Proving Pregnancy: Gender, Law, and Medical Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century America

Proving Pregnancy explores how women in the United States lost control over reproduction to male medical and legal professionals from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth centuries, with community-based female knowledge playing a crucial role in prosecutions for infanticide in the first half of the century. As the century progressed, women accused of the crime were increasingly subject to the scrutiny of white male legal and medical experts.

Format: Hardback
Length: 246 pages
Publication date: 06 September 2022
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the United States witnessed a concerning trend of infanticide cases, particularly affecting women of various backgrounds, including Black and white enslaved and free individuals. Proving Pregnancy, a groundbreaking work by Felicity M. Turner, delves into the intricate dynamics that led to women gradually losing control over reproduction to male medical and legal professionals.

In the early part of the nineteenth century, community-based female knowledge played a pivotal role in prosecutions for infanticide. Midwives, neighbors, healers, and relatives, who were more familiar with an accused woman's intimate life, pregnancy circumstances, and potential motives for infanticide, were better equipped to provide testimony than any man. This knowledge was invaluable in securing convictions and ensuring justice was served.

However, as the century progressed, women accused of infanticide faced increasing scrutiny from white male legal and medical experts who were educated in institutions that perpetuated prevailing notions about the inferior mental and physical capacities of women and Black people. These experts held significant sway over the legal process, often questioning the credibility and reliability of women's testimonies.

As Reconstruction came to an end, the carceral state expanded its reach, exerting greater control over individuals and communities. At the same time, law and medicine privileged federal and state regulatory power over local institutions, further marginalizing women's bodies and reproductive rights. This shift placed all women's bodies at the mercy of male doctors, judges, and juries, in ways they had not experienced before.

Felicity M. Turner's work highlights how the medical profession, in conjunction with legal regulations, transformed knowledge of the female body into property. At a time when the federal government was expanding formal civil and political rights to formerly enslaved people, the medical profession instituted new legal regulations that restricted access to knowledge of the female body to white men. This discriminatory practice perpetuated gender inequality and marginalized women's health and well-being.

Proving Pregnancy serves as a powerful reminder of the historical and ongoing struggles women have faced in controlling their bodies and reproductive rights. It sheds light on the complex interplay between medicine, law, and societal attitudes toward women and highlights the urgent need for gender equality and reproductive justice. By examining infanticide cases in the United States from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth centuries, Turner provides a valuable contribution to our understanding of the historical roots of gender inequality and the ongoing challenges women face in achieving reproductive autonomy.

Dimension: 235 x 155 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781469669694