Amanda (Amanda Prestigiacomo)
speaker
1,029 appearances
3 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 21 Jul
Amanda (Amanda Prestigiacomo)’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 3.
Appearances
One of its goals was to elevate medicine into an elite profession with recognized expertise and legal authority.
And to do that, they had to eliminate the expertise and authority of what they called, quote, irregular practitioners, midwives, herbalists, folk healers, and anyone practicing medicine outside the new professional establishment.
One of the leaders of this movement was Dr. Horatio Storer, who launched the 1800s Physicians Campaign Against Abortion.
Storer and his movement argued that abortion should be criminalized and that licensed physicians, not midwives and not women themselves, should control reproductive medicine.
This campaign had multiple motivations.
First, the medical establishment had actively taken up the anti-abortion cause as part of its effort to eliminate competition for midwives.
Second, it was part of an anti-feminist backlash to the growing movements for suffrage, voluntary motherhood, and other women's rights in the 19th century.
And third, with the declining birth rate among whites in the late 1800s, the US government and the eugenics movement warned against the threat of race suicide and was desperate for white women to reproduce.
Even then, the issue was not about whether abortion was ethical.
It was about who had the authority to decide it.
who had the authority to perform it, and whom they wanted to reproduce at all.
This so-called professionalization didn't mean much in terms of helping those who needed help.
Formal medical training required no high school education, lasted merely a few months to a max of two years.
There was very few clinical facilities and frankly, no body of medical science to be trained in.
Medicine at this time consisted of providing laxatives, bleeding, and opium.
By all accounts, lay practitioners were safer and more effective than the certified doctors.
But formal certification did offer two irresistible advantages to male physicians.
One, a monopoly on the industry of medicine.
Since poor women were spending $5 million a year on midwives who are often black, indigenous and immigrant women, that profit could be diverted through legal requirements to the certified males.
and two, control and authority over what was being offered as medicine.
Showing 141–160 of 1,029 · page 8 of 52
← Previous
Next →