Kathleen Crowther: History of Controlling Pregnancy
Kathleen M. Crowther discusses her book, Policing Pregnant Bodies: From Ancient Greece to Post-Roe America. She explores the deeply rooted medical and philosophical ideas that continue to reverberate in the politics of women's health and reproductive autonomy. From the idea that a detectable heartbeat is the voice of the unborn to why maternal mortality rates in the United States have risen. Abortion restrictions are based in a fetal primacy history that systematically wrote out of the picture the pregnant person's reproductive health and autonomy. Professor Kathleen Crowther teaches at the University of Oklahoma in the Department of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine.