Abortion

Between 1880 and 1930, then, a paradigm was established in which the focus of abortion prosecutions rested on male parties rather than on women and their abortion providers. While this focus offered women space to negotiate for an abortion, it silenced their voices inside the courtroom. . . . But depicting women as passive objects in legal narratives about an event that they had strong opinions about was crucial to the enforcement of legal statutes that denied women reproductive choice” (Schoen, loc 2056ff.).