Our Memory

Records (Her Womb)

From the evidence adduced on trial, it appeared that Miss Ashe went to the establishment of Howard... about the middle of January 1858, for the purpose of having abortion procured, supposing herself pregnant, by a young farmer, by whom she had been employed during the previous summer; that a bargain was struck between the reputed father of the child and Howard, by which he was to perform the desired service for the sum of $100.
Report of a trial for criminal abortion
C.P. Frost, M.D., of St. Johnsbury, Vermont

The "immorality" of women, favorite theme of misogynists, is not to be wondered at; how could they fail to feel an inner mistrust of the presumptuous principles that men publicly proclaim and secretly disregard? They learn to believe no longer in what men say when they exalt women or exalt man: the one thing they are sure of is this rifled and bleeding womb, these shreds of crimson life, this child that is not there. It was at her first abortion that woman beings to "know."
Simone De Beauvior, The Second Sex

Her sister swore that she witnessed every operation. She testified that the doctor operated three times with instruments. (She could not describe the instruments minutely. She did not know how many there were.) She said water discharged from her sister's body (for tow or three hours, she said). She said on the next day, he operated again. (She said he used two or three instruments.) She said her sister did not cry out, but gave other evidence, she said, of considerable pain. There was now a discharge of blood, she said. On the night of the same day, Saturday, she reported, he operated again. After this, her sister did not sit up, she said. He used instruments again, she said, and also his hand.  This time a child was delivered about two-thirds grown, she said. She said her sister continued to bleed for a few days. That she lived from that Saturday to the next Friday evening, that the last two or three days of her life she was delirious and picked at her clothes.IT is said from the body of the dead woman no proof of innocence or guilt can be issued. We go back. We ask what happened then. We find no mention. No reference. No book. Books out of print. Lost, destroyed. Pages torn away. Days missing. We find documents. She finds letters. Diaries. Stories are repeated. We discover she was operated on four times before she died, we discover a hairpin was removed from her bladder, we read they took salts of lead, copper, zinc and mercury, we read they let themselves fall down staircases, we read she injected vinegar into the bladder, we read her womb was perforated by a knitting needle, by a probe, we read hemorrhage, we read inflammation, we read that she drank a solution of soap and then ran for a quarter of an hour, we read she remained for hour days in her room bathed in her own blood with no food and no water we read that the doctors would do nothing for her pain we read that she gave birth along that the infant was found dead beside her nearly dead body that she was sentenced to death, we read pain, we read illness. We can tell you something of what they went through, we say. Standing in the pharmacy, she was afraid they would know she was hemorrhaging. From the records, we say, we can guess what she felt. So that her screaming would not give her away, she began to sing. From the records She spend the night on the floor rocking in agony, biting her teeth into the flesh of her palm so she would not awaken them we can tell you what we know. The past is a hard stone within us. On this subject we have become unmovable, implacable. There is no way of convincing us otherwise, we say, and what is stone becomes wood that ages and resonates: we know what we know.

p 214 to 216 of Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her, by Susan Griffin