The Pre-Roe Pro-Life Movement in Minnesota and New York

performed the procedure, doctors were largely motivated by economic factors in forming
their anti-abortion stance. 2
Indeed, the 1840s saw the rise of abortion as a business, and
with this trend came a greater awareness of competition in the medical sphere. 3
In
attacking abortion, doctors eliminated their competition, presented themselves as both
professional and moral authorities, and thus increased their influence on nineteenthcentury
American society. An added advantage of attacking abortion was the opportunity
to make the issue into a “widespread social phenomenon” and into a rallying point, a
symbol itself. 4
From the outset, the issue was in part framed by a highly symbolic
medical and moral debate.
Individual professional doctors wrote and lobbied their legislators for antiabortion
laws; in 1847, those willing to join forces to promote the status and interests of
physicians formed the American Medical Association (AMA), marking the beginning of
what Mohr deems the “Physician’s Crusade” against abortion. 5
The AMA provided the
opportunity to integrate medical rhetoric in the abortion debate. Indeed, Dr. Horatio
Robinson Storer, an obstetrics specialist, used the framework of AMA to launch his
attack on abortion ten years later. Storer originally gained followers and support by
writing to individual physicians, most already involved in anti-abortion policies or
discussion across the country. One such man was Dr. C.W. LeBoutillier. Reporting on
the status of abortion laws and public opinion in the Minnesota Territory, LeBoutillier
asserted “the practice of producing abortion is frequently resorted to in our vicinity…and
I regret to say that regular physicians have in many instances assisted in this damnable
2 Ibid., 37.
3 Ibid., 47.
4 Ibid., 46; Kristin Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1984), 31.
5 Mohr, 146.
13