Authors

Sasha Rasmussen¹;  ¹ University of Nottingham, Department of History, UK

Discussion

In the late Russian Empire, abortion was a feminine crime: both those who sought abortions and the vast majority of those who provided them were women. In the records of the Revel’ District Court, women also appeared frequently as witnesses in the criminal proceedings of abortion cases, as neighbours who closely observed the comings and goings of their building, or had been called to help when procedures went awry. This paper considers the cases of three midwives – Amalia Prommer, Johanna Graufeld, and Anneta Laks – found guilty of performing abortions or providing “artificial miscarriages” in the city of Revel’ (Tallinn) between 1910 and 1915. Only a few years before it was legalised under the Soviet regime, the subject of abortion stands at the intersection of legal, medical, social, and cultural histories of gender. These documents situate midwives (akusherki) within the wider social and professional landscape of the early twentieth century, a time when medical practice was both ostensibly modernising and overwhelmingly masculine. But beyond this, the lengthy testimonies included in these court files offer a unique perspective on the emotional world of fertility, sexuality, poverty, marriage, and grief. This paper takes these personal accounts as a vantage point from which to explore the vulnerability of unwanted pregnancy, asking how our historical understanding of abortion might shift if we approached it not only as an illegal medical procedure, but also as in intimate and emotionally-charged encounter between two or more women.