A Letter to Christopher Sauer, Jr. (1721-1784)
Dear Chris,
In 1776, abortion was not yet America’s loudest moral battlefield.
It was quieter than that.
Whispered.
Domestic.
Practical.
Dangerous sometimes.
Private often.
Most importantly:
it was largely considered women’s business.
Colonial America inherited English common law, which generally allowed abortion before “quickening,” the stage when fetal movement could first be felt, usually somewhere between the 16th and 20th week of pregnancy.
Before quickening, the law largely viewed pregnancy differently than modern legal systems often do.
Potential life.
Possible life.
Not yet fully separate legal personhood.
And because pregnancy itself could not be medically confirmed early with modern certainty, women often described abortions as “restoring the courses” or “bringing on menses.”
Language mattered.
Directness remained rare.
Knowledge traveled sideways:
through kitchens,
midwives,
neighbors,
mothers,
sisters,
healers.
And there you stood, Christopher Sauer Jr., printer and publisher in a world where information itself moved through pamphlets, almanacs, recipes, and whispered networks long before centralized medical authority claimed ownership over reproduction.
The colonies contained abundant herbal knowledge.
Women used plants like:
black root,
cedar root,
cotton root,
pennyroyal,
indigo,
ergot.
Some remedies worked unpredictably.
Some dangerously.
Some perhaps not at all.
But the knowledge existed widely.
Midwifery manuals included instructions.
Home remedy books circulated recipes.
Even Benjamin Franklin once published material containing references to remedies for ending unwanted pregnancies discreetly.
Which surprises modern Americans taught to imagine abortion as entirely modern invention.
It is not.
The methods changed.
The politics exploded.
The technologies evolved.
But human beings have attempted to control reproduction for thousands of years.
And practices crossed racial and cultural lines too.
Indigenous women utilized botanical knowledge refined over generations.
Enslaved Black women often used herbal abortifacients secretly, sometimes to avoid bringing children into slavery itself.
Imagine the moral weight of that reality:
women making impossible choices inside impossible systems.
Because reproductive control has always intersected with power:
economic power,
racial power,
religious power,
state power,
gender power.
Always.
And notably, early America showed relatively little interest in aggressively policing abortion before quickening.
That would change dramatically.
Then came the 19th century.
And reproduction moved from household knowledge…
into institutional control.
At first, the old quickening standard still largely held.
Women continued seeking abortions quietly.
Midwives and herbalists continued providing care.
Patent medicines marketed themselves euphemistically for “female complaints.”
But beneath the surface, American medicine professionalized aggressively.
The newly formed American Medical Association launched campaigns to establish physicians as dominant medical authorities.
And abortion became part of that struggle.
Doctors like Horatio Storer argued abortion should be criminalized entirely.
Partly this reflected evolving fetal theories and moral concerns.
But also?
Professional competition.
Male physicians increasingly sought to displace midwives and traditional women healers from reproductive care.
Medicine centralized.
Authority masculinized.
At the same time, demographic anxieties haunted white Protestant America.
Fears grew that immigrant and nonwhite populations were reproducing faster than native-born Protestant families.
Abortion debates increasingly tangled with nationalism, race, religion, and cultural panic.
Which means abortion politics were never only about fetuses.
They were also about who America imagined itself becoming.
Then came the Comstock Act.
And reproductive knowledge itself became contraband.
Named after anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock, the law criminalized mailing contraceptives, abortifacients, and “obscene” materials through federal postal systems.
Imagine criminalizing information itself.
Pamphlets.
Medical guides.
Contraceptive advice.
Knowledge became suspect.
And by the late 1800s, nearly every state had criminalized abortion except under narrow circumstances to save the life of the pregnant woman.
The old quickening distinction disappeared legally.
Yet criminalization did not eliminate abortion.
It pushed it underground.
Women still sought care.
Providers still emerged.
Advertisements still hinted cryptically at solutions for “female irregularities.”
America developed dual reality:
official morality publicly…
private necessity quietly.
Then came the early 20th century.
And silence became deadly.
By 1910, abortion bans dominated nearly nationwide.
Access depended heavily upon wealth and geography.
Affluent women often found safer physicians willing to help discreetly.
Poor women faced terrifying risks:
unsafe procedures,
self-induced abortions,
infection,
hemorrhage,
death.
In 1930 alone, unsafe abortions contributed to nearly 18% of recorded maternal deaths nationally.
Think about that.
Nearly one in five maternal deaths linked to desperate reproductive circumstances.
And despite criminalization, abortion remained astonishingly common.
Which reveals recurring truth about prohibition generally:
making something illegal does not eliminate demand.
It changes who suffers most from enforcement.
Meanwhile women built underground networks quietly.
Friends shared names.
Nurses whispered referrals.
Communities passed information carefully.
Abortion became hidden infrastructure beneath public respectability.
Then came the 1960s.
And America changed rapidly.
Second-wave feminism expanded conversations around:
bodily autonomy,
sexual freedom,
workforce participation,
contraception,
and reproductive rights.
At the same time, horrifying stories about unsafe illegal abortions became harder to ignore.
Reformers argued criminalization harmed women more than it prevented abortion itself.
The American Law Institute proposed liberalized abortion standards allowing procedures under circumstances including rape, incest, or health threats.
States began shifting cautiously.
Colorado liberalized abortion law in 1967.
Others followed gradually:
California,
New York,
Hawaii.
And then came 1973.
Roe v. Wade detonated American politics permanently.
The Supreme Court ruled that constitutional privacy protections extended to abortion access.
The trimester framework emerged:
strong protection early in pregnancy,
increasing state interest later.
For supporters, Roe represented:
medical safety,
privacy,
bodily autonomy,
gender equality.
For opponents, Roe represented moral catastrophe and judicial overreach.
The modern abortion war began in full.
Clinics opened nationwide.
Access expanded dramatically.
Maternal deaths from unsafe abortion plummeted.
But backlash mobilized immediately.
Religious conservatives,
Catholic activists,
evangelical organizers,
and the emerging New Right built powerful political infrastructure around opposition to abortion.
Figures like Jerry Falwell transformed abortion into central organizing issue for conservative politics.
And over the next decades, abortion became not merely healthcare debate…
but symbolic struggle over:
religion,
sexuality,
family,
feminism,
privacy,
constitutional interpretation,
and national identity itself.
State restrictions multiplied:
waiting periods,
parental consent laws,
clinic regulations.
Then came Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which preserved Roe while allowing broader state regulation so long as laws did not create “undue burden.”
The legal terrain shifted gradually.
And activists on both sides intensified.
Marches.
Clinic protests.
Political campaigns.
Violence occasionally.
Court battles constantly.
Abortion became America’s perpetual unresolved argument.
Then came the 21st century.
And technology changed everything again.
Medication abortion transformed access profoundly.
Drugs like mifepristone and misoprostol allowed abortions without surgery during early pregnancy.
Telemedicine expanded.
Mail-order access emerged.
Digital privacy became central issue.
The internet decentralized reproductive knowledge much like midwives once had…
except now through encrypted apps and online communities rather than whispered kitchens.
Then came June 24, 2022.
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade entirely.
Federal constitutional protection vanished.
And America fractured instantly into radically different legal realities.
Some states enacted near-total bans.
Others expanded protections aggressively.
Cross-state travel surged.
Shield laws emerged.
Providers relocated.
Patients improvised.
In states like California, Illinois, and New York, abortion access expanded and protections strengthened.
Elsewhere, bans tightened sharply.
Meanwhile medication abortion became dominant nationwide.
Telehealth providers mailed prescriptions across state lines.
Legal battles exploded around FDA authority, interstate enforcement, and digital surveillance.
And despite restrictions, abortion numbers nationally did not collapse as dramatically as many predicted.
Instead, access rerouted:
through travel,
telemedicine,
mail systems,
support networks.
Human beings adapt around systems constantly.
Now in 2026, America lives inside reproductive patchwork nation.
Some states function as access havens.
Others impose six-week bans or total prohibitions.
People cross borders for care the way earlier generations crossed borders for alcohol during Prohibition.
History rhymes strangely sometimes.
And the politics remain volcanic.
For some Americans, abortion represents essential bodily autonomy and healthcare access.
For others, it represents profound moral wrong requiring legal protection for fetal life.
Most people navigate emotionally complex middle ground involving circumstance, compassion, ethics, fear, religion, and deeply personal experiences.
Because abortion conversations rarely stay abstract for long.
Eventually they intersect with real lives:
pregnancy complications,
economic instability,
assault,
health crises,
family realities,
desperation,
hope,
timing,
grief,
love.
Christopher, if you could walk through America in 2026, you would likely stand stunned watching:
people order abortion medication through telehealth portals,
states sue one another over reproductive laws,
activists livestream protests instantly worldwide,
and private medical decisions become national election flashpoints repeatedly.
You would see technologies unimaginable in 1776:
ultrasounds,
fetal surgery,
genetic testing,
viability shifts,
encrypted health apps.
But we suspect you would also recognize something ancient beneath all the noise.
Because across every century, people have struggled with same fundamental tension:
Who controls reproduction?
The individual?
The family?
The church?
The physician?
The state?
America has never settled that question fully.
And perhaps that is why the conflict persists with such intensity.
With whispered remedies, court rulings, encrypted messages, and one exhausted nation still arguing across centuries about autonomy, morality, and power,
—The Radical Left 🌿🖤
And dear reader, perhaps the deeper question after 250 years is this:
What does bodily autonomy actually mean?
Does freedom include reproductive decisions?
Can society protect potential life without controlling existing lives?
Who bears the risks?
Who carries the consequences?
Who gets trusted?
Because abortion debates are never only about medicine.
They are about authority.
Privacy.
Gender.
Faith.
Responsibility.
Fear.
Compassion.
And beneath all the politics lives something profoundly human:
people trying to navigate reproduction, survival, morality, and future under circumstances rarely as simple as slogans pretend.
The laws changed.
The technologies evolved.
The arguments intensified.
But across every century, one thing remained true:human beings continued searching for ways to shape their own lives inside systems constantly trying to shape them first.