Alias Grace; Not of Woman Born: Representations of Caesarean Birth in Medieval and Renaissance Culture; Abortion Politics; Mothering Rhetorics

On June 24, 2022, the US Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, effectively overturning 1972’s Roe v. Wade decision, which had guaranteed the constitutional right to abortion. Trigger laws regarding the procedure sprang up in several states. These recent events have profoundly impacted my present article, which in many ways is a personal reflection, but the termination of pregnancies and debates of when life begins and ends are not new. Rather, they have existed for centuries. As such, this review essay explores a play and three books attempting to disentangle fact from fiction surrounding these and other maternity-focused situations. In the play Alias Grace, written by Jennifer Blackmer and adapted from the novel by Margaret Atwood, supporting character Mary Whitney dies from an abortion. This play has particular resonance for me, since I directed a production of the play in Oklahoma in the fall of 2022.1 The books I discuss here include Not of Woman Born: Representations of Caesarean Birth in Medieval and Renaissance Culture by Dr. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski; Abortion Politics by Dr. Ziad Munson; and Mothering Rhetorics, edited by Dr. Lynn O’Brien Hallstein. Each book delves into topics related to reproduction and representations of motherhood itself, providing context and illuminating the history behind such topics, including abortion, such as the one featured in Alias Grace.Before rehearsals for Alias Grace began, a community member asked to speak with me. Among other topics, the individual brought up my impending production. Friends from their church said that there was an abortion in the play. There it was, the elephant, or, rather, the sensitive topic, in the room, “that-which-must-not-be-named,” or at least procured, in our state, for we were in Oklahoma, during the fall of 2022. Abortions in this state are now illegal except when necessary to save the mother’s life or if resulting from rape or incest—but only if the latter two situations had been officially reported to law enforcement in a timely manner.2I grew up in the US, post–Roe v. Wade. Raised in and well-schooled by the Roman Catholic Church and with three great-uncles as priests, I was aware of the opinions many Catholic people held on abortion, as well as birth control. I knew of the Church’s 1968 Humanae Vitae, “Of Human Life,” an indictment against hormonal birth control, which it labeled “intrinsically wrong.” In high school, I asked why I should listen to a “bunch of old men who don’t get none” on the topics of my procreation. After college, a seminarian chastised me for using the hormonal birth control pill. With patriarchal authority, he claimed that I was “killing babies” every single time I had intercourse. Doing anything to prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg was akin to murder in his Catholic mindset. As I discuss later, particularly regarding Munson’s Abortion Politics, the Catholic Church has long been a driving force in pro-life rhetoric in the United States.But this is not a new rhetoric within the context of Christianity, as Blumenfeld-Kosinski points in chapter 3, “The Marginalization of Women in Obstetrics,” in Not of Woman Born. She writes, “In the fourth century, Saint Jerome described contraception as homicide (“Others, indeed, will drink sterility and will murder a man not yet born”)” (Blumenfeld-Kosinski, 111; parentheses original). This refers to drinking a liquid abortifacient. Still, I refused to accept that I was repeatedly instigating abortions, or murders, in my marital bed because of a pill or IUD, as the seminarian claimed. I had no idea that, just over a decade later, the right to procure an abortion at all would be in jeopardy, which brings me back to present-day Oklahoma.Before my conversation with that community member, I was driving back from Quebec to Oklahoma. I had just reached New York State when I heard the breaking news that the Supreme Court had overturned Roe v. Wade and, with it, opened the gates to state limits on reproductive rights. The US–Canadian border suddenly felt reminiscent of the divide between Gilead and Canada in Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale, and thus it is ironic that I would soon be directing a play adapted from another Atwood novel and one in which reproductive issues are also featured.Because of the Supreme Court decision, Oklahoma and other states quickly made abortion illegal in nearly all circumstances. Earlier, when I proposed the play for production in the fall semester, I, perhaps naively, had not truly anticipated just how divisive the topics within a work of fiction could be. The character, Mary Whitney, who dies from an abortion, was not the protagonist. While her death affects the protagonist, there are other issues in the play warranting content warnings: violence, murder, dismemberment, sexual scenarios, etc. Staging scenes of intimacy and violence while keeping the actors physically and emotionally safe felt like a more pressing concern than worrying about the plotline surrounding a supporting character. In the play, Mary’s death does not serve to glorify the situation. Rather, it produces a reality check; in the nineteenth century, when this play is set, pregnancy and abortion both posed significant risks for the pregnant person. The character, an orphaned teenage maid impregnated by her employer’s son, had few options: either somehow terminate the pregnancy or lose her job. (Losing one’s job due to pregnancy is also a concern in an article I discuss later.)Subsequently, I approached rehearsals with greater sensitivity. Audition sheets were prepared with content warnings, discussing the mature topics and urging those auditioning to let me know if any of those topics could preclude them from accepting a role. I neither asked nor required auditionees to disclose their private reasoning. Still, I felt that, as a professor at a public university in a state currently outlawing abortion, it was necessary to protect myself, my actors, and our ability to produce this play at all. Ultimately, no one brought up the topics as concerns, and casting proceeded. I remained adamant about posting signs warning of mature topics near the entrance to the theatre as an extra notice to audience members.For rehearsals, the production dramaturg and I researched abortion-related laws, statistics, and procedures for the play’s timeframe, including those specific to the play’s location in Ontario as well as in the rest of nineteenth-century North America. Before discussing this with the cast, I made it clear to my actors that they were welcome to exit the room without penalty beforehand. All remained. Discussions ensued regarding how abortions were performed during the era, as I felt that it was important to understand why the character died, in addition to understanding the legality of the situation.For production purposes, the costume designer and I chose to take a less-realistic route for the blood as Mary hemorrhages from her abortion. This was in keeping with our production concept, consideration of our audience base, and practical purposes. The costumer cut deep red, textured fabric into strips around the actor’s skirt. Under the stark red stage lights, this produced a moving effect. The character staggered offstage for her death and then reentered upstage, holding her arms up behind a scrim to indicate that her soul was trapped. This more abstract interpretation worked well for the needs of our production, as I was unsure if our audience in rural southwest Oklahoma would receive a more realistic, graphic interpretation badly. During tablework, while discussing nineteenth-century North American abortion procedures, an actor who had felt they could handle the material felt woozy. Worried that could happen again and knowing our conservative area and older audience base, I hesitated to show anything in graphic detail.My experience with the play and its production prompted me to write this article and carefully review these books on women’s health and reproduction. Alongside centuries of discussion about the willful terminations of pregnancies come discussions and depictions of labor ending in caesarian sections in the books discussed here. Before the advancements of modern medicine, these nearly always occurred in an effort to save the baby, or at least baptize it before it, too, expired after the birthing person died. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski charts these depictions in Not of Woman Born, which brims with thorough evaluations of historical sources regarding caesarian sections, both writings and illustrations thereof (many of which claimed to be about the birth of Julius Caesar, hence the name) and laws surrounding such practices. The book is divided into an introduction and four chapters. The first chapter is titled “Caesarian Birth in Medical Thought.” Chapter 2 is “Caesarian Birth in the Artistic Imagination.” Chapter 3, “The Marginalization of Women in Obstetrics,” and chapter 4, “Saintly and Satanic Obstetricians,” round out the book before an appendix, labeled “Creative Etymology: ‘Caesarian Sections’ from Pliny to Rousset.”The book is a well-researched text, outlining topics relevant to the history of caesarian: religious beliefs, laws, and even how it impacted witchcraft accusations. The information covers practices across several countries worldwide, though the focus is on Europe and terms used to indicate caesarian sections during its Medieval and Renaissance timeframes. An acknowledgment considers that caesarian births at this time were nearly always performed after the mother died, and, if she were still alive, would likely result in her death. The reasoning behind this postmortem surgery concerned the soul of the unborn. As Blumenfeld-Kosinski writes, “Midwives were required by the church authorities to perform Caesareans if they believed a fetus may have been still alive after the mother’s death; the goal was baptism and thus the salvation of the child” (2). This section provides a solid base of terminology and sources.In chapter 1, early accounts of caesarean births from the fourteenth century onward are discussed with medical writings regarding childbirth and reproduction. The next chapter relates information regarding artistic representations of caesarean births. The primary sources for such depictions are mentioned in the book’s introduction, and all illustrations are referenced and contextualized, allowing for a clearer idea of the topic. Chapter 2 helpfully sources illustrations from religious texts such as the Bible, as well as medical, political, and other writings. The illustrations typically show passive mothers, often deceased, with large infants being removed from their wombs. As the timeline progresses, depictions show women moving from active roles in the birthing chamber as midwives to more passive roles assisting male surgeons, as birth moved from the realm of women’s knowledge to formal, and male-led, medical practice.The closing chapters of Not of Woman Born focus on associations with witchcraft and the antichrist, along with exploring the origins of the name caesarian section. In chapter 3, midwives are removed from the birth experience and accused as witches. The chapter highlights the conflict between knowledge of reproduction concerns with Christian religious beliefs, noting that knowledgeable women were viewed negatively. Chapter 4 moves from witches to representations of the Antichrist born via caesarean either after the Devil sneaks into the womb or through a loose woman unsure of paternity. Finally, the appendix closes with an investigation into historical documents detailing whether or not Julius Caesar, the man for whom the operation may be named, was born this way or if there were other explanations for the term.Not of Woman Born provides a well-rounded immersion into the world behind often-postmortem caesarian sections in Medieval and Renaissance Europe and an understanding of the development of men’s and women’s roles in childbirth, including how such situations have impacted today’s medical practices. As relates to my production of Alias Grace, this book helpfully set the stage regarding the historical dangers of childbirth and pregnancy termination. Still, since the book was published in 1990, it might be helpful to see if more information could now be found to help expound upon the scholarship.Likewise, Ziad Munson’s book Abortion Politics provides a thorough, unbiased understanding of the evolving nature of the abortion debate in the United States, contextualized further by comparing and contrasting it with views in other places, including various European countries. Published in 2018, its discussions of the current state of abortion in the US already need updating after the 2022 Supreme Court ruling. As Munson points out, “If there is a common theme among the different aspects of the debate covered here, it is that the terrain of the abortion controversy is always shifting. So what will it look like five or ten or fifty years from now?” (131). Munson’s book, though outdated in the sense of the 2022 ruling, is a deep into this topic, in the nature of its of both of a divisive and no of the this book is now through an for my purposes, helpful information on abortion on the other of the border in the of Alias nineteenth-century material covered in the book the through the timeline of abortion, here as medical procedure in which a pregnancy is through medical or within the United and the is divided into an chapter 1, “The of the Abortion chapters Chapter “The of the and is by chapter 3, “The of the and chapter 4, and and chapter “The on American Chapter and chapter and in Abortion the introduction the for the book’s statistics, and that the abortion has always been with political, and other in the United Munson states that this book out because it both of the debate to see whether those for and against abortion be into or conservative is in of or ending abortion are in the while those in of abortion and against such are is helpful to that Munson abortion as what is labeled this has not been the centuries when a pregnancy before the when a woman the fetus was not 2 and discuss modern abortion and beliefs, noting points to In chapter the of abortion is discussed while noting that related to pregnancy termination with time and how medical all or nearly all were behind the of all from the birthing chamber while for abortion again knowledgeable Chapter that neither of the abortion debate has been a A timeline of how the since is with to the Catholic Church’s the development of pro-life and including the of and of abortion are as are for and against abortion, noting the of to the pro-life 4 that has an about abortion. chapters that while this is in many the United is different in that abortion a topic. 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