, and the language, of abortion in early America. Nathan Stormer’s interdisciplinary work moves beyond special histories of 19th century rhetoric about abortion, and general histories of medicine, science and women, to analyze how the articulation of cultural memory through reproductive control in early antiabortion rhetoric presented abortion as nationally and racially threatening to good cultural order. Part 1 provides a layered context for understanding medical practices within the rhetoric of memory formation and sets early antiabortion efforts within the wider framework of 19th-century biopolitics and racism. Part 2 examines the substance of the memory constituted by these early medical practices. This book should be useful reading for scholars researching reproductive rights, rhetoric, and feminist and cultural histories of medicine.