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How Did the Founders Feel About Abortion?
The different rules for White and Black women.
I didn't wake up this morning wondering what the founders felt about abortion. One of my readers commented about Ben Franklin publishing a book including steps to perform an abortion, and I had to find out for myself.
Franklin indeed wrote about abortion. It was in, of all places, a revised copy of a British math book called The Instructor that covered a variety of tips on other subjects like recipes and how to care for horse hooves. Franklin adapted the original book by George Fisher by adding John Tennent's The Poor Planter's Physician to the end of the book. Franklin described his adaptations as making the original text more relevant to the American colonies.
“The book is the whole better adapted to these American Colonies, than any other book. In the British Edition of this Book, there were many Things of little or no Use in these Parts of the World: In this Edition those Things are omitted, and in their Room many other Matters inserted, more immediately useful to us Americans.” — Ben Franklin
It seems how to perform an abortion was one of those useful things Americans needed to know.
