This article originally appeared in a SUNY HistoryLab newsletter.
This project explores print media representations of and political responses to African American physicians involved in abortion cases and the abortion rights debates of the 1950s and 1960s. During these decades, sensational newspaper and magazine stories prominently featured the arrests and prosecutions of African American physicians who provided illegal abortion services to African American and white clients. Such pieces frequently characterized these physicians as unethical professionals who took advantage of vulnerable women for profit. Print media coverage of the “abortion menace” also often lumped African American physicians in with uncredentialed or untrained providers associated with dangerous “back-alley” abortion rings. Although these publications suggested a clear divide between ethical physicians and those who provided illegal abortions, my research investigates the ways that physician-turned-politician Dr. Dorothy Brown’s pro-abortion stance challenged this simplification of African American physicians’ medical, moral, and political motives. Read more...
