{"id":19494,"date":"2022-08-29T10:19:18","date_gmt":"2022-08-29T14:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/humanities\/?post_type=profile&#038;p=19494"},"modified":"2022-08-29T10:19:18","modified_gmt":"2022-08-29T14:19:18","slug":"charley-binkow","status":"publish","type":"profile","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/humanities\/profiles\/charley-binkow\/","title":{"rendered":"Charley Binkow"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><strong><em>&#8220;She Forces Nature&#8221;: Criminalizing Abortion in Nineteenth Century America<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>My dissertation looks at the causes and effects of the anti-abortion movement in Reconstruction-era America. The modern anti-abortion movement began in the 1850s, and its greatest legislative victories came during the decades after the Civil War. My work explores the political and cultural trends that shaped and fueled the anti-abortion movement. In the wake of unprecedented death, constitutional changes to citizenship, and new possibilities for equality, the anti-abortion movement popularized a narrative that emphasized the sacredness of life, the immutability of racial characteristics, and the \u201cnatural\u201d limits to women\u2019s equality.<\/p>\n<p>The dissertation\u2019s title, \u201cShe Forces Nature,\u201d comes from Susan B. Anthony\u2019s only known reference to abortion. After Anthony\u2019s sister-in-law suffered from a botched abortion, she privately wrote in her diary that her sister would \u201crue the day she forces nature.\u201d Did Anthony mean her sister\u2019s \u201cnatural\u201d health or her \u201cnatural\u201d duty as a woman? What did it mean to \u201cforce nature\u201d in an era when Anthony herself challenged \u201cnatural\u201d social hierarchies\u2014not to mention the medical and technological advances that were shaping the natural world at unprecedented pace? \u201cNature\u201d was a shaky concept that intersected religion, science, and law. My research disentangles these concepts to reveals the ways Victorians\u2019 race, gender, and class biases influenced their changing understanding of the human being.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16661,"template":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/19494"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/profile"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16661"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/19494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19642,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/19494\/revisions\/19642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/humanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}