From Coat Hangers and Knitting Needles, a book about abortion before Roe v. Wade. We can't go back.
A
Pre-Revolution Abortion and Trial
Today
Pomfret CT is a post card of a New England town with churches, wooden houses,
Robert Frost-type stonewalls and ivy-covered brick buildings. In autumn, leaves
turn brilliant red and gold. The 40+ square miles covered by Pomfret lacks a
town center as such. A graveyard, going back centuries, has the thin stone
tombstones typical of Puritan times. Some are askew.
The population in
2014 was about 4,100 people. Selectmen, the New England version of an elected
town counsel with equal voting rights, govern Pomfret as they have through the
centuries.
Probably most
residents today, would not guess that in 1745, 34 years after the village was
incorporated and took its name from Lincolnshire, England, it was the scene of
one of the first reported and prosecuted abortions in the new world. The
University of Connecticut has published trial documents, which is why the
information exists today. http://history.uconn.edu/taking-the-trade-biographies
As more people immigrated
and the new settlers reproduced: growth was constant.
Although settlers
found the class system more equal than the societies they had left, life was
difficult. There were still poor whites, indentured servants, prostitutes and
tenant farmers in comparison to those that garnered more prestige such as
ministers, doctors, lawyers and landowners of various degrees of wealth.
Those living in
New England faced a rugged climate and topography.
Religion was
strict. There were churches that considered an organ too liberal and dancing
dangerous. These limitations seeped into the general population influencing
daily life. Celebrations did not include the too-Catholic Christmas.
Farmers
represented about 90% of the people living in the colonies, although fishing,
trapping, tobacco, blacksmithing, ship building etc. were also practiced
trades.
In Pomfret,
because of its land-bound location and climate, things like commercial fishing,
shipbuilding and even tobacco growing were not viable livelihoods. Much farming
was subsistence.
One
of The First Abortion Trials in The New World
Sarah Grosvenor was lived all her life in
Pomfret. By standards of the time, her family was well off. They owned
farmland: her father was one of the first selectmen, elected as a village
leader, in 1714.
There is no record
of how Mary and Leicester Grosevenor felt when their daughter Sarah was born in
1723. They already had one daughter, two-year-old Zerviah.
Were the couple disappointed that she wasn’t a boy? I could find no records of
other children nor of Mary having miscarriages.
We know little of
Sarah’s childhood but at 19 she found herself pregnant by a man eight years her
senior.
· Were
they in love?
· Did she
seduce him?
· Did he
seduce her?
· Was it
mutual desire?
· Did they
make love once or many times?
· Where
did they make love?
One of the
frustrations with old records, that the many questions they raise have no
answer.
We do know his
name was Amasa Sessions. Amasa is a Biblical name rather uncommon even in those
times. In various documents he was described as “corpulent,” “capable” and
“honest.”
In July 1742,
sister Zerviah noticed Sarah was acting unwell. She suspected that her sister
might be pregnant, but when she asked repeatedly, Sarah denied it each time.
The girls’ mother,
Mary, was so concerned about her daughter that she asked a neighbor, Doctor
John Hallowell, to look at her. Dr. Hallowell told the family Sarah was not
pregnant.
For reasons that
are unclear in existing documentation, Dr. Hallowell took her to another house,
where Amasa Sessions visited the girl. When she returned home, she confessed
she was, indeed, pregnant.
If Sarah had not
been forthcoming with her sister, I am sure she did not rush to tell her
parents that they might be grandparents. Although there is no record of any
conversations, of her parents’ reactions, I can imagine they were not that
different from any parent today who finds an unmarried daughter pregnant.
Zerviah was upset
that her sister had not told her before, but Sarah had said she’d been “taking
the trade” the popular phrase of the time for using herbs to bring on a woman’s
period, a common practice when an unwanted pregnancy was suspected.
Unlike today,
there seems be no societal arguments about when life begins. Communications
took days, weeks, months by letter and horseback or ship, not seconds on the
internet.
The mores of the
time considered bringing on a woman’s late period with different plants before
the baby quickened, not an abortion.
Marriage would not
have been an impossible alternative for Sarah and Amasa: they were of a similar
class. Session never denied he was the father. He was reported to have visited
Sarah several times during the early part of her pregnancy willingly.
Amasa was the
third son of Joanna and Nathaniel Sessions. The Sessions ran a tavern out of
their house and because the father was involved in village politics, the
fortunes of the family must have benefited from meetings held there, perhaps
the way President Trump’s company benefits from other politicians staying at
his Washington, D.C. hotel. That he was not overjoyed at being a father is a
guess based on his reported conversations with John Hallowell.
Amasa expressed his
fear that his parents would make the young couple’s lives difficult should they
marry, but I could find no explanation of why he thought that.
However, with
persuasion, Sarah and Amasa decided to marry and stop any attempt to get rid of
the baby, something Sarah was said to be ambivalent about.
Despite that
decision, two weeks passed. No banns were announced. Zerviah saw Amasa giving
Sarah more herbs to “finish” what had been started. We don’t have any idea of
which herbs they were, but they did not work.
The assumption
abortion was only after the baby quickened, when the mother feels the baby
moving sometime around the fourth month. Until then the loss of a baby was a
miscarriage whether it happened naturally or with help. Missing periods could
be corrected by bringing the body back into balance using various herbs. Sarah
was in her fourth month when the baby quickened making the removal of the fetus
an abortion not a balancing of her menses.
According to her
friend Abigail Nightingale’s testimony at a trial three years later, Sarah had
told she had felt the baby move for about a fortnight when abortion attempts
were begun.
Much feminine
medical care was general knowledge shared by women. A number of plants that can
lead to abortion (abortifacient) were available and were considered effective.
Juniper to create
savin, pennyroyal and seneca snakeroot were among the popular plants “to
restore balance” and all grew in the Pomfret region. If a book of abortifacient
herbs was available to women in Colonial times, I have not been able to locate
it.
When the pregnancy
continued, Dr. Hallowell surgically removed the fetus, but it took him two
attempts over two days. The surgery took place at Sarah’s 30-year-old cousin’s
Hannah’s house. Sarah told her friend Abigail that Dr. Hallowell put
instruments on the bed and tried to remove the baby.
At one point,
Sarah fainted. Zerviah brought cold water into the room to revive her.
Amasa hid out at
Mr. Waldo’s the local tavern during the procedures.
Sarah went home
that night, but did not miscarry for another two days. The fetus, which fell
into a chamber pot, appeared damaged, was wrapped in cloth and buried near the
house.
Within ten days,
Sarah sickened most likely from infection caused by dirty instruments. This was
well before the importance of cleanliness was discovered. Her family called in
two other doctors who were unable to save her.
She died 14
September 1742. Court records show testimony by Dr. Hallowell that he said he was
responsible for her death.
Why there was no
official court action for three years is not explained. Not until 1 November
1745, did two county magistrates issue calls for Amasa, Hallowell, Hannah and
Zerviah. Hallowell’s depositions were delayed. He was in a debtor’s prison in
Connecticut.
The Inferior Court heard depositions
which still existent today.
Hallowell was found guilty of
murder. Amasa, Hannah and Zerviah were named as accessories to the crime.
It still wasn’t over.
The Superior Court, in September
1746, charged Amasa and Hallowell, for destroying Sarah and her unborn child.
Although a verdict was issued 18 November 1746, a technicality caused the case
to be dismissed.
It wasn’t until March 1747 when the
king’s attorney tried again. Amasa was released. Hallowell was sentenced to the
gallows and lashes on 20 March 1747. He disappeared before either part of the
sentence could be carried out.
Amasa married, raised ten children
supported by his farm. He seems to have suffered no stigma from his connection
with Sarah, served in the militia and died in 1799.
He and Sarah are buried within 25
feet of one another, ironic that they were separated in life.
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