Comstock Laws

Well I finished reading that long biography of Madame Restell by Jennifer Wright. Though the subtitle on the book cover calls her "fearless" and "fabulous," the book is not a hagiography of the abortionist. She's a complicated person like all real people. The truest adjective for her is "infamous" because everyone in New York knew her profession and yet she lived a wealthy comfortable life for decades before Comstock arrested her during his puritanical moral crusade. I would say she was more of a pragmatic businesswoman who could be ruthless when she had to be. I applaud the book for giving lots of details so I could see the full woman, warts and all. She was frequently unapologetic about her job, arguing that limiting family size was moral and good to save women's lives and keep people from having more children than they could afford.

Originally born Ann Trow in England, she started out as a maid before marrying a tailor and immigrating with him and their daughter to New York. Unfortunately, she soon became a widow, and she could not make good money as a seamstress. Nobody could in the Gilded Age. That's when she met a neighboring patent medicine guy making pills to sell. She learned how to make pills too, particularly for birth control and abortion, then eventually started performing surgical abortions since her pills weren't foolproof. She was a self-taught surgeon, but then again, many midwives didn't have degrees, and she performed the abortions so successfully that the women survived and could become repeat customers. By contrast, other abortionists could kill their patients. In later chapters, Wright points out that even formally trained male doctors in America didn't have experience practicing on female patients before they got their degrees; they weren't so much better than midwives, especially since many doctors didn't believe in germ theory and were resistant to washing their hands. In Victorian times, newspapers claimed that Ann's second husband Charles Lohman pressured her into becoming Madame Restell, but Wright makes clear that Ann did this herself, and that if anything, Charles gave up his career as a printer in order to help Ann's career. He adopted a fake doctor persona too and opened a branch office selling the pills. Ann also recruited her brother to help the family business.

The book details many scandals and previous legal troubles Madame Restell had before Comstock got to her; she could be callous to patients and to former servants if they sued her or blackmailed her. She did do some time in prison but was comfortable due to her wealth and the deference of prison officials on Blackwell Island. (Eventually her luck would run out with Comstock, and she did become afraid of losing her trial.) Meanwhile, feminists at the time like Elizabeth Cady Stanton were focused on suffrage, abolition, and temperance while mostly ignoring the question of abortion, just as Madame Restell mostly ignored the question of voting. She was content to bribe police and politicians to get what she wanted. So she was not a feminist saint, but certainly an outspoken, determined woman who was very necessary to the society that so disapproved of her. Sometimes she got tired of society's hypocrisy, but she could hardly out her high society patients to the press, because that violation of confidentiality would ruin her business. Still she tried to raise her daughter Caroline to be a respectable society woman equal to other debutantes. Unfortunately her daughter did not marry well and there was a falling out, though Ann remained close to her beloved grandchildren.

Only in her later years did Madame Restell try to start a new real estate venture when she created the Osborne apartment building to solve the problem of no one wanting to build a house next to her mansion. It was luxury apartments rather than affordable housing, but it became a trend in city living, even though newspapers again attributed this innovation to her husband Charles rather than to Ann. She just couldn't get credit in her lifetime. Over her career, the laws about abortion changed to be stricter and harsher. Not only Comstock but the entire male medical profession started targeting midwives and abortionists, wanting to discredit them as dangerous quacks so they could take over the care of female patients. Elizabeth Blackwell did become a real female doctor, but she was no ally to Madame Restell either. Overall, many abortionists considered themselves rivals rather than colleagues who could help each other gain respectability or fight the harsher laws. Maybe if Restell hadn't felt so alone, so wouldn't have felt so scared of Comstock trying to make an example out of her.

I did mostly enjoy the book because it is a feminist look at an important period in the past. (I didn't like the chapter speculating on whether Madame Restell faked her death; let's avoid conspiracy theories.) Wright concludes the book by discussing the fall of Roe V. Wade, and the new push for Comstockery and abortion bans. Democrats are trying to repeal the Comstock Act for a reason.