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Author Biederman at WNHH FM, and her new book about a the underbelly of New Haven-Bridgeport's turn-of-the-century abortion trade.
Emma Gill’s severed foot and severed head washed up on a beach. Three boys stumbled across them.
That was in 1898. Might new such discoveries loom as a new era of abortion prohibition looms?
Marcia Biederman considered that question Tuesday.
Biederman has just had a book published about the Gill discovery and the deadly dangers and official hypocrisy (not mentioning the colorful cast of cold-hearted hucksters reaping fortunes while trying to stay a step ahead of the law) surrounding Bridgeport’s and New Haven’s illegal abortion industry at the turn of the 20th century.
The book is called The Disquieting Emma Gill: Abortion, Death, and Concealment in Victorian New England (Chicago Review Press). It tracks the careers and murder trials of Nancy and Henry Guilford, the young women who risked their lives in their care, and the nationwide scandal over the Emma Gill case. The Guilfords’ practice, run at times out of a “gracious” Wooster Square home, was an open secret. Tolerated, until it became inconvenient.
Emma Gill is a gripping tale, with resonance today not so much in New Haven as in red states rushing to ban abortion once more.
“Prohibition didn’t work,” Biederman, who began her journalism career in New Haven at the now-defunct Advocate alternative weekly, said Tuesday during an interview on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program. She noted that at least one in 10 pregnancies ended in abortion at the time.
She predicted that new iterations of Gill’s murder mystery could accompany the renewal of abortion prohibition as women turn to revived desperate measures.
“We’re going to hear some of these dreadful stories … about corpses being chopped up, probably. I wouldn’t be surprised,” Biederman said. “There’s a lot of dangerous stuff going on. It’s only a matter of time.”
Biederman is scheduled to read from and discuss Emma Gill at an event at the main library branch at 133 Elm St. next Wednesday, March 20, beginning at 6 p.m.
Click on the above video to watch the conversation with author Marcia Biederman on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven.” Click here to subscribe or here to listen to other episodes of Dateline New Haven.
The new laws being enacted since the Supreme Court reversed Roe V Wade will result in the deaths of women.
The way to reduce the need for abortions is to make birth control free and easily accessible for all who want it, and to educate young (preadolescent) boys and girls in a developmentally appropriate manner, about the human reproductive systems, and about the right to consent, and about responsible and healthy sexual-romantic relationships, if they decide to have one once they reach the age of consent.
Only doctors with the proper education in the fields of obstetrics and gynecology and the people with uteruses should be making decisions about what is medically necessary, science based, and appropriate for the human being who is already born to decide what do with their pregnancy.