Many historians have criticized the New York Times, the Pulitzer Prize board, and Random House for pushing the concept that America’s “true founding” came in 1619, when enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia. But as today’s 50th annual March for Life in Washington celebrates the end of the Roe v. Wade regime, it’s worth remembering that abortion likely arrived in what is now the United States in 1629. If “structural racism” is a problem, so is structural abortionism — and maybe we need critical abortion theory.
1629 is an important date because that was the year servant Dorcas Howard told her master, George Orwin: I’m sick and cannot work. He suspected she might be pregnant, ordered Howard to bed, and called “some women to her.” The next morning, the corpse of an unborn child was on the floor. Court records in Richmond, Va., burned up in 1865, so we don’t know the legal outcome. But that was probably the first abortion in England’s American colonies.
For the next 344 years, most of America’s common law and common sense recognized that unwanted pregnancies created crises for many unmarried young women and men. And yet, individuals and communities usually found ways to support both unborn children and their parents: sometimes marriage, sometimes child support, sometimes adoption.
Now, though, our economy apparently relies on female employees aborting unplanned children. Many companies now pay not only medical but also travel expenses for employees heading to blue states to abort their babies. A more expensive alternative would be to expand at-home work whenever feasible, and to set aside office space for nursing rooms and baby care, with breaks for nursing and hugging.
Several proposals readily come to mind. Colleges could create “Pregnant Women’s Studies” programs and appoint compliance officers to interrogate programs that might be discriminatory. Conferences on structural abortionism and critical abortion theory should issue requests for papers and proposals. Since women who continue a pregnancy under difficult circumstances show character, they could benefit from affirmative action. Many other projects can and will develop.
The 1619 Project of the New York Times examined structural racism. A 1629 Project could help us comprehend structural abortionism.
Marvin Olasky is co-author with Leah Savas of The Story of Abortion in America (Crossway, 2023).