Proving Pregnancy: Gender, Law, and Medical Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century America

ISBN-13: 9781469669694 Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press Publication date: 09/06/2022 Series: Gender and American Culture Pages: 246 Product dimensions: 6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.69(d) Examining infanticide cases in the United States from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth centuries, Proving Pregnancy documents how women—Black and white, enslaved and free—gradually lost control over reproduction to male medical and legal professionals. In the first half of the nineteenth century, community-based female knowledge played a crucial role in prosecutions for infanticide: midwives, neighbors, healers, and relatives were better acquainted with an accused woman's intimate life, the circumstances of her pregnancy, and possible motives for infanticide than any man. As the century progressed, women accused of the crime were increasingly subject to the scrutiny of white male legal and medical experts educated in institutions that reinforced prevailing ideas about the inferior