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Madame Restell was a bold, brave, intelligent, talented woman who made a fortune providing birth control and abortions to the women of New York City in the mid-1800s. She believed she had a moral responsibility to do so. At the time, getting pregnant could truly ruin a woman's life. Either she would be a single mother, ostracized by her community and forced to drug her infant with opium so she could eek out a meagre living in a factory (at least until the child reached the age of three, at which point they could be put to work themselves). Or, if married, she may already have more children than they could provide for, or she may have had complications during previous pregnancies that would make future ones dangerous. If the woman was forced to give birth despite these things, newborns were frequently left at almshouses and baby farms, where they were given dismal care at best and the majority of them died. New York in the 1840s also had tens of thousands of children living in the streets. Imagine 30,000 homeless and starving children living in your city. This, like all the other outcomes of forcing a woman to have an unwanted baby in the 1840s, is horrifying.
For these and other very valid reasons, there were a ton of women getting abortions then, and plenty of people providing them. Madame Restell stands out for a few reasons. One, she was completely unapologetic to the point where she blatantly advertised her services in several newspapers. Other abortionists advertised too, but in subtle, coded messages. Restell just put it all out there. Two, she was GOOD at her job. Her birth control powders worked, and she has very few patients die, despite the dangerous ingredients in her abortion pills and the fact that she performed surgical abortions before germ theory was even a thing, using her bare hands on the floor in her office. These things combined made her both very rich and very famous.
Because she practiced for so long, Restell had a front row seat to the changing public opinion and laws surrounding abortion. It gradually became less and less legal and more and more taboo (thanks to men who were too threatened by both the ability of women to make their own decisions about their bodies and their families and the ability of midwives and female abortionists to be more successful than them), and with that her fame turned into infamy. She dealt with public denouncement by newspaper editors and puritanical busybodies. She had repeated run-ins with the law, going to trial multiple times and to jail on several occasions. However, none of that deterred her from providing her services to women in need. She had a job to do and she was going to do it, men be damned.
This book doesn't shy away from the realities of birth control, childbirth, abortion, or child abuse in the 1800s. It's hard to stomach at times, if you have any empathy at all. But the fact is that things are grim in America right now too. There are still a significant number of men who believe that women should not have bodily autonomy, should not have access to basic healthcare like birth control and abortions, should not get to choose when or if they want to have children. Women's rights are under attack once again. As such, this is a very timely and important read, whether you're pro-choice or anti-abortion.
For these and other very valid reasons, there were a ton of women getting abortions then, and plenty of people providing them. Madame Restell stands out for a few reasons. One, she was completely unapologetic to the point where she blatantly advertised her services in several newspapers. Other abortionists advertised too, but in subtle, coded messages. Restell just put it all out there. Two, she was GOOD at her job. Her birth control powders worked, and she has very few patients die, despite the dangerous ingredients in her abortion pills and the fact that she performed surgical abortions before germ theory was even a thing, using her bare hands on the floor in her office. These things combined made her both very rich and very famous.
Because she practiced for so long, Restell had a front row seat to the changing public opinion and laws surrounding abortion. It gradually became less and less legal and more and more taboo (thanks to men who were too threatened by both the ability of women to make their own decisions about their bodies and their families and the ability of midwives and female abortionists to be more successful than them), and with that her fame turned into infamy. She dealt with public denouncement by newspaper editors and puritanical busybodies. She had repeated run-ins with the law, going to trial multiple times and to jail on several occasions. However, none of that deterred her from providing her services to women in need. She had a job to do and she was going to do it, men be damned.
This book doesn't shy away from the realities of birth control, childbirth, abortion, or child abuse in the 1800s. It's hard to stomach at times, if you have any empathy at all. But the fact is that things are grim in America right now too. There are still a significant number of men who believe that women should not have bodily autonomy, should not have access to basic healthcare like birth control and abortions, should not get to choose when or if they want to have children. Women's rights are under attack once again. As such, this is a very timely and important read, whether you're pro-choice or anti-abortion.
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The prologue had be SO stoked to read this book. And while overall I still really enjoyed it and would recommend it, I feel like once I started to get a better, more holistic sense of who Madame Restell was, it was a bit of a let down. And while no one is perfect and I appreciate the complexities of seeing her as a whole person, in her bad and good moments, I fear that I was led to really embrace her right off the bat and then had to backtrack which felt... not so great. All that being said, it's still a wonderful book and I'm glad I read it. She was a truly fascinating person and someone who really left an impact, in ways both positive and negative.
I had never heard of this person and her *extensive* influence on the modern birth control/abortion movement. A fascinating, wry, often infuriating history of a complex woman ahead of her time.
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