L2L Proving Pregnancy (ft. Felicity Turner, pt. I)

Proving Pregnancy (pt. I)

Felicity M. Turner

When it comes to reproductive rights, our current legal landscape is rife with changes and chaos affecting the daily lives — and futures — of women, pregnant people, and their families. Historian Felicity M. Turner, in her new book Proving Pregnancy: Gender, Law, and Medical Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century America, examines U.S. law and cases about concealed pregnancy and alleged infanticide in the early republic and antebellum eras. Drawing on court records and newspaper accounts, she traces the changes in American medicine and law — and the changes in Americans’ lives, bodily autonomy, and livelihoods — before and since the Civil War … developing a new social theory for interpreting past practices and what this might mean for us today. She joins Leigh, P. T., and Dr. C in the studio to talk about the rights of women and African Americans in nineteenth-century America.