Today in Salem: The beggar Sarah Good is curled into a corner of the jail cell, leaning into the wall with her knees up, sound asleep. Somehow she’s still holding her baby. She’s been here for almost three months now, and has kept the baby in her arms constantly.
Sarah startles awake, though, when the jail keeper pushes his way into the cell and drops a pile of heavy irons on the floor next to her. The sickly Sarah Osborne had been in that spot until she died, just a few days ago. Now it’s the pious Mary Esty who’s being chained there.
Mary is pressing her fingers into her eyes, swollen from a night of crying and praying. Only three days ago she’d been released from prison. Then last night the Marshall had come for her again, dragging her away in the middle of the night. And now the jail keeper is here, with his chains and shackles and muttered curses.
On the other side of the jail cell, the quarrelsome Elizabeth Proctor touches her stomach and watches the jail keeper. She hasn’t bled in nearly two months, and her breasts are tender. But there’s been no quickening, and how could she not feel ill in these wretched conditions? In ordinary times she might have used the medicinal herbs in her garden to bring down her courses. She’s 42, after all, with five children already (and another four from John’s earlier marriages). And she’s feeling so ill.
Things are different now, though. If she is pregnant, and she feels a quickening before her trial, then the judges will delay her hanging. A child unborn is innocent, whether its mother is a witch or not.
LEARN MORE: Wasn’t it illegal (or at least immoral) to terminate a pregnancy? What were the Puritans’ views about abortion?
Throughout Western history, much of the debate about abortion begins with one question: When does life begin?
The Puritans believed that life begins at “quickening,” when a pregnant woman feels her baby move for the first time (about the fourth month of pregnancy). And without today’s pee-on-a-stick pregnancy tests, that was also the moment that pregnancy began.
Before quickening, abortion was legal, safe (given the medical knowledge and practices of the time), and readily available from midwives and healers using herbs from their own gardens. But it wasn’t called “abortion“ because it wasn’t seen as such. It was called “restoring the menses,” or more euphemistically “bringing down the flowers.” It was a way to balance a woman’s ill health, and to cure the “pregnancy sickness” if a woman suspected as much.
After quickening, though, abortion was homicide. By extension, if a pregnant women was convicted of a capital crime, she could “plead the belly” and delay her execution. She would be examined by a group of women, and, if she was pregnant with a “quick child,” she was reprieved until the next hanging time after her delivery.
This distinction remained true in the United States until the 1860s, more than 170 years after the Salem Witchcraft Trials. Abortion was legal before quickening, and illegal after.
All of this was different for enslaved women, from early colonial days through the Civil War. They were subject to the rules of their ”owners,” who often refused to allow them to terminate pregnancies. The slave masters had their own reasons, but since any children legally belonged to them, they had an interest in producing as many as possible.
Tomorrow in Salem: Summary: Kissing the King’s ring, while stuffing the jails