Happy New Year to you! We’ve been getting off to a good start this year. There are no resolutions to feel guilty about – “I am enough” may be my next best mantra. The Bride and Groom have returned unscathed and refreshed from a trip to New Zealand and Australia with the Grands. And the Rocker and Aunt Cait returned from the East Coast, totally missing that rogue wave in Cali. And if you’re wondering what book is on my 2024 nightstand, it’s a nonfictional look back at the Golden Age of abortion.
I’m not talking about the 60s. I’m currently reading “MADAME RESTELL: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York’s Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist,” by Jennifer Wright. Madame Restell, who lived and worked in the mid-1800s, would advertise her services in all the New York newspapers. She had learned to compound a pill to regulate the menses with a mixture of essential oils and paint thinner. And if that didn’t work, for $100 she could terminate the pregnancy with a whalebone. Surprisingly, her patients lived! But male doctors at the time, who were still using leeches, were threatened by her success and fame.
Madame Restell was not a surgeon, in fact she wasn’t even French. She was an immigrant, a widowed mother from Britain who didn’t want to go into service for a wealthy family (and thereby have to give or sell her child away) or become a prostitute, often the only two choices of the day for women alone. She was an entrepreneur who wasn’t afraid to flaunt her wealth with a carriage decked out in the finest livery. The moral crusaders of the day found such arrogance and lack of shame intolerable. And so Restell found herself in court often, even serving a year in Blackwell Island’s notorious prison.
Ah, the good old days of a medical procedure that is as old as the oldest profession. And since SCOTUS overturned Roe, physicians in some cases are having to reevaluate their care of pregnant women. In other words, The Bride, who is practicing Emergency Medicine in a red state, may have to choose between saving a woman’s life and being exposed to liability, including criminal charges and loss of license. How could that be true? Enter “EMTALA;” a federal law that was passed in 1986 and is the bedrock for Emergency Medicine physicians everywhere. Surely this law would save my daughter from criminal prosecution?
EMTALA is short for the “Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act.” Think about it, most doctors in their offices require insurance or payment up front before your appointment; this law requires ER doctors to treat everyone and anyone who walks through their doors – or rides through on a stretcher – regardless of their ability to pay. Ever since the Bride was a young girl, EMTALA has been the law of the land, just like Roe v Wade. ER docs are quick thinking, fast acting specialists who are not willing to wait for a team of lawyers or administrators to decide if a patient is worth saving because she happens to be pregnant!
SCOTUS is scheduled to rule on this “contradiction” in April… I refuse to hold my breath. Texas has already taken the lead in banning emergency abortions, so sorry, if you find yourself carrying an ectopic pregnancy in TX. Your state has sentenced you to a death penalty already if something should go wrong.
“In the early years of Madame Restell’s business, abortion was classed only as a misdemeanor if performed before quickening, around 20 weeks. Over time, the punishments grew, along with the risks. Madame Restell advertised not just her services but her belief in their necessity. Lifting passages from the social reformer Robert Dale Owen, she likened abortion and contraception to a lightning rod — an invention that was “unnatural,” perhaps, but sensible and lifesaving. She published letters from grateful clients, who proclaimed, “God bless you dear madam, you have taken off the primal curse denounced upon Mother Eve in Eden.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/28/books/review/madame-restell-by-jennifer-wright.html
Lightening rod indeed, from the 19th to the 21st Century and women are still left dying by the hands of red legislators. Today, a third of our country, religious zealots for the most part, because of certain SCOTUS selections, may get their way. It’s not enough for them to ban abortions and outlaw morning after pills as if it were the early 20th Century, now the GOP wants to prosecute the physicians. It’s not just the Ob-Gyns, it’s the ER doctors who are being asked to violate their Hippocratic Oath, and EMTALA.
Here is a throwback to the 80s with my little Bride in her Daddy’s ER.
MountainMornings 