How U.S. abortion laws went from nonexistent to acrimonious

Most scholars say that at the nation's founding ending a pregnancy wasn’t illegal—or even controversial. Here’s a look at the complex early history of abortion in the United States.

There weren't any laws against abortion in the U.S. until the 19th century—and as those laws grew more restrictive, many women sought abortions in secret. Surgeon George T. Strother, shown at right with a patient, defied Virginia's law against abortion and was arrested in 1954. The man with his back to the camera is a doctor who accompanied the police on a raid of Strother's medical facility.
Bettmann, Getty Images

The divisive battle over abortion has flared up once more with the leak of a U.S. Supreme Court draft majority opinion by Associate Justice Samuel Alito that would overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision affirming the right to abortion nationwide. In his draft opinion, Alito drew on the work of certain historians and concluded the right to abortion was not rooted in the country’s “history or tradition.”

But that view of history is the subject of great dispute. Though interpretations differ, most scholars who have investigated the history of abortion argue that terminating a pregnancy wasn’t always illegal—or even controversial. Here’s what they say about the nation’s long, complicated relationship with abortion.

In colonial America and the early days

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